Full Panel
Panelists
Brianna Marshall (Indiana University), Melissa Villa-Nicholas (UIUC) and Paul Vinelli (University of Texas at Austin)
Biographies
Brianna Marshall is a dual-degree Master of Library Science and Master of Information Science candidate at the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science in Bloomington, IN. She currently works at the IU Digital Library Program, the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender and Reproduction, and the Wells Library Teaching and Learning department.
Melissa Villa-Nicholas is originally from Los Angeles and Riverside in Southern California. She has a B.A. from Azusa Pacific University in English and Global Studies, my M.A. from Claremont Graduate University in Cultural Studies, and a M.L.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Paul Vinelli is a Masters degree candidate in The School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he’s worked as a social media research analyst, nonprofit manager, and public radio director.
Abstract and Panel Description
We embrace the opportunity to “engage in the creative, if not impossible, glimpse of the digital future” by examining the threads that run through unique activist narratives in libraries and archives. We analyze, critique, and imagine the crux of technology, humanities, and librarianship while furthering sustainable communities for our narratives to be perpetually challenged.
We offer small summaries of our 15 to 20 minute talks below. In short, Brianna Marshall will survey the landscape of library innovation, focusing on libraries providing digital media labs and those that lend non-traditional materials; Paul Vinelli will introduce an illegal, underground online community that has stealthily crafted and curated one
of the world’s greatest music archives; and Melissa Villa-Nicholas will examine representations of archival social media through the lens of critical race theory and queer theory, illustrating the interaction and circulation by social media users with these archives as citizenship-building through imagined histories of the U.S.
1. Brianna Marshall – Digital Media, Non-traditional Lending Practices, and Other Library Innovations
This talk will discuss innovative libraries of two kinds: those that are adopting “makerspaces” or digital media labs, and those that with non-traditional lending practices (e.g. loaning seeds, tools, craft supplies, etc.). Although the two may seem at odds — giving patrons access to cutting edge technology versus objects that many consider everyday — this presentation will argue that both are acts of activism equally important for the future of libraries. To encourage and inspire a reimagining of libraries that integrate both concepts, this presentation will spotlight libraries that are taking bold steps beyond the typical library offerings of print and electronic resources, empowering their communities and shifting the paradigm of the library.
2. Melissa Villa-Nicholas – Nostalgic Reflections: Producing citizenship with archival social media
I will look at representations of American citizenship through national and state archival social media. I will analyze the social media that promotes two major archives – U.S. National Archive and the The Wisconsin Historical Society. These archives, when represented on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, project a nostalgic past and formulate, circulate and reproduce ‘good’ citizenship. Multiple questions arise when U.S. archives are presented through social media platforms. How do the conversation and images recreate the utopian hetero-white era of pre- civil rights and Sexual Revolution? What is at play if Latina/os are completely missing from archival representation? What sort of discussion is encouraged by disengaging archives from the larger national dialogue? And who is the public that is being addressed by these circulated images? Besides critical theory reflections on these conversations, it is important to challenge the merger of archives with technologies when they reproduce a narrative of whiteness and a certain type of valued citizenship.
3. Paul Vinelli – Groundbreaking/Lawbreaking Design: Innovative Curation by Illegal Archive Communities
Over the past 5 years, the online community What.CD has built an unparalleled music archive that grants users access to millions of albums. This invitation-only illegal community of over 150,000 audiophiles embraces a draconian set of rules to preserve anonymity and maintain an impeccably high level of quality control. Yet, beyond basic rules enforcement and site upkeep, the members of this community also act as curators – painting audio collages, telling stories, and shaping ever-evolving word clouds to meaningfully connect artists within a web of musical legacies.
This team of volunteers has constructed, in many ways, an ideal archive: accessible, networked, self-reliant, user-governed, efficient, and endlessly sustainable. More importantly, by carefully growing an international membership, What.CD has built a consortium that guarantees that neglected art forms – such as music from the Andes mountains – remains preserved on hard drives indefinitely and worldwide. The joy of this system is the serendipity it provides – and as designers and dreamers of information communities, learning a few tricks from the underground will prove invaluable.