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