Reanimation library

The Reanimation Library seeks to assemble an inspiring collection of resources that will facilitate the production of new creative work and promote reflection and research into the historical, legal, and methodological questions surrounding the adaptive reuse of found materials. It strives to provide the necessary space and tools to allow these activities to flourish, and to foster a climate of spirited collaboration.

(...)

In our culture, libraries have the special privilege of dictating which published materials are deemed culturally worthy and worth preserving. To a degree, those materials that are kept within a collection are important and those that are removed are not. Books and other materials are removed from collections for a variety of different reasons: space is in short supply, materials become physically worn, information becomes outdated, and new editions are produced. Whatever the ultimate reason for the de-accession of an item, one result is that a tremendous amount of printed material disappears from the public sphere of information when it exits the library.

Of particular interest to the Reanimation Library is the loss of visual information that occurs during the aforementioned process of weeding. Even though text is often accompanied by images, collection development policies generally assign little weight to the graphic dimension of a work, unless that work happens to be graphically driven (i.e. a book on a visual artist, graphic design, or an atlas). Most library collection development policies place priority on acquiring items with current textual information and replacing items where that information is lacking or outdated. This priority, coupled with the continual production of new editions as fields of knowledge evolve, create the growing fossil record of outdated books—a veritable feast for image archaeologists. The Reanimation Library is committed to building a collection of materials that are rich in visual information, regardless of the currency of their textual information. The Library serves as a repository and, more pertinently, an access point for such materials.

Contemporary cultural production often draws upon earlier cultural materials. Artists, historians, writers, musicians, and scholars all build their creative and intellectual work on the images, ideas, words, and sounds of previous generations. Pastiche, collage, and sampling are fundamental tools of our creative vocabulary. The Reanimation Library presents a fertile environment for patrons who wish to participate in these creative processes. Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan's first law of library science states that "books are for use." Through the belief in and promotion of the idea that a book's intended use is not its only use, the Library reanimates books that have, for whatever reason, fallen out of use.

Más en Reanimation library