[fse-esf] a google group to prepare the wsf 2008 global day of action

[Mikael Book]

Dear friends,

as Christophe Aguiton said, we certainly need communication tools to
prepare and co-ordinate our activities during the Global Day of Action in
January 2008.

Christophe mentioned "Google group", see groups.google.com. That is a good
tool. So let's use it.

We also have "WSF Process", which offers Common Space and Collaborative
Tools. See www.wsfprocess.net.  We certainly should use and refine this
tol of our own, too. 

More in general, we have the internet, with its many information and
communication tools and services. The internet might be a necessary
condition for the realization of our goals. 

And then there is the library, the organisation which strives to preserve,
organize and present information in the most professional manner. The
library and the profession of the librarian is presently undergoing a
major transformation as the library is extended by the internet. 

I enclose a couple of reflections on the library and our thousand and one
activities, which I wrote down after the USSF in Atlanta. 

Merci.

  - Mikael


Mikael Böök * book at kaapeli.fi * gsm +358(0)-44 5511 324 * 
http://www.kaapeli.fi/book/  * http://blogi.kaapeli.fi/book/


The library and the thousand and one activities
[World Social Forum] 


A world social forum consists of thousand and one activities. And the
catalog of the on-going first US Social Forum here in Atlanta also
mentions hundreds of activities: workshops, seminars, lectures,
discussions, brainstormings, etc.

These hundreds and thousands of activities of the social fora need to be
documented in libraries and archives so that information about them can be
transmitted to future generations of social forum participants, and to
posterity. Here, the librarians undoubtedly have a very important role to
play.

However, the social forum activities as such should also be present in
public libraries throughout the whole world. In other words: both the the
documentation of the activities and the activities themselves should be
accessible and available in the library.

But what does it mean to say that the activities themselves should be
accessible and available in the library? It means that the librarians
should maintain webpages about those activities. The webpages should be of
the easily editable Wiki-type, like in the Wikipedia. Wiki-techniques and
wiki-pages are suitable when documenting ongoing activities, because: "The
information is often very dynamic, meaning that some facts are prone to
change quickly and need to be updated." (quoted from Guzman, Manuel &
Verstappen, Bert(2003): What is Documentation? - a manual from HURIDOCS,
accessed via www.huridocs.org, and quoted here just a little bit out of
its context).

But before starting the documentation of the activities themselves, a very
basic problem should be given some careful thought, and a viable (if not
final) solution. Librarians would probably call this problem the problem
of classification.

In short, in order to organize and present the hundreds and thousands of
activities in the social forum process, we must agree upon a common
classification scheme.

A classification of activities is not a classification of knowledge. Take
the list of ministries of a modern state, or the table of contents of a
political programme, e.g. the would-be political programme called "The
Bamako Appeal", to quote an example from our own social forum context. Or
imagine what the main headlines in a programme of a "world government"
would be like. That should give you an idea of what the classification of
the activities of the social forum must be like.

The International Council of the World Social Forum actually came up with
a classification of the activities some months before the Nairobi WSF in
January 2007. I am referring to the the 21 actionable themes. For the list
of the 21 actionable themes plus some viewpoints by the librarians and
library activists who participated in the Nairobi WSF, see
http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Actionable_themes .

The problem is, however, that these 21 actionable themes did not become
established. They were not taken seriously.

Now, librarians happen to be a group who takes a serious, professional
interest in the problem of classification. We would probably have no
libraries at all if they did not. Nor would we have what is called
civilization, but that is another story.

The point which I obviously would like to make here is that we, who want
to take the process of the social forum a step further, have to civilize
ourselves. We need to have real libraries and thus we must cooperate with
the librarians, who understand the necessity of classification and serious
information management. This will help us to navigate the ocean of social
forum information. Obviously, it is also essential for the continuity of
the process, and for the understanding of the nature of the social forum
as an open space.

The openness of the open space is an ideal, a core value of the ethic of
the public librarian. The librarian is supposed to deliver all the
information without delay to all the people. The librarian must have an
open mind and be intellectually free. The open space is the space where
the intellectual freedom reigns.

We will remain divided on many political, economical, cultural, religious
and scientific issues. That is another way of saying that we must by all
means guarantee that the social forum lives on as an open space. And that
we simply cannot do without public libraries and public librarians if we
want to keep it open.

The librarians themselves also need the social forum, because as long as
the librarians serve the political systems which we have to day, they
cannot really be free. In order to liberate themselves, the librarians
must proceed to build an independent worldwide public library system.

With whom shall they build this necessary institution? With the NATO? With
the Commission of the EU? With the government of China? With UNESCO? Or
with the World Trade Organisation, which grew out on of the effort of
transnational industrial corporations and banks to make all our
"intellectual property" - the accumulated knowledge of the human race -
tradable? (In their book "Information Feudalism", Drahos and Braithwaite
tell the story of the birth of the WTO from the marriage between
intellectual property and international trade - and that is a story, which
every librarian and social activist need to know.)

No, that institution, the independent, cosmopolitical public library
system for the people, will never be built by the corporate-led
governments of the national states and their international organisations.
It is simply incompatible with the so called Information Society of today.

The library is the mildest and kindest institution, which helps to fulfil
the information needs of everybody. But it can give a hard blow to the
imperialisms and dictators of this world, if the librarians decide to
raise from their subordinate position together with the peoples of the
social forum.

    * * *

The envisioned WSFLibrary of activities, has to be built on the internet
with the digital networking tools of the internet. As somebody wrote a
long time ago: mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve;
and this problem of how to build the cosmopolitical public library is one
of those problems that can now be solved, thanks to the internet.

The quality of the networking tools have matured over the last decade.
They are are now available to librarians everywhere as FOSS (free and open
source software) and in the form of relatively affordable hardware and
internet connections. - Some, like Alfredo Lopez in his excellent essay
"The Organic Internet" (May First, 2007 - by the way, this is a book and
an author whom I met at the US Social Forum in Atlanta), think that the
internet in itself is a vast social movement, the biggest which mankind
has ever seen. I think they have a good point. However, I also think that
the internet itself should be put in a long historical perspective. "The
library is a growing organism", wrote Indian library scientist
Ranganathan. The internet is the latest branch on that old tree.

The library of the printed word has swiftly adapted itself to the
technical revolution of the internet. It must now go further and take the
lead as an organizer and producer of social information on the internet.
Firstly and foremostly: librarians must no longer accept that their
webpages, the webpages of the libraries, follow rules and apply technical
solutions which are dictated by others than the librarians themselves.

To sum up: let us continue to build (because we have already started) our
envisioned WSFlibrary together on the internet, and in the public
libraries. It should become a "Civipedia" of activities towards "another
world". Without that library, we will not be able to take the
alterglobalization process (the global justice movement) further. The
social forum process should extend to all communities which have a library
and the public librarians should become involved in the course of their
daily work.

Last, but not least: The social forum opposes the Neoliberal
globalization, which passes through global financial deregulation and the
establishment of the most unjust and protectionist global intellectual
property regime (the TRIPS). We oppose the information feudalism. We
demand debt cancellation and abolishment of the tax havens. We want to
introduce a global levy on the speculative money trade in order to finance
the necessary public service, such as the public library service. 

(http://blogi.kaapeli.fi/book/126)