Memory of the World

Memory of the World is a network of interconnected shadow libraries, each maintained locally and independently from the others. It is modelled after the concept of the public library, extended to the digital realm: with books ready to be shared, meticulously cataloged, everyone is a librarian. When everyone is librarian, library is everywhere.

Public Library/Memory of the World was initiated in 2012 upon the invitation of Kiberpipa to curate their biannual HAIP festival in Ljubljana. Conceived at a moment where public libraries came under threat of austerity measures and where the networked infrastructures of sharing came under an increased threat of closing, it was aimed at strengthening and connecting those infrastructures and provoking debates that addressed the imposed and implicit territorial, socio-economic and legal barriers to the universal access to knowledge. Since this initial outing, Public Library continued to be developed and presented a.o. in dedicated exhibitions at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Galerija Nova under What, How and For Whom/WHW in Zagreb, Galerija SULUV under Kuda.org in Novi Sad, in collective exhibitions Dear Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana and Really Useful Knowledge in the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, in hackathons at Impakt festival in Utrecht, in Post-Digital Publishing workshop at Transmediale in Berlin, in Archive/Anarchive/Public Library workshop at Kuda.org in Novi Sad, in the residencies at Constant in Brussels, Calafou in Barcelona, MayDay Rooms in London and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. (2019)

Links

• https://memoryoftheworld.org/
• https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/
• https://twitter.com/memoryofworld
• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Memory of the World / Public Library", in Goldsmith, Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb, New York: Columbia University Press, Jul 2020, pp 116-123.