A few months ago, Punk Planet ran a feature about "radical librarians" (as a good librarian I must tell you it was in issue no. 52) which got me to thinking about what, exactly, a "diy librarian" might be. Well, I know I like to do things myself, and I am a librarian. Besides that, I like to do things myself in my library. Why spend oodles of money buying an automated library system when I can do it myself? A practically-minded person might tell you that the oodles of money spent purchasing an automated library system might well save my employer a lot of my time, which could be spent doing other things. It might also give us a better system in a shorter period of time. But, a diy librarian would tell you that no pre-packaged library system ever does everything that you want it to. No pre-packaged library system guarantees that you can get your data out of it and into another system, should you want to switch software, without hassles. And no pre-packaged library system lets me make changes how I want, when I want, and learn about systems design in the process. Now I just need to figure out how to do all this without using Micros**t products (yes, I know there are ways, it will just take me some time...)!
So I started this site as a place to collect resources on librarianship and the punk/DIY aesthetic. Most of the resources right now are links to other sites, but I hope to add my own ideas and, who knows, perhaps some contributions from others.
Comments? Want to contribute? Contact me!
All content on this website, unless otherwise noted, was created by Tara Murray and is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
