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Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book
Libraries amid Protest: Books, Organizing, and Global Activism
In September 2011, Occupy Wall Street activists took over New York's Zuccotti Park. Within a matter of weeks, the encampment had become a tiny model of a robust city, with its own kitchen, first aid station, childcare services―and a library of several thousand physical books. Since that time, social movements around the world, from Nuit Debout in Paris to Gezi Park in Istanbul, have built temporary libraries alongside their protests. While these libraries typically last only a few weeks at a time and all have ultimately been dismantled or destroyed, each has managed to collect, catalog, and circulate books, serving a need not being met elsewhere.
Libraries amid Protest unpacks how these protest libraries―labor-intensive, temporary installations in parks and city squares, poorly protected from the weather, at odds with security forces―continue to arise. In telling the stories of these surprising and inspiring spaces through interviews and other research, Sherrin Frances confronts the complex history of American public libraries. She argues that protest libraries function as the spaces of opportunity and resistance promised, but not delivered, by American public libraries.
Libraries amid Protest unpacks how these protest libraries―labor-intensive, temporary installations in parks and city squares, poorly protected from the weather, at odds with security forces―continue to arise. In telling the stories of these surprising and inspiring spaces through interviews and other research, Sherrin Frances confronts the complex history of American public libraries. She argues that protest libraries function as the spaces of opportunity and resistance promised, but not delivered, by American public libraries.
216 pages, Paperback
Published June 26, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 5, 2021
“Libraries Amid Protest” (written by Sherrin Frances, a professor at my alma mater Saginaw Valley State University) researches the libraries formed at a number of recent large protests; BiblioSol in Madrid, Occupy Wall Street People’s Library in New York, Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez in Oakland, Gezi Park Library in Istanbul, Maidan Library in Kiev, BiblioDebout in Paris and Lyon, and Freedom Square Library in Chicago. Frances outlines the book’s two purposes as documentation and the preservation of the histories of these protest libraries, and to analyze the patterns generated by the reproduction of protest library spaces around the world.
The author defines protest libraries as:
“A temporary physical library that emerges spontaneously within a political occupation or encampment. They are all physical spaces with boundaries defined by stacks of books, shelves made of found objects, and tents or tarps. Their book collections begin with a handful of volumes and usually grow to several thousand within a few days or weeks. The collections themselves include a wide variety of general reading materials and are not restricted to political texts. Activists, many of whom have professional library training, though just as many do not, are drawn to the books and take on the persona of “librarian”, helping to define and name the library, create systems of organization and lending rules, create stamps to mark books, and collect equipment to store, display, and protect the volumes. The libraries become a dedicated space within the camps for conversation and activities like poetry readings, music, and chess.”
According to the book, there are four phases in the lifecycle of a protest library; The construction phase (the physical emergence and rapid growth of the book collection, and the act of taking over a space, reclaiming it, renaming it, and reusing it), the struggle phase (where the library is evicted and becomes nomadic and insubstantial), the futures phase (an in-between phase in which the future of the library is undetermined and it can be transformed, broken apart, or redeployed - often the end of the library occurs here), and finally the transitions phase (the rare phase where a protest library has become something permanent).
Throughout the book, Frances compares the protest libraries discussed to the US public library. Public libraries are idealized as bastions of democratic thought, community centers, and the free access to information yet they realistically fall short of this ideal. The legacy left on our public library system by Carnegie directs its collections and policies toward the capitalistic goal of making a prosperous middle class of well-read citizens, and in doing so expects all in the library to be working towards knowledge (patrons can’t sleep or just loiter). “Protest libraries emerge and function as a foil to this legacy. They are the spaces of opportunity and resistance that American public library rhetoric can only promise”
The author also focuses on the power of a physical collection of books to create an environment in which creativity is fostered and you can slow down and loiter. There is truth to this ability of books to be worth more than their mass in terms of their “spatial weight”. I feel it every time I walk into a bookstore, library, or archive. They can draw people in and connect people from different backgrounds and creeds like few other objects can. In protest libraries, the collections themselves are the germ that the library forms around. They start with piles of books, and people begin to have the need to organize and protect them. When camps were raided, these librarians spoke about their focus to save the books even before the food and medical supplies - items in theory more important to the life of the protest.
As a librarian in a public library I found the harsh critiques of the public library eye-opening, but truthful. While my small library still is grounded in a physical book collection, I am aware that there is an overall trend towards the expansion of digital collections in the library field, and the removal of some collections to make space for creation centers (3d printers, crickets, ect.) Frances warns that these meta trends in the library field eat away at the physical book collections that in fact make a library a library. In each of the protest libraries described in the book, the collection of books was created first, then it was organized into a library around them. As many others have I replaced the truth of the institutions I work in with the idealized version, something which now that it is apparent, I will be able to check myself on in the future.
I enjoyed this book. It shed light on a vibrant form of library that is grounded in prefigurative politics (“an attempt to create right here and now the kind of world we want to live in, rather than setting that world as an idealized goal and working to achieve it in the near (or distant) future”), while also critiquing my professional field in a necessary way. Frances also cited a book called “Not Free, Not For All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow” by Cheryl Knott which is now on my to-read list. This is an interesting book for anyone within the library field, or anyone with revolutionary ideals.
I’ll end with an excerpt I found lovely.
“My argument up to now has been based on this proposition: a protest library relies on the power of a physical book collection, which helps create a particular kind of space in which creativity is fostered as well as a capacity to slow down and loiter. I have also argued that public outdoor space is more conducive to this assemblage than indoor space because buildings themselves embody economic flow. Finally, I have argued that protest libraries are free from indoctrination and nation-building. And yet, the general public’s collective romantic memory of “library” usually seems to be grounded in the rhetorical claim that a library serves as a cornerstone of democracy and as a community resource. Protest libraries emphasize much more clearly the connection between “library” and alternative political stances, or more specifically between “library” and revolutionary power. The references to democracy more often reinforce the library’s connection with the circulation of institutional hierarchy and power. Public libraries rely on an inherent critical tension between institutional desires for indoctrination and control on the one hand and the “freedom” of information on the other. In a public library, one may find the seeds of revolution within the books.”
“Protest libraries create a boundary enclosing a space meant for the generation of noproductive, potentially creative ways of being. In contrast, US public libraries are complicit with institutional hierarchy and discrimination because their authority comes from the building itself, a manifestation of economy and power. Despite the vulnerability and danger of building a library behind a barricade, a temporary outdoor space provides more freedom and autonomy in the space itself. Protest libraries differ from traditional libraries because reliance on buildings - as distinct from the space proper - is different. Without a building, the obligation and responsibility are different. In a protest library, one finds the seeds of revolution by crossing the threshold into the space itself.”
The author defines protest libraries as:
“A temporary physical library that emerges spontaneously within a political occupation or encampment. They are all physical spaces with boundaries defined by stacks of books, shelves made of found objects, and tents or tarps. Their book collections begin with a handful of volumes and usually grow to several thousand within a few days or weeks. The collections themselves include a wide variety of general reading materials and are not restricted to political texts. Activists, many of whom have professional library training, though just as many do not, are drawn to the books and take on the persona of “librarian”, helping to define and name the library, create systems of organization and lending rules, create stamps to mark books, and collect equipment to store, display, and protect the volumes. The libraries become a dedicated space within the camps for conversation and activities like poetry readings, music, and chess.”
According to the book, there are four phases in the lifecycle of a protest library; The construction phase (the physical emergence and rapid growth of the book collection, and the act of taking over a space, reclaiming it, renaming it, and reusing it), the struggle phase (where the library is evicted and becomes nomadic and insubstantial), the futures phase (an in-between phase in which the future of the library is undetermined and it can be transformed, broken apart, or redeployed - often the end of the library occurs here), and finally the transitions phase (the rare phase where a protest library has become something permanent).
Throughout the book, Frances compares the protest libraries discussed to the US public library. Public libraries are idealized as bastions of democratic thought, community centers, and the free access to information yet they realistically fall short of this ideal. The legacy left on our public library system by Carnegie directs its collections and policies toward the capitalistic goal of making a prosperous middle class of well-read citizens, and in doing so expects all in the library to be working towards knowledge (patrons can’t sleep or just loiter). “Protest libraries emerge and function as a foil to this legacy. They are the spaces of opportunity and resistance that American public library rhetoric can only promise”
The author also focuses on the power of a physical collection of books to create an environment in which creativity is fostered and you can slow down and loiter. There is truth to this ability of books to be worth more than their mass in terms of their “spatial weight”. I feel it every time I walk into a bookstore, library, or archive. They can draw people in and connect people from different backgrounds and creeds like few other objects can. In protest libraries, the collections themselves are the germ that the library forms around. They start with piles of books, and people begin to have the need to organize and protect them. When camps were raided, these librarians spoke about their focus to save the books even before the food and medical supplies - items in theory more important to the life of the protest.
As a librarian in a public library I found the harsh critiques of the public library eye-opening, but truthful. While my small library still is grounded in a physical book collection, I am aware that there is an overall trend towards the expansion of digital collections in the library field, and the removal of some collections to make space for creation centers (3d printers, crickets, ect.) Frances warns that these meta trends in the library field eat away at the physical book collections that in fact make a library a library. In each of the protest libraries described in the book, the collection of books was created first, then it was organized into a library around them. As many others have I replaced the truth of the institutions I work in with the idealized version, something which now that it is apparent, I will be able to check myself on in the future.
I enjoyed this book. It shed light on a vibrant form of library that is grounded in prefigurative politics (“an attempt to create right here and now the kind of world we want to live in, rather than setting that world as an idealized goal and working to achieve it in the near (or distant) future”), while also critiquing my professional field in a necessary way. Frances also cited a book called “Not Free, Not For All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow” by Cheryl Knott which is now on my to-read list. This is an interesting book for anyone within the library field, or anyone with revolutionary ideals.
I’ll end with an excerpt I found lovely.
“My argument up to now has been based on this proposition: a protest library relies on the power of a physical book collection, which helps create a particular kind of space in which creativity is fostered as well as a capacity to slow down and loiter. I have also argued that public outdoor space is more conducive to this assemblage than indoor space because buildings themselves embody economic flow. Finally, I have argued that protest libraries are free from indoctrination and nation-building. And yet, the general public’s collective romantic memory of “library” usually seems to be grounded in the rhetorical claim that a library serves as a cornerstone of democracy and as a community resource. Protest libraries emphasize much more clearly the connection between “library” and alternative political stances, or more specifically between “library” and revolutionary power. The references to democracy more often reinforce the library’s connection with the circulation of institutional hierarchy and power. Public libraries rely on an inherent critical tension between institutional desires for indoctrination and control on the one hand and the “freedom” of information on the other. In a public library, one may find the seeds of revolution within the books.”
“Protest libraries create a boundary enclosing a space meant for the generation of noproductive, potentially creative ways of being. In contrast, US public libraries are complicit with institutional hierarchy and discrimination because their authority comes from the building itself, a manifestation of economy and power. Despite the vulnerability and danger of building a library behind a barricade, a temporary outdoor space provides more freedom and autonomy in the space itself. Protest libraries differ from traditional libraries because reliance on buildings - as distinct from the space proper - is different. Without a building, the obligation and responsibility are different. In a protest library, one finds the seeds of revolution by crossing the threshold into the space itself.”
May 15, 2024
At first I thought this book was going to be about how established libraries reacted during protests and conflict, but that was my own fault for not reading the book blurb. While I didn't agree with some of the things the author argued for/against (she seemed to have a stagnant view on public libraries in some cases and didn't really consider the approach of tailoring collections to specific communities - i.e. some need more digital resources or non-book resources than others and some need more print - even though she mentioned that this is what protest libraries were doing) and at times the book felt a little repetitive or contradictory, I did enjoy learning about these libraries within international movements as it was something I hadn't really thought of before. Histories of the movements were given, leading up to the timelines of the protest libraries and their futures.
December 5, 2024
for library school but this was really interesting. it introduced me to prefigurative politics.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews