Informed Agitation – Just Published!

Informed Agitation
Editor: Melissa Morrone
Published: February 2014
ISBN: 978-1-936117-87-1

Great news for all of us interested in the use of libraries and archives for social causes: a new collection of essays, Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond was just published by Library Juice Press.

This volume features an essay on the Radical Archives of Philadelphia that I wrote back when it was a thriving daily adventure of community archival activity. (It has since gone a little quiet, but there are new plans in the works: more on that in the near future).

The introduction and table of contents can be read over here, and be sure to ask your local library to grab a copy. This is a great book for folks just coming into the library/archives world and who may be wondering how to use their new-found powers for good.

Lastly, there are plans in the works to build author events in the near future. Details, links, and all that will be shared as they become available.

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SAADA post of what being a community collection means

As PADIYL — the Philadelphia Alliance of DIY Libraries — continues to work out our founding documents, we’ve been doing our best to find articulate attempts to explain the whats and whys of community collections.

I recently ran across this post (http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/blog/20120418-704) and thought I would pass it along.

There is reason to believe that SAADA (South Asian American Digital Archives) will be moving to Philly! If so, we consider this a great benefit for Philadelphia, and we hope to meet the team behind the Digital Archives soon.

Updates

Posts to this blog have slowed, but for good reason.

A lot of time and energy has recently been directed toward a project to bring together a number of small, independent libraries and archives into a consortium. The overall goal of this consortium will be to facilitate the creation and maintenance of DIY collections.

If this project is successful, the Start and Archives blog will likely to be relocated and integrated within the new organization’s blog posts.

Updates will continue until that time.

And, in the mean time, here is an article, “Marginalia: Little Libraries in the Urban Margins”, that explores the uptick in “little libraries” and discusses what they might be about. (I heard about it from the ever informative Library Juice blog.)

I hope you wish us luck with the new project. If you have any questions, comments or general enthusiasm, let us know!