digitization in Barok 2014


e is left to travel
not only to locate artefacts, protagonists and experts in the field but also to find
literature, which in turn makes even the mere process of compiling bibliography
relatively demanding and costly activity.
3

In this sense, the digitization of publications and archival material, providing their
free online access and enabling fulltext search, in other words “open access”, catalyzes research across political-geographical and disciplinary configurations. Because while the index of the


ts striking variety, all of which provide authors and publishers with
heterogenous means of expression. Although this “segment” is today generally
perceived as artists’ books interesting primarily for collectors, the current process
of massive digitization has triggered the revival, comebacks, transformations and
5

novel approaches to publishing. And it is these publications whose nature is closer
to the label ‘book’ rather than the automated electro-chemical version of the offset
lithography of


digitization in Sekulic 2018


on
the asymmetries of access to knowledge.

In 2008, programmer and hacktivist Aaron Swartz published Guerilla Open
Access Manifesto triggered by the enclosure of scientific knowledge production
of the past, often already part of public domain, via digitization. “The
world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in
books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful
private corporations […] We need to download scientific journals and upload
them to


also build networks of support
and solidarity. Those on the peripheries need to 'steal' the knowledge behind
paywalls in order to fight the asymmetries paywalls enforce – peripheries
“steal” in order to advance. Depending on the vantage point, digitization of a
book can be stealing, or liberating it to return the knowledge (from the dusty
library closed stacks) back into circulation. “Old” knowledge can teach new
tricksters a handful of tricks.

In 2015 I realized none of the architecture students


s from
a conference drew my attention –the important, white male professor was
showing the front page of After the Planners on his slide. I realized fast the
image had a light signature of the scanner I had used. While I do not know if
this act of digitization made a dent or was co-opted, seeing the image was a
small proof that digitization can bring books back into circulation and access
to them might make a difference – or that access to knowledge can be a weapon.



[Dubravka Sekulic](https://www.making-futures.com/contributor/sekulic/) writes
about the production of space. She is


the digital
realm. See: ‘Memory of the World’. Accessed 7 April 2018.


(3) Herman's library can be accessed at[
http://herman.memoryoftheworld.org/](http://herman.memoryoftheworld.org/) More
on the context of digitization see: ‘Herman’s Library’. Memory of the World
(blog), 28 October 2014. /hermans-library/>, and ‘Public Library. Rethinking the Infrastructures of
Knowledge Production’. Memory of the World (b

 

Display 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 ALL characters around the word.