Library Interventions: Reading Gendered Words
Summary
Library Interventions: Reading Gendered Words is a critical workshop / presentation questioning universalizing standards of library classification and sharing strategies and experiences of developing and instituting context-based, user-centred, categorization schemes for particular collections. With Maria Fusco (Edinburgh College of Art) and Wendy Kirk (Glasgow Women Library) SPUR, and Rosa Nussbaum (artist, designer London), Rosalie Schweiker, Eva Weinmayr (AND Publishing, London)
Supported by
Leeds College of Arts, UK
Description of project
The project forms part of my ongoing investigation around the organization and classification of knowledge trying to examine potential ideological implications of classification schemes in institutional libraries. The series “Library Interventions” at Leeds College of Art attempts to assess the opaque processes of cataloguing in the college library. It reviews library science scholar Emily Drabinski’s claim, that classifications and subject headings are by their very nature “socially produced and embedded structures, that carry the traces of all the intentional and unintentional racism, sexism, and classism of the workers who create them”. In form of of a workshop we developed new, unconventional and user-centred categories for selected books which we borrowed from the “Library of Omissions and Inclusions”, a community run reading room in Gothenburg gathering feminist, de-colonial and intersectional materials.
Together with writer Maria Fusco (Edinburgh College of Art), Wendy Kirk (Glasgow Women Library) Rosa Nussbaum (artist, designer London) and all the participants we creatively exposed the opaque process of standard classification to bring human knowledge together under a single unifying, universalizing structure and language.
Type of work
Presentation / Workshop
Published in
Leeds College of Art, Leeds, UK
Link to web site
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/library-interventions-reading-gendered-words-tickets-32649728216#
Date
2017-04-20Creator
Weinmayr, Eva
Schweiker, Rosalie
Keywords
Radical librarianship
Radical Archives
Feminist and De-colonial Strategies
Gender Studies
Library and Information Science
Publication type
artistic work
Language
eng