Main Page

Welcome to the Parallel Library Services wiki. Here you can find;

• a list of Libraries
  
• various Tools that they are built with
  
• documentation on how to work with tools

Background

Parallel Library Services is a workshop series that documents the many actions and situations that libraries and amateur librarians facilitate.

It sees libraries as not just places to keep books and files, but as sites where important social practices are performed: annotating, community-building, reading together, supporting, organising, structuring and many more.

It aims to collect and document these actions hands-on; sharing discussions, perspectives, tools and techniques while experimenting with free software to create one, or many libraries in parallel.

How can libraries offer each other support while maintaining necessary difference? What knowledge and know-how can assist and what are the tasks of librarians to come?

Programme

The programme of 12 workshops will be held (mostly) every two weeks between October 2021 and March 2022. Each workshop will be approximately 2-3 hours. During these we will:

• engage in critical discourse on library practices and knowledge distribution
• collectively gain knowledge and know-how in the setup and maintenance of digital libraries
• support each other in experiments with free software tools to organise, classify, distribute and annotate digital collections
• collect and document techniques, tools, workflows and discussions
• connect and strengthen a network of amateur digital librarians

Schedule

• October 2021: Introducing digital library types and setup, classifying and cataloguing texts
• November 2021: Organising library structure, experiments with document conversion
• December, 2021: Digitising, scanning, processing and republishing
• January, 2022: Annotation tools and strategies, Documentation
• February, 2022: Collaborative writing and self-publishing workflows, Documentation
• March, 2022: Experimenting with the database, Documentation and debrief, Publication

Location

The workshops will happen twice monthly, alternating between in-person meetings at Varia, in the south of Rotterdam and online, hosted over web conferencing software. Guests speaker presentations will accompany the workshops. All workshops will include online forms of communication, so participation at a physical distance can be supported.

Applications are welcome from all with an interest in libraries and in particular from those who are curious to experiment with creating a library for their own community, in a mutually supported environment.

Documentation

Participants who choose to be involved in documentation in the later stages of the series will also receive a small fee as compensation.

Application

To apply, please send a brief description of your motivation to pls[at]simonbrowne.biz by Friday the 24th of September, 2021. All participants will be informed of the results of the selection by the 30th of September, 2021.

Acknowledgement

Parallel Library Services is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.