Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustaniable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance

SRSLY Wrong is a "research-based comedy podcast" run by a pair of Canadian fellas with a background in radical politics, occupy, and the Pirate Party; in a three part series, hosts Aaron Moritz and Shawn Vulliez; in a series of three long podcast episodes (1, 2, 3), the pair elucidate and elaborate a utopian vision for the future that they dub "Library Socialism."

It's not clear that the hosts themselves know exactly what they mean by "Library Socialism" and much of the episodes -- which take the form of didactic riffs interspersed with comedy sketches depicting life in a library socialist future -- is taken up with thinking through its meaning and implications.

I just finished listening to about six hours' worth of this, and I'm very excited, though I don't know that I can crisply articulate a definition of Library Socialism, I can give you a sense of what they're getting at:

* First, libraries have some nexus with socialist principles; they are public institutions, devoted to efficient allocation of resources, through which you can get the benefits of owning vast quantities of books and other materials without the downsides of having to organize, store, or maintain them. They are available to all comers at no cost, and they are provided as public services.

* Second, librarianship is imbued with several ethos that are adjacent to socialist principles, such as "to each book its reader and to each reader their book" -- that is, there's a book that suited to each reader, and a reader that's suited to each book, and librarianship is in part the art of consummating the encounters between books and readers. Read the rest