E-mail: theanarchistlibrary@angrynerds.com
IRC:
irc.anarchyplanet.org, port 6697, SSL only, channel#library
The scope of the Anarchist Library project is enormous. It will be a central website for all anarchist texts. Our collection eventually will consist of every digitally-available anarchist book, essay, story and article. We will be using only Free Software and Open Formats to produce typographically accurate, easy to parse, clean textual treatments of anarchist texts.
There are many online archives of anarchist and anarchist-relevant texts, so why one more?
Many of the existing anarchist archives are sadly out of date, unattended, and use software and protocols that do not do a good job of presenting text.
By creating an environment where an active set of anarchists-who-love-text can work together on a) editing, b) tech coordination, and c) editorial decisions about content priorities, this website will avoid the problems encountered on the other archives. Our Anarchist Library working group enjoys each other, and our project, enough to continue to work on it for years to come.
Furthermore, we value the work of copy editors. We are in the early stages of cleaning some of the texts on the site, and will be fixing typos and contextual errors until the texts are perfect. The editors' keen eyes will help create high quality texts. Anarchist copy editors improve the overall content of anarchism, especially in print.
Too often anarchists put up static HTML pages (built using proprietary tools), use a service that forces you to agree to their "terms of service" (which can include geographical tracking, ownership of your content, marketing everything you do, etc) and/or, to make their texts pretty, rely on tools from the Adobe Corporation (which breaks the open pdf format). We like to do things differently. Our plan is to go slow-and-steady and use our own resources rather than a university's or corporation's. We will also fundraise to develop the infrastructure for this resource, and we will share our code, our work, and our time.
Why these writings and not others?
This question is always thorny. Consider the following response the beginning of a conversation (and the beginning of a possible future FAQ).
On the one hand our intention is to include all anarchist texts in this library. As a result we have started the library out with a set of books, essays, and articles that were readily available and easy for us, as a small group of @librarians, to put through our workflow and upload.
Within the scope of our use of the term "anarchism" we have been quite broad in what we have posted.
Broad does not mean infinite.
Our understanding of anarchism is as a political philosophy that aspires to a world without the State and without exchange relations. As a result we do not consider Rothbardism, Objectivism, or so-called Nationalist Anarchism as anarchist friendly or appropriate for the library. We do consider Mutualism to be within the canon. For the foreseeable future, we will discuss each text that raises any questions between the @librarians as it comes through our workflow.
Tell us about your workflow
Our current workflow is guided by two elements. The first is the format by which texts enter the library, the second is how the texts are output.
We have rather technically-specific guidelines for text submissions, but if you have ever manually-edited HTML, this will not be challenging. Once your text is prepared (please refer to our “guidelines” for this) and you have collected information such as source (web, isbn, magazine), author, etc, all you have to do to place a body of text into our queue for librarian approval is click Add to Library and fill in the values.
Once your text has entered our queue our librarians will discuss whether it is appropriate for The Anarchist Library. Once approved we will attempt to proof the text, tag it, publish it to the (drupal) website and announce it to the world. Then we will produce pdfs from your text: A4, letter, and imposed (for either the A4 or the letter). The A4 pdf will be typographically accurate and appropriate for printing on non-US printers. The letter pdf works for US printers (and whatever other backward countries still use letter). Finally, the imposed pdfs are for creating zine format versions.
How does the anarchist library organize itself?
We organize as an informal, internet based group of anarchists, and use conversational consensus to make our decisions. Most of us (about 10 fairly active members at launch) have never met each other face-to-face and do our work together online.
Why don't you do X
Perhaps because we haven't got around to it. Perhaps we have other reasons for not doing X. If you want X to happen at the Anarchist Library, feel free to log onto the AnarchyPlanet IRC server (irc.anarchyplanet.org, port 6697, SSL only) join the channel #library, and talk to us about how X will rock our world, and how to make X happen. We are probably open to do it.
What is the Anarchist Decimal Classification (ADC)?
Good question. We need a reference librarian to help us with this one. Are you one? Please contact us.
What about support for other languages?
Some of the anarchist librarians read and speak in languages other than English, and have discussed the issue of support for other languages. We realize that English is not the only language, and are open to providing the infrastructure and tools to support the other languages of the world. Indeed, some articles in the library are themselves translations from other languages. That said, it is no small task to create and maintain a high quality online anarchist library in another language, and currently our main focus is on the English version. If you are interested in starting an anarchist library in another language, please know that it will be a lot of work, but we are willing to help out in certain capacities, such as providing the subdomains (like espanol.theanarchistlibrary.org) and the storage and bandwidth costs. If you're seriously up for it, please let us know.
I have a text I'd like to see in the library. May I submit it?
Yes, you may! You don't need an account. Just click Add to Library. There you will find our uploading guidelines. They will just take a few minutes to read, and will get rid of bad body odor. No, seriously, reading them will make you a better, happier person. We use only a minimal set of tags to help you to create a simple but clean text. Please note: we don't reject ascii images completely, but we do ask you to use discretion. Most ascii images should be removed as they are a pain to deal with. If an ascii image is worth keeping, then leave it in, and we'll work with it.
I have an amazing zine, freshly scanned. Where can I upload the file?
If your zine doesn't rely on images or fancy design, then the entry page is where you start. But if you think that the images and/or the layout are as important as the words, then perhaps http://zinelibrary.info is the right place for your piece. Here we emphasize text because it is easier to use in various ways, from creating new zines and PDFs, to easier (and more versatile) document searches.
Hey, you started without me. Can I join you?
Sure, you can join the crew. We have a mailing list and an IRC channel, where you'll find us (#library at irc.anarchyplanet.org, port 6697, SSL only)
Do I have to format these sections into a table of contents like your other texts, and must I link to the endnotes?
No, please don't. The library automatically generates the table of contents and links to endnotes. The table of contents and the linking of the footnotes are also shipped in the pdf, and these features work very well. Check them out. The pdfs are high-quality, almost camera-ready, and provide bells and whistles, everything someone needs to navigate, read, and print the document (table of contents, bookmarks, hyperlinks). This is probably the preferred way to store the text on your disk, to print or simply to read off-line.
Tell us about your technology
We use LaTeX to produce our PDFs from XML produced by code written by one of our members. Our technology primarily relies on variants of the Debian distribution of the GNU/Linux Operating System.
Hey, I know LaTeX and I want to rearrange one of your texts. Can you give me the source?
Absolutely. Feel free to browse the TeX repository to retrieve the files you need.