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Faculty of Taxonomy |
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University of Openess |
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2004 |
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Prompted in part by the curators of the exhibition Database Imaginary, the University of Openess (Uo) – a self-institution for independent research, collaboration and learning – inaugurated a Faculty of Taxonomy: www.twenteenthcentury.com/uo/index.php/facultytaxonomy.
The Faculty of Taxonomy was founded to investigate categorization structures, classification schemas and look at various ways people have developed to deal with the mess of life. Information about both the Uo and about one of the Faculty of Taxonomy projects included in the exhibition is detailed here.
The Faculty of Taxonomy (antisystemic) Library:
The Faculty of Taxonomy Library is a mobile and expanding collection of photocopies and print-outs of digital texts. Although each text is easily reproducible, each item is presented here and listed in our Distributed Library Project catalogue (http://dlp.theps.net) as a unique physical object with details about its geospatial location, condition and associations at any time. Readers may add to the collection, re-categorize and re-associate the texts, either on the website or using the highlighters and filing systems provided. Readers may also use the instructions on hand to join the Distributed Library and nominate their own collections of books, videos, zines, maps, flyers as a node in the network. A taxonomical games compendium is also available for readers to use in situ or take away.
The Antisystemic Library:
The principal of an anti-systemic library is that it does not have a catalogue, i.e. a hierarchical organization of knowledge, instead it allows each library, each archivist and each researcher to use their own archiving and searching systems, based on their own bibliographies, languages, interests, politics and codes. The Antisystemic Library is not a group as such, rather the libraries that use these principles considered as a whole can be called 'The Anti-systemic Library'.
The Distributed Library Project - http://dlpdev.theps.net.
The software we are helping to build is the metadata system for the Antisystemic Library. Through using the website (or installing the software on a web server) readers can create their own library and use their own taxonomical structures for categorizing their collections.
Why bother?
Public libraries are being closed, subjected to dubious 'anti-terror' legislation, chronically under-funded or are re-branded (in the UK at least) as 'knowledge stores'. Personal or private collections of books, flyers, zines, and small periodicals have tended to be obscure, hidden and difficult to access, as are their archiving processes and relationships with other materials. Methodology aside, the purpose of the Antisystemic Library is to provide access to materials, knowledge, and categorisation structures that previously had no commercial or official distribution infrastructure.
About the Uo and Faculty Setup How-to:
If you are interested in the Uo's study methods but your research requires its own faculty, please feel free to set one up. A good way to start is to form a gang. This is also just more fun than doing things in isolation. Here are some suggestions based on how other faculties have been started.
Representation and Documentation:
Although radically undocumented or secret faculties may never leave a trace, one way to present and invite further contributions to research is to create a Faculty homepage. This could be a website on your own server, or you are welcome to use the first Uo wiki at http://uo.twenteenthcentury.com.
The wiki is a website that anyone who visits it can edit. So to start your own faculty homepage, just read the http://uo.twenteenthcentury.com/HowToUseWiki page, and then make a link to the new faculty page from the Uo home page. Or, start your own Uo server as many faculties have chosen to do.
Let the Uo know:
The Uo is a great resource of people, some may share your research interest and be good to work with so do let people know when you have founded a new faculty by posting a message to the Uo mailing list. Then again, there is no reason that any researcher or faculty should feel the need to use a computer at all.
Admissions and more information can be found at: http://uo.twenteenthcentury.com/AboutUo
The creation of the Faculty of Taxonomy was generously supported by a residency at Isis Arts in Newcastle.
- University of Openess, Faculty Taxonomy, 2004
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