librarypunk - 070 - Metadata Anarchy

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

We’re doing metadata anarchy this week. Come for the creative destruction, stay for the Reddit questions.  Readings https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-on-order Eros in the Library  Metadata Anarchy Media mentioned Ask Reddithttps://www.reddit.com/r/Libraries/comments/xz0egf/ada_and_patron_question/  Adult males in the children’s department : r/Libraries  TX Library Professionals: share your "conspicuous place"  Is it wrong to decorate your library with a witch?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G56_mQwyBM   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliban_and_the_Witch https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/669547 https://litwinbooks.com/books/feminist-pedagogy-for-library-instruction/

I'm Justin. I'm a skullcom librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they then. I'm Jay. I'm a music library director and my pronouns are he. And this is definitely not the second time or third time that we're doing this, because everything's great and everything's going fine. Everything is super smooth. I've never seen these other two people in my life. Yeah.

Smooth as a shark, as the tumbler kids would say. Smooth as a shark in both directions. holding up his jaw's shirt. Hell yeah, I am. We have a J-heavy episode, but first, we have a new segment. Those people are dumb-dums. Ask Reddit. Check this out.

I've got new AI voices, so now I can be in the narrator, so it picks up the word that I'm using, and then it like voice to text set, and then text to voices that. So then I can be different people. I can be the president. Today, we celebrate my Independence Day. For the general what movie this one's referred to

I was the V-Tuber. Is that what I am? I'm a V-tuber. Kov, you are looking at my dance while I am on TikTok. Callv. Anyway, back to the voice and answer because that's the best thing about voice mod right now.

It's so fucking spooky. I know a V-tuber that has done that for a long time now, where, like, it's clearly they speak into it, and then an AI voice reads what they've said for, like, anonymous anonymity. Anyway, we've got these Reddit questions, and I put them in the notes so you can take a look at them. Some of them were more silly than others, but I want to help these poor people of Reddit.

So here's the first one. ADA and patron question. We have a patron who is demanding that the be allowed to lie on the floor of the library due to a disability. He has threatened to sue if he is not allowed to, so our admin team said that he can do so as long as he's not obstructing the hallway. Our library policy has rules against laying down on furniture, but nothing about the floor. Does the ADA law requiring something like this? How would your library handle this situation? Here's more info.

The patron in question is irregular. He's a jerk to staff and continually pushes the limits. I don't think that's relative to whether or not this is an ADA thing. In fact, he has received several warning letters about his behavior. Again, not a problem. Sue happy, not a problem. Disability issue you brought up has only been recently. Again, not a problem.

So I'm highly doubtful of his truthfulness. Not your place to do that. Yes, I don't like the guy, but I don't have to like everyone that comes in, nor do they have to like me. Correct. As long as you're following the rules, we're good and I'll give you the same service. Well, I would say, if we don't have a policy against it, he is following the rules. What do you guys think?

This is some cop shit. Why wouldn't people be allowed to lay down on the floor? The furniture thing I heard, like, don't lay down on the furniture. And I'm like, cop shit. This is anti-homeless rules is what it is. Why wouldn't they be allowed to lay down on the floor? As long as they're not obstruct anyone, like, that's kind of common sense. Yeah, and I think this is going to be a theme for another upcoming one.

but this has nothing to do with ADA. If you don't have a policy, then you don't have a rule, man. Like, how could he be breaking the rule if you don't have a rule about it? Just because you're a fucking cop, does it mean? He doesn't even need to be disabled. Yeah, you can just lay down. There's no rule. Yeah, there's no rule.

Policies allow you to say, no, if you really don't want people laying down on your floor, have a policy that clearly say it's not laying down on the floor. And then, really, if he needed the ADA accommodation or something, that's when that could be brought in. But you don't have a rule. So like, fuck you. I just say this reminds me of the time I was working the front desk and I had several people who had just walked into the library tell me that there was somebody passed out on the front lawn and it was like early January and had like been pretty cold, like not cold like some other places, but still pretty freaking cold. And like people were like, I don't know if he's okay

or not. And I'm like, is he in a sleeping bag? Like what's going on? And they're like, yeah, he's in a sleeping bag. And I'm like, okay, great, we just have a homeless person asleep on our lawn, right? Try to find my branch manager to see what she thinks, couldn't find her, couldn't find somebody else to go out there with me to check on the guy. So I just went out anyway. And yeah, he was just, he was just an unhoused dude, decided the library lawn looked good, pulled out a sleeping bag, sleeping on the lawn of the, like off the edge of the parking lot. And I was just like, are you okay? And he was like, yeah, I'm fine. And I'm like, okay, just checking on you. making sure you're good. When I came back in the library, I found my branch manager and was like,

yo, this just happened, FYI. And they went, and she went, okay, good. Maybe it'll be a lesson in, you know, lesson in, what did she say? It'll be a lesson in, like, noticing your unhoused population. And then just kept going about her day. She had way too much other shit to do. And I was like, yeah, pretty much, like, he's not passed out. He's not in danger. We don't have a rule again sleeping on the lawn. I think we didn't. I think they do. now, but at that point they didn't. So I get the feeling that the reason this is even a question is because the patron is a jerk. Like one thing begets the other. It's not the other way around. This is a patron that irritates the fuck out of everybody in that library. And this is just

one more like one more thing that they have to deal with this dude. But welcome to public service, I guess. The only thing I could see is if maybe the admin came up with, if there was something to do with liability. That would be the only thing I could think of. That's probably the furniture thing. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

Liability for what? Like, falling off and getting hurt or getting stepped on if you're on the floor. Yeah. I guess. Not saying that it's like legit. Oh, no. God fucking damn it.

Where were we? So the next one. I think this one's related. That's why I wanted to do it next. We have an adult male who routinely sits in the department on the small little chairs reading alone. And the title is adult males in the children's department. No children of his own. Our library has no policy concerning adults in the children's area.

He has not approached anyone while in the department, but definitely gives off a creepy vibe. Do other libraries have a policy for this? And there's a comment later that I want to get to. But first thoughts. Is he staring at children or is he? reading and minding his own business. Yep. It says he sits in the department and the small chair is reading alone.

So he's reading in a library? Yeah. Dear God, what has the way to do? In a little chair. And also, like, it's stuff like this. Like, I've read that, like, there's a reason why, like, sometimes it's hard for men to get hired as, like, grade school teachers, especially, like, gay men, doing any kind of teaching of children or like mentoring kids or teens or anything because there's this assumption

of pedophilia that like men cannot be trusted around children this person is reading if they're staring at kids that that would be something else i think yeah and have other patrons mentioned it because if you're not getting any comments from patrons about it then and literally you're the only person who's uncomfortable i mean i've seen things like when i've been working like front desk stuff, it's like you can ask somebody who's watching porn to like move to a different computer or something because if it's it's the whole inadvertent viewing thing, like if it's making other people uncomfortable, then it is like affecting how people are able to use the library and therefore you can like do some, you can do certain things to like try to make it work.

Hardboardhood, baby. Yeah. But like it doesn't sound like there's any actual behavior here. He just like tiny chairs. The twist is going to be that he's the children's librarian. No, I don't know what the twist is. I mean, I think I know what the twist is. Here's a comment that I think is pretty relevant, but I thought it was from the original poster, but it isn't.

But if it had been, it would be pretty ironic. This is why a profession is so tricky. We, including the branch manager, thought we had a policy, but found out we didn't. I have a customer who is autistic and hangs out there because he's an aspiring children's illustrator and uses the JP. for inspiration. I am also autistic and don't find him creepy, but other people don't get him and do. On the other hand, the reason we found out about the policy part was a creep hung out there and hit on one of my teen volunteers. Obviously, that's different, but that discussion led to our discovery. Anyways, my point is we have nebulous and tricky jobs sometime. So here's my thought

is, is this adult man developmentally disabled? That was going to be the next question I asked, was that, like, maybe this person is, like, neurodivergent or has some form of, like, developmental disability. Yeah, that was going to be like the next question. It doesn't look like they looked into it. Yeah, like, I didn't want to, like, assume that, like, oh, only people who are, like, autistic or maybe have, like,

Down syndrome or something, that they would be the only ones who would exhibit this kind of behavior. We didn't want to assume that. But like, it's also a possibility and this person just being a fucking jerk. Okay, here's the next one. Might need some explaining from me. Texas library professionals share your conspicuous space, specifically to Texas public school librarians, but other opinions are welcome. What is your plan to comply with the new Texas Education Code section 1.004 requiring in God we trust posters that are donated, meet these requirements, be displayed in a conspicuous place of your building. Many have suggested the library is a good place.

Do any of you plan to maliciously or non-maliciously comply? I'm thinking on the wall of the mythology and fairy tales section. I like the comment that's just as a Canadian. I'm just so sorry you have to deal with that shit. I'd put it in the cafeteria. I like the propaganda display idea person. Propaganda display? Oh, put it in a larger display about.

propaganda and other examples of propaganda into it. Oh, yeah, put it in the X to that Soviet Yuri Gagarin thing when he says, well, I didn't see God up there, which was like a thing he said just sort of like nervously because he wasn't press trained. And then I turned into like this big like Soviet poster that was like, there's no God up there. Base. You know.

Because he thought he was going to die. So he was like, I didn't see God up there. Oh. Still based. Or, you know, just get a whole bunch of other similar posters, but in like different languages and just put them all together as like a world diversity display. Yeah. People have been donating them in different scripts.

So like Arabic and things like that because it's donated ones because they don't spend the money on it Because they assume, like, Christian groups are going to donate them. So they're like, well, the government's not spending the money, wink, wink. So someone else will spend the money, wink, wink, and hand it to us. We'll just spend $10,000, like, putting up your monument. But it was because it was a gift of a $500 shitty little concrete thing you sent us. You know, that's the way this always goes. Yeah, like I watched him.

I believe the YouTuber is Big Joel. And I think it's him. And he's got a video analyzing this one, Christian. film about nativity scenes and about like the legality like the legal cases like real legal cases that have been put up against displaying nativity scenes at like city halls and stuff and like when they are appropriate and when they aren't like when they are actually following like a religious freedom type of protection and when they are crossing that that line in like a way that I thought was like very well explained and stuff and so I know in God we trust is like on our money

but that only started in like the 50s or something. But it is like an official thing on our money, which is bullshit. But like this surely has to be some sort of like religious freedom thing where you can like do it in a way where like maybe you put other slogans of other countries or something around it or other things we've put on our money like Illuminati symbols. Put some like golden don't shit up there. I don't know. I mean, it's still stupid that you have to do that, people in Texas. Anyway, so here's the last one. I think it's topical and seasonal and in the spirit of the season. Is it wrong to decorate your library with a witch? Would it be offensive somehow to dress up a mannequin as an old school witch with hat and broomstick? What do you think? Because I actually, I can see both sides of this.

And I remember a few years ago, and also right now I'm reading Sylvia Federici's Caliban and The Witch, because I'm a leftist on Twitter who's in a podcast, so I have to read Calabana the Witch. But there was a discussion. Abigail Thorne strikes again. Yeah. It's very good, by the way. But a couple years ago, there was some discourse on Twitter, because I have a friend who does a lot of, like, graphic designing for Blazeball or whatever it's called. And one of the teams or something had to do with like a witch and it was like a green witch. And they got feedback that that was anti-Semitic.

And we were all very confused. We were like, like that wasn't one of the anti-Semitic stereotypes I was aware of. But then there was like a very, and again, I didn't verify any of this, but like a research thread about that specific imagery of the green skinned witch in medieval and early modern and modern anti-Semitic. drawings and caricatures and stuff. As far as like the hat and broomstick thing, I'm trying to remember if there was anything suss about that. Maybe don't make the skin green would be my main thing.

If there are Jewish historians who know more about the green skin witch stereotype of Jewish people that has more to do with the greens, more to do than the green skin. Like, let us know. But I remember the green skin as a big. one. I mean, I think that like how are you going to use the mannequin? Is it just going to stand in a corner? Are you going to make it part of a book display with books about Halloween? Like, there are a lot of ways you could like, for lack of a better term, style that sort of decoration and like place it in context. You could make it about abortion rights and how a lot of witch hunt stuff they were controlling their own reproductive freedom. Thank you, Sylvia Federici. And they don't specifically say that it's a decoration for like a kids area, which I would think it would be where most of the like bullshit protests would come from.

Yeah, I would say there are a lot of ways to do things without like there's just no, I don't think there's a correct answer here, I guess is what I'm saying. Because yeah, there's like the anti-Semitic stereotypes that sometimes come with it. Then there's- Don't give her a big nose. Yeah, like don't do that. is there like wild curly hair, you know. Yeah, I'd do that. But like at the same time, like, you're going to have those people who bitch about Harry Potter because it has witchcraft. So like, place, what's what's your library's policy on displays?

Does it have that sort of thing? If it does, does it have to be integrated into like a wider theme that the library is doing? Does it have to integrate into like a book display? Like, there's a lot of stuff here that I think could be under discussion. Yeah. I think it would probably be fine in the vast majority of cases. People understand what it is for what it is. If it's a mannequin, you know, don't make it look like the greedy merchant stereotype,

and you'd probably be fine. Yeah. Make it look like the one out of the Wizard of Oz. That's a book. Except not green. Don't do that. I guess the green thing could be a problem. Make her sexy witch.

Give her stockings and stuff and just make a big thing. sick. Do the Vavich. Give her Black Phillip. Have her killing a baby. Get a goat manikin? Yeah. Give her a little stuffed goat.

Have her eating some like corn with ergot on it. Yeah. Do that. I think it's erm gots. Corn smart, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's where LSD kind of comes from.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. That's the theory of the Vovic is that maybe they were just tripping the whole time. I like to believe it's both things that there are witches. and also they were tripping. It just made a worse. Corn smuts good. We should eat it more.

Yeah, there was this Mexican restaurant in Champaign-Urbana where you could get like food with corn smut, and it fucking ruled so tasty. It's it's mushrooms that taste kind of like corn. Yeah, Urgaat is like when it's actually making the corn go bad. I don't know if the corn smuts the same, but it's like a... It's just a fungus. It's just a mushroom that grows on corn. Yeah, Urgot is like psychoactive or candy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, that was the whatever. I'll get something made up for the other Reddit questions because there's a lot of them. Oh, I bet. I feel like we'll have plenty to play with there. So, Jay, do you want to get us started on metadata Anarchy? Yeah, so I made a shitpost back in May that an I school professor, like, obviously knew it was a shitpost, but decided to what happens? when we take this seriously. And I went, oh, and then invited me to do a guest lecture about that for their metadata

course last week. And so the tweet is actually a quote tweet. So the original tweet, which has since been deleted, so I had to get this from like the way back machine, said, good afternoon to all of you, but especially to the local author, pardon me, especially to the local author who keeps moving his book to the poetry section. because according to him, even though his book is about religion, his words are poetry. The library, I clicked the wrong browser. The library organizational system is not vibes, sir.

And I was feeling spicy that day. And so I retweeted, I'm declaring metadata anarchy and demanding that our systems be only about vibes from now on. And then I replied to that tweet, I support this local author, Recavick. with your poetry. Obviously, a shit post, but in the spirit of, I've been, like, through my work on the homosaurus, which is still very important and I love it, but I'm starting to have this, like, reaction of like, all of this is bad. I'm kind of feeling about metadata, and now I'm not even a metadata library anymore,

but I was, you know, trying to be funny. And she replied, dot, dot, dot, but really? Or something like that. And then like, I was like, what? And then she's like, would you come talk to my course about this? And then here we are today. And so I have had a lot of time to think about, okay, this fucking joke I made, what happens when I take it seriously? Like integrate my own politics even more so in like a let's name this, which,

contrary to the actual spirit of thing of metadata anarchy. And so I was like, okay, how am I going to do like a guest lecture? She's like, do you have any like assigned readings or anything? I was like, uh, sure. And so I was like, well, they need to know what anarchism is. And I don't want them to have to read the bread book. I need something short. Can I find anything that is about like organization or naming or anything?

And I was like, wait, my boy Kropotkin on order. And it's a pamphlet. And it's so short. And what was hilarious was I sent the like anarchist library link to her. And it's like, um, can you, is there a different version you can send us our library and can't verify the copyright status of it and needs to know if like this book we found on Open Athens is a correct translation? I'm like, this came out in the 80s. I'm sure it's in the public domain. But let me, let me compare the translations.

Yes, it's fine. So I thought that was cute. The librarian trying to get the stuff for the class. I was like, I can't verify the copyright status of something by Peter Crippagian. I don't know. Are translations under different copyright than the original text? Probably are. I'm probably being an asshole.

Sometimes, I think it depends because this has changed over time. Yeah. So I never have to deal with this directly. So off the top of my head, I don't know. Anyway, so I had them read that. And then I had them read the text I've mentioned a lot. Eros in the library by Melissa Adler. I'm not sure how much we've talked about it on here,

but I have mentioned it as like an example that in the discussion that we could talk about, like, what might this look like? Could this be an example? Just because I wanted something library related as well. That wasn't querying the catalog because I assumed they had all read querying the catalog that it had been assigned to them at some point, because that was like one of the first things I had to read in my like cataloging what I want was queering the catalog grew.

Queering the catalog. It's by Emily Drivinsky. Yeah, it's queering the catalog. I never wanted to be a cataloger, so. Yeah, it's queering the catalog, a queer theory in the politics of correction. It's actually more for reference and instruction librarians than it is for cataloging librarians. Oh, so they don't want to be a reference instruction.

Yeah, because it's about instead of having to deal with, this like endless task of having catalogers, like try to correct things. Why don't we have reference librarians, like engaging with patrons in what they see? I don't know. It's a gross over simplification of Emily's argument, but I had assumed that they had all read Queering the catalog. But that's what I had them read. And because I read Maria Tia Cardi's or Mariah, I'm not sure I've not heard their name pronounced out loud, their book, feminist pedagogy for a library instruction.

The way I chose to do the lecture was not as a lecture. I like introduce the topics and then kind of let discussion happen, moderating a little bit, but it's not like I was up there. Like I did have slides, but that was just for visual help, but I wasn't giving a lecture. It was like a discussion in that sort of like non-hierarchical type of teaching that sort of is, like, not, what's the models of teaching where it's like the students are a bucket you fill or something like instead of that like where it's more. The banking model of teaching.

Yeah, where it's more, um, I'm an ex, I have authority and expertise on this that I'm sharing with you, but you also have authority and expertise and knowledge that you are sharing with me and everyone else kind of thing. Um, and so we did it that way and it was really cool. And so I thought it'd be fun to actually talk about it. Uh, here with y'all see what y'all thought. And I'm not going to do it as like a lecture. Yeah. So that's what happened. And the reason I assigned on order, not just because it has order in the name, was because the first half of it, well, I thought it'd be like a good introduction of like anarchist thought, like a very basic,

here's what anarchism is for people who maybe hadn't read any anarchist theory of writing before. Yeah. That sort of talks about how the late, like the name of anarchist got, like how that label got assigned and the politics of labeling and naming. And then the second half is sort of commenting on the fact that like anarchy was meant to talk about disorder. And so the second half is like, well, what is order versus disorder? And so those two things, but in reference to metadata. But yeah, so that was like the main reading that I gave them both to introduce them to anarchist thought, like baby's first anarchism. But also I thought, it was relevant to metadata and like the conversation alone on like labeling and naming

in order versus disorder in response to our current metadata systems and what it could be like was really fruitful. Yes, Justin, did you remember? Yes. So a big thing that Kropokin's talking about is something I think about a lot and kind of like lots of ways of everyday life with transitioning, people changing their names. is this phrase names or things other people give you. And he's talking a lot about how anarchists preferred the terms like federalists or anti-capitalists or anti-authoritarians.

But the word anarchists, even though it was poorly defined and defined in a public consciousness in a certain way, it's what your enemies called you. it's what you started calling yourself. And he talks about how this happens again and again. He gives like two or three examples of this happening again and again because it still opens up all this cognitive space. Someone was saying the other day like, I'm sure you all saw this where people were talking about this study that said people do believe like over 50% no matter what they have, what their political position. Over 50% would you have the LAPD budget used for social work? workers, homeless care, and things like, and first responders for drugs that are not police. And it's overwhelmingly like, yeah.

And people would jump in the comments and say, like, this is why defund the police was such a bad slogan. And other people were saying like, no, defund the police gave us cognitive space to say, this is a budget issue. It made you focus on in the same way that like fuck the police wouldn't. And I think also abolish the police has that same possibility when you're talking about abolition because saying like abolished slavery is like an insane sounding thing to a slave society. So abolition creates room for thought. And so that's what Kropokin is talking about is that like there's this idea, there's this word that people have and they might have negative connotations of it. But as long as the word is still useful to create that cognitive space, it seems fine that it's whatever word people want to use. He even was talking about like how the anarchists wanted to have the hyphen and hyphen anarchists and they were tired of doing Greek translation on the fly.

And they were like, we don't need to teach people Greek. You know what? It's fine. We're just anarchists. That word is giving us enough space to talk. talk about this stuff. Yeah, like, and like, you know, the politics of reclamation isn't really relevant to the metadata anarchy thing. But I thought that was also an interesting, like, look into, like, reclaiming what your enemies call you. I mean, like, yeah, I am this.

Fuck you. You're right. Like, what I love about this is, like, you know, when people call queer people, like, monsters and stuff, part of me, he's like, yeah, I am a monster. You're right about everything you say about me. And that's a good thing. Like, and Krapot because doing the same thing, like, oh, you say we're all about disorder? All right, let's look at what order is. And then goes and it's like, order is like the people dying in like, what was the Paris commune and like the nine tenths of the population working and feeding the one-tenth and like all of the shit. Like that's what they call order. Disorder is revolution. Disorder is people rising up. Disorder is like this like love and the spirit that like refuses to die. And I was

like, yeah, spit fire, Kropakken. Disorder is the best of us. And I think that also is like directly aligned to what you're talking about with metadata because when you're talking about why are we going to change a certain term at a certain time, it's building that discursive space. That's what I was thinking about when I was reading it is like, oh, we're going to change the way we catalog things. Well, what does that matter?

I mean, like we're librarians who cares what we use. But it forces us to think about the language we use and why we use it. And it creates a space. Once you have to define something, you have to start thinking about it. And what does like order versus disorder look like in our metadata systems? Like, if Library of Congress, subject headings is order right now, then the way Kropotkin is defining order as like, this is all of the bad shit that comes with that. Then what does the disorder? the revolution against that.

I'm totally joking here, but it looks like Tumblr tags. Take your jokes seriously. That's how we got here. Folkonomy, right? Is that how you say that? Yeah, like literally, like half of my master's thesis was just like, and here's Poxonomies and their pros and their cons. Melissa Adler has written a lot about Foxonomies because she steals all my ideas before I

even think about them. I love you, Melissa Alamos. So what does metadata disorder get us, do you think? Like, what's the benefit of metadata disorder? Well, one of the reasons why I had the students read Eros in the library by Melissa Adler, shout out to The Greatest I Do It, was because it not only offered a really cool history, but also, like, alternative way of looking at knowledge organization, but she explains, explicitly puts... So, Eros in the library,

because I forget if we've actually talked about it on the show, is an article by Melissa Adler, where she talks about this Greek, like, antiquity Greek woman named Pamphilia, who was a miscellanist and who compiled the histories of, like,

all of the cool tales that, like, her husband's guests would tell and stuff. And she recorded them, like in the order she heard them and got them, but then the way that she ordered them and arranged them, like in books and stuff, was based on what she thought would be most pleasing to the reader and to herself. So it's explicitly a system based on pleasure.

And looking at it today, and Melissa Adler talks about this, it's compared to weaving and embroidery, like the way that she compiled things. And Adler puts this as like talking about how the tipping point of critical cataloging and ethical metadata is what I call it. We have reached that tipping point right now where I feel like every single fucking call for paper I say is something about ethics and metadata critical cataloging, which is fine. That's how, that's why I'm here. But I feel like that's the

only thing we're talking about anymore. And so she's like, and it's right that we're talking about that and critiquing the systems. What are other ways that we could look at this issue? and look at these systems instead of trying to fix the one we've got. What happens if we are really radical and come at this from like a feminist perspective and completely go outside of this existing system in a way with a system, like what she takes from Pamphalia's system is that it is tactile and like forces you to actually get into the stacks and interact with the materials in your collection. It is communal.

Like you are thinking, like it forces you to think about like what it will be pleasing to the people who will be reading this. It, uh, in the non-neoliberal way is very much tapping into that like maker space attitude. It's about like pleasure. It's not a rigid organization system. It's very fluid. It's based on joy. Like not panfilius system exactly. But like as like, where can we?

go from here, here's maybe some attributes that we could take with us. And so that was sort of like the example that I put forward to the students. And they had very good like criticisms, but also their criticisms also revealed why this is so necessary in the first place. The main criticism was, isn't this just really biased if it's one person's idea or, you know, of what would be enjoyable? And I'm like, it's all biased. You know, like the astronaut, you mean it's always been biased? has been the whole time. Like, all of our systems are biased. This one's just way more explicit about it.

And like, what are the power dynamics about that bias? I guess would be a good question. But I like that this is sort of inviting us to think outside of our current modes of knowledge organization in libraries. And not just what are alternate systems, but explicitly framing those within, like, feminist contexts. And I thought it sort of had like an anarchist spirit to it. like a very like fiery kind of focus on pleasure and fluidity and like no rigid system.

Like it could move around. It wasn't completely without a system, but it wasn't, I don't know, it wasn't like fixed in place. So that would, that was like what I immediately thought of when I was sort of thinking of like, well, what does disorder look like? And I found this article when I was like researching. my erotics of metadata idea and thinking about what happens when we think of pleasure instead of just ethics all the time. And what does that open up in us and in how we approach, not, quote, fixing the systems,

but just how we approach this field in general. What can we, you know, make better? What can we completely do a new thing? like, I don't know, but bringing pleasure of both the of the library worker and the patron. My whole erotic of metadata actually wasn't

focused on the patron. It was focused on the worker because I never see that. It's always the patron that we're doing this for. And like, yeah, but also there are people who do this and I think we should focus on them. Anyway, that's rant for another time. But that was one thing with disorder. I thought, like, she talked, Adler talks about

Ariadne and the labyrinth and also arachnay with the webs and stuff in it. So like labyrinthine and, you know, not rigid. But that was one model that I really liked. I don't know what you do think. I feel like Tumblr could be a good example, honestly. Not in libraries, maybe. I mean, isn't everybody's like Tumblr blog just the shit that they enjoy and want to look back and see or is, I mean, can't be just me, right?

And everyone has their own tagging system. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not sure how it relates to metadata exactly, but talking about, like, stepping out of, like, the sort of current systems. I always thought it was interesting that fiction got removed from Dewey Decimal. Oh, it did? Well, because you could pretty much classify all fiction.

I forget exactly, but it's all in the 800s. Okay. I don't really ever work with Dewey, so I'm like, well. Yeah, fair. I haven't in a very long time, but I remember looking it up once in like anything fiction is if you were to classify using Dewey, it would all end up in the 800s. And at least the libraries I've worked in the 800s are always super tiny because it's just like poetry and like things about writing. So it's like you actually have this giant 800 section. You just took it out and put it elsewhere in the library. And instead of dividing it up by Dewey decimal, you divide it. it up by genre, which is then its own sort of weird, you know, bias system too, because, like, I've had that, I've heard that conversation in so many public libraries where it's like, should we pull out the fiction in science fantasy and put it in its own section so people who like that can find it easier? Or do we, like, put stickers on the spine and interspers it so people can still tell what's, you know, that more of the serendipitous sort of, you have to see.

other things and then there's like bookstore versus yeah yeah and like it splits up like an author so if you have an author who writes like a fantasy series and then writes like a literary or mystery series like they're going to end up in two different sections so like that's somebody who's maybe missing out on a different

series like I've heard so many different conversations go about around and around that and that just got me thinking about arranging like how we arrange fiction and is that based around pleasure? I mean, I think it's mostly like findability is really what people think of when they're thinking of the patron because you need some sort of streamlined system, I guess. But I was just talking to a colleague about this too, who also worked in public service

before he started working in IT. And I was like, I miss paging sometimes, man. I would find the weirdest stuff on those carts. And I read so much more stuff from all over the spectrum. I did physically handling books every day that I have since I stopped paging. Yeah, like folks listening. Like, since I stopped shelving books. Paging is the best.

I got tired of it after a while, but I did not get tired of the, I'm looking through a stack of books, you know. I always thought it was funny when, like, somebody would be on the desk doing check-in, and you realize you haven't heard the barcode scanner beat for 15 minutes, and you look over and they've got like a cookbook or something open, like, in front of them, and they've been paging through that for 10 minutes of their shift instead of like checking books in. And I'm always like, you do that. You take that time. But I have to think about that.

Yeah. And especially like that also brings up a discussion of like how does the system work physically versus digitally? If like what does this disorder look like? Because like in a digital space, that's not a problem. Yeah. Because something can be linked to more than one place at a time. Yeah. But physically you don't have that.

that web that like network unless you have multiple copies and you put them in different places yeah which is a different which is a whole aspect of that debate too so yeah budget space you know yeah i don't know because it's like especially if you're going to split up by genre like how are you deciding my genre is um to be a snooty theory asshole my boy derida you know he's my favorite love him he say that around genre that things aren't of a genre, they participate in genres. Ooh, I like that. Yeah.

So how with metadata, energy and disorder, I guess people be like, how does something participate in being categorized? How is it participating in who is making it participating in what way? It's always like, to me, it's also about like thinking about these like power structures of who is making these decisions and why and for whom. And what assumptions, like, when they're making a decision for somebody. Who's the patron in your head? Yeah, what assumptions are you making about that person or that archetype or whatever?

Yeah. So yeah, there was that discussion, which was actually really cool. And the students had a lot of interesting things to say. And then also when I was thinking about, like, what is metadata anarchy? outside of just thinking about like knowledge organization, I wanted to think about like, okay, if we're talking about anarchy as like a political position as like anti-capitalist, okay,

what role does metadata play in a capitalist state? How are metadata and capitalism best friends right now? And what like, especially libraries are agents of the state, most of the public libraries are like agents of the state. Academic libraries, uh, you know, we're in bad with the devil.

What role does like metadata play in supporting those structures? What role does metadata play in capitalism, both in libraries, but then like the examples of students we're bringing up and talking about like, you know, surveillance. We kill people based on metadata, right? Is what the NSA people said or something.

You know, that the like digital surrogate, like Facebook and like ads. and stuff make of you because they track you around the internet and steal all your data, you know, stuff like that is what they were bringing up. They went immediately negative with it, which I thought was interesting.

But yeah, so that was the next thing we talked about. I don't know what y'all think about that. What did they bring up? I mean, the students mainly brought up, like, non-library-related things,

particularly, like digital surveillance and the NSA. It's not necessarily non-library-related, because Paging records and stuff, yeah. Well, also because we're spending money with Lexus Nexas, who is also having contracts with ICE, who is also having, you know,

and we, they have all these different faces. Sometimes we call them publishers, sometimes they're data brokers, sometimes they're government contractors, but they're the same groups, and we are supporting them in various different ways. So it's, there might be a divest. political argument there, but also like an antitrust thing there is, okay, if we can split these

sections of their business up, we can focus on the ones that we can pick our fights in different ways. Right now, if we're picking a fight with relics, we're picking a fight about the publishing stuff, and we're picking a fight about the surveillance stuff, and we're picking a fight about the government stuff. If they were three separate companies, it might be easier for us politically to do something. Yeah, like something that we talked about a little bit was the Jessman West, the FBI has not been here, like Canary Watch sign. Like I got to tell them about what a Canary Watch is.

And how, you know, the NSA, the FBI would like come asking for patron records. And the professor of the course and I put it out that most ILSs by defaults hold on to patron checkout records, even though as librarians, we don't share that kind of thing. They collect it automatically. And like we told the students that, which can sometimes be useful if a book has gone missing and you need to see who had it last. But also, you know, if you don't want data to get out or be traced back to someone, don't collect it in the first place. Yeah. And that just kind of brings me back to some of the stuff I was talking and thinking about in the, um, ransomware episode with like giving all of this data about our internet traffic, even if it is

somewhat denomized, like to government agencies to help with cybersecurity efforts on like a federal or governmental level, but it's still metadata that's getting passed along. And so much of the digital world is literally just metadata. Like every security protocol is just a new. And, new way to package to obscure more metadata that people are then using to use for other like purposes. So it's just like, yeah. Yeah, I feel like when people like, they think of like data and metadata as separate things like data mining and data harvesting and data collection, it's like, no, that's metadata that they're grabbing. That's what it is. It's information about what you're doing online. A lot of the library services like I work at a, you know, at a, you know,

at a music conservatory. And we have this app called Incoda, which I actually really like, except it's, even though it's, it's a European company. And so obviously it follows the whatever the privacy standard. TPR. Yeah, that one follows that. But also it has the Amazon bullshit where it can notice if you're trying to show. it on Zoom or take a screenshot of it and it blacks it out. It tracks where your mouse is and records that and like how long you're looking at things and stuff. It holds on to that for like

six or seven years. Yeah. And this just all gets back to like library policy because like you're saying like ILS is keep that data. And like that's how libraries get their circulation stats and all of that stuff. And it varies greatly depending on the ILS. But like, you should have a policy. You should have a data retention policy. Like your ILS probably has a way to get rid of that data. Oh yeah. I know Koha definitely does. Yeah. And Polaris does. So it's like it's not necessarily something wrong with the ILS. It's more like what is your data? What are your what are your data retention policies?

And a lot of places actually every library I have worked at now that I'm thinking about it, I've asked, what are the data retention policies and gotten, well, we're not really sure because libraries sort of, at least public libraries exist in that sort of quasi-governmental but not quite education sort of space. So it's not always necessarily clear what legal requirements exist to retain that sort of data. Yeah, like people, I think people view like how obsessed I am. with policies and I'm still writing all the ones for my library because the previous one, he didn't leave any written down. It's like, I'm an anarchist.

Why am I so focused on writing all these rules? It's like, these aren't about me being a cop. These are about protecting my patrons and protecting me and everyone else. Like their policies is protection. Like, what does a privacy policy do? It lets people know what you're doing. But also it's like, if I put this in writing, this is how I'm protecting people.

It's forced me to think about that and what I want to do and like put my foot down and stuff. And yeah, with like other ways, like I was thinking about like the quote illegal aliens like subject heading and like library of Congress itself, how that's the library for Congress. I know that it's more nuanced than that and I don't want Violet to get mad at me. Like is de facto our national library. But those subject headings are used all over the world. You know, there's the argument of do we try to fail? LC because everyone uses it and that's way more consistent or do we add a bunch of other vocabularies and expect people to either use things that aren't LC or to supplement and complement

and their arguments for both but thinking about how the terms used in a literary warrant for a lot of them often like the ones that come from legal language because again they're coming from like congressional documents and like supreme court shit and like that was one of the reasons illegal aliens took so long to change was because of what it's literary warrant was was that is what the legal language was and you can't have more than one word for the same thing in elsie right in homoosaurus you can but in elsie you can't that was another another thing we talked about um we didn't come up with solutions but i wanted them to think about like, okay, what role, not just the, quote, vague library playing capitalism, but let's think

about us as explicit individual library workers and the work that we do and the systems we participate in and how those are doing this and not the library as its own thing, but let's think about how we as people and the work that we do that contribute to this. Yeah, like Justin was saying earlier, it creates the space where you're sort of forced to think about it. Yeah, not to say like, oh, you critique the system yet you participate in it. Interesting meme. It's like, yes, I do participate in it. And that is why I care so much about having it not be shitty. They're, you know, I'm sort of forced to be here. So I'm sort of forced to be in it and I can't reform it on my own. And some of it, or I can't get rid of it on my own. And I know

reforming is often not the way to go. Some things I think can be reformed. Sometimes you just have to make a new thing. It's hard to do that by yourself. But yeah, what do you two think about this whole discussion? It wasn't necessarily like a simple, this is exactly what metadata anarchy is because that wouldn't be in the spirit of the thing. But I wanted like, especially thinking about order and labeling and naming,

like just inside what space is open up in. in conversations about our field that maybe we haven't had before or framing them in a different way. I have to say that when I was looking at the notes and saw that the reading was something called on order, my first thought was as like a book status. Like we've purchased these books, but we're waiting for them to come in, which is like what it's been in like almost every library. And I'm like, on order, why would? And then, oh, on order.

Like, big of, oh. Did you think of the reading, Sadie? Because you said you hadn't read it? No, I hadn't read it before. And I enjoyed the first half more than I enjoyed the second half. See, I love the second half. I want to get on my soapbox about it. Just because, and like, I have to admit, I read it like right before we started recording. So I think we put like a whole lot of deep thought into it. But I always like the discussion about how words. change and shift and be embraced or pushed away, you know. And I don't know if it was because I got his point super quickly in what, like, what he was trying to say was like order is the status quo and the status quo is bad. And disorder is like the things that we can create together that are

better. And then I was just kind of like, okay, like these last three, four or four paragraphs are just him. Going off. Like, going off. Like, I get your, I get your, I get your, point, so I like skimmed the last half just being like, okay, like, this is, this is too much for my brain right now. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to read every example of, you know, the French revolution that you like, deeply felt. I, I, you see, and I don't have any context for this. I don't know, like, who this guy is. Or when, when this was written or anything, I was just like, I'm just going to read this thing about anarchy because, like, like,

Kropotkin Slaps, the 19th century. And, oh, hold on my friend's calling me. I'll get back to him in a second. 19th century, he was born in the aristocracy. I think he was actually royalty in Russia. And he was like, no, fuck this. And it was one of, like, the leading thinkers and, like, the anarchist movement of the 19th century in Russia and all of Europe. That's why I have that graphic.

I don't know if you got a chance to look at the present, like the slides I gave students. One of them is the anarchist formerly known as Prince, and that's a picture for Potkin. AK Press used to make a shirt with that on it, and they don't anymore. They won't like because it's the best joke you fucking ever. Yeah, but this was a pamphlet he wrote and distributed his own little anarchist zine. Which that makes a lot more sense as to like the second half. I was like, this doesn't seem very like academic or like the other stuff we sometimes read for the podcast. And then, yeah, when you were like, oh, it's a pamphlet.

I'm like, oh, fucking duh. It wasn't trying to, you know. Yeah. Yeah, all of the students were like this made me, like, they didn't know what, that this was anarchism. They had the very, like, basic, like, oh, it's chaos or it's anti-government or whatever. And a lot of them were like, a lot of them were like, I wish I was in a town square right now, like, hearing this if I read this. or that they really liked it. And I was like, I said at the beginning, I'm like, I'm not trying to convert any of you.

I will be very explicit about my politics because that is inherent in this discussion. I'm not trying to make you anarchist, but part of me is thinking, yeah, they like the read. But some of you will become anarchists anyways. You like the Kropotkin, I see. Let me tell you there is more. Yeah, imagining this being read aloud in like a town square kind of thing. Like it did. Yeah, that puts it on a different level.

That makes me like the second half more. I get so fired up when I read it. And he's like, that is order. And I was like, yeah. Fucking Kropotkin, man. He spit in fire in like 1881 or whatever was this was. But yeah, a lot of the students really, really liked it. I already got feedback that they've gone back to their professor saying how it's going to influence how they do their final projects and taking them in more critical directions.

And I feel very proud of myself. Yeah. A little accomplishment. Yeah, it was cool. And yeah, like, I know this was a little rambly. But again, I didn't want metadata anarchy to be this like fully fledged out like theory or concept, but rather an approach to like thinking about knowledge organization and what we do. Think of the vibes. Think of the, think of the vibes wreak havoc with your poetry. And I just thought that the on-order piece, like, perfectly encapsulated what this means and what it could mean. But I feel like it'd be against my own politics and ethics to try to decisively nail down and define, like, and classify metadata anarchy because, no. I'm not going to be a Victorian taxonomist and put this in a hierarchical genealogical structure. and like taxidermia and pin it down on a board to stare at in a museum.

I will not participate in that. I have this whole schick about that. I'm like such a bad metadata person now because I fucking hate all. But not in the like cynical way. I guess. I don't know. What do you all think? What does it look like for you?

I really like what you say, Justin, about it like opening up a space. Yeah, I'm thinking about like, how do we? use anarchist metadata, not in the sense that like it is metadata created by anarchists or metadata that is anarchist in nature. How would we use that? What I'm saying is how do we use anarchist metadata to create conceptual space? Like I mentioned before, and the thing that's coming with that is metadata serves a purpose, right? Yes. So you're talking about like a definition has like one thing to it. So it has to do something, though. Like metadata is just a tool that helps us like find things, categorize things. So if we're not using a standardized metadata standard,

then what are we asking metadata to do in an anarchist context? What does standardization mean in this order versus disorder context? Yeah. Well, in this order versus disorder context, I think it still means can you translate one concept to another concept? Can you, even as you're creating this room, can the language still make sense between two people? Like, I define anarchists this way, you define anarchist that way. We're going to catalog these things using two different understandings of anarchism. Is that going to create conceptual space for us, or is it going to create confusion? Is it something a reactionary could use in order to, like,

Like, you know, what are the, what are the things we want metadata to do? Because metadata ultimately, it needs crosswalks. It needs meanings. Who are we doing metadata for? That too, yeah. Yeah. It's like if we're doing it for patrons, things. My thought is less who we're doing it for, but and how to find things.

Because I don't know if it's so much about finding things, actually. There's a lot of metadata that does not help with discovery. Call numbers help with discovery. subjects help with discovery, but there's also a lot of things like description, abstract, GIS coordinates. Those things help you find things and understand things about the object, but they don't actually, unless you just want to go, I want everything in this geophysical location. So it does help with like that sort of sorting, but I don't know. It feels like metadata has other uses.

And I'm thinking specifically like, you know, the government knows I called someone for one and a half minutes. They don't care about how well I called someone or like my relationships are being healthy. It's more that like what can we extract from this metadata in terms to bring like the carcral state down on you? And so like metadata has these like tertiary purposes and quarters. and quaternary purposes that just keep going and going. Yeah, the example I always give about, especially like I did that salon on metadata and a lot of people who aren't librarians attended and a lot of people are like, what the fuck is metadata?

And like the example I always give about like how this can be used in like a power relation is with the NSA phone call metadata thing, you getting a call from a doctor and then you calling an abortion clinic right after. it's not hard to guess what happened in that conversation. And especially right now, that could make you put you in legal trouble. So just based on a phone call. Yeah. Yeah.

That kind of thing. That's always the example. I've given that example since, I believe it was Emily Knox who used that example when I was in grad school and it was in a call. So, yeah, it's a good example, but it doesn't tell us much about, like, what anarchist metadata does or what anarchist metadata does. And metadata creators do, right? No, I was just using as an example of, like, how metadata can be used against us outside of this.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about, like, what the next step is, talking about, like, what will this mean if this concept is going to be, like, a useful concept for us? How can we use it in, like, interesting ways? Yeah. I think that's the next step. Yeah, I mean, because the metadata class I was giving this talk to is about doing. like traditional library metadata.

I did a specific like knowledge organization type article. And I think what I like about that article is it opens, again, just like said it opens up the space to think about in knowledge organization, there is more to just finding things like you said. And what are those other things and like pleasure and enjoyment should should be a goal of, of our metadata and how do we? we tailor the metadata to that? Like, what other systems?

What could they look like? And Adler, again, specifically talks about this as like communal. Like, it is inherently in a relationship. Like, it is not the solitary metadata worker cataloging. It is, like, it exists within a community networked, collaborative context. So I think just like a step one could be. be making people realize they have a patron in their head. Because a lot of people think like,

oh, well, I'm doing this and it's going to help people. Or I'm making this crick cat decision. It's going to help people. It's going to help the patrons at my library. And I'm like, all right, who's the one person you're thinking about? Who's the patron in your head and who's left out? Like, I always try to, in my, like, job interviews and stuff, I was always stressing it's not the library or my workspace is community.

It is communities. There are multiple communities that use the library and need the library. Because I feel like with anarchism, people think that it is without structure. And I don't think that's true. And so thinking about making ourselves aware of the structures and thinking about how we maybe shift power in those structures. What collaborations can we do? How do we think about labor in those structures? Like, again, I never, like, I want to encourage people to stop leaving out the workers in discussions of metadata.

Like, stop just thinking about the patron or the end user think about the worker too. And not just as the person who's making these decisions, but like how it affects them. Like, because so many people just don't even think about this. Or if they're doing the critcat thing, they're stuck in that, well, L.C. is bad and I have to fix L.C. And that's kind of sometimes where that discussion starts. And it's. I love the grit cat folks, but just making yourselves aware of the structures. I think it's just like a good fucking first step.

I don't know if that's what you were after, Justin. Yeah. And I think that's where we should wrap up for now and come back to it later because I think we've covered everything that we can at this preliminary stage. Yeah. But we should definitely plan like a second episode to delve into the things that I'm interested in, which is like the implementation. and like what happens next and maybe some completely third person outside of us is going to be like,

oh, I got it. I know how this will work. And then they just run with it and we can help them along. Yeah, because again, this is still just very much like a loose. I'm a very like high, broad theory kind of person. And sometimes I struggle with application. Maybe it's like just the way those connections work in my brain. But yeah, also, it's still just relatively early.

And the main way I prepared for it was having a discussion with students in a specific context. But it is something I think would be really fine to develop and get out there. Is this a class that you are teaching? Or is it something you just did as a one-off? I want to know if you want to plug anything. It was a guest lecture for a library school. But would you do it again? Fuck, yes, I would.

And yeah, how do invite me for talks or guest lectures? I do it in like a discussion style. I swear I sound more intelligent that I do here. Pay me money to do it. I won't do it for free. This is the only time I'm doing it for free, especially if it's at a library school at a college. I can pay me.

Okay. Yeah. That wraps it up. Good night.