Read/Write Library is a replicable project that uses local media to examine a region’s creative, political and intellectual interdependencies, creating a visible network of primary sources. We hope to make it available as an open source technical and theoretical template for other cities, borrowing models from library science, urban planning and social networks. Non-professional content receives more respect than in any previous era. By developing contextual and social features within a catalog, we can direct this sentiment at media that wasn’t valued in the cultural climate of its day. Using relative tags and non-hierarchical subject and keyword combinations helps hyperlocal or alternative perspectives compete in search engines alongside dominant historical records and fill in massive blindspots, and each entry is mapped and treated as a social object where users can share stories of the forgotten, marginalized or even still-active communities connected to these publications. http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP13252

1. READ/WRITE
LIBRARY
MAPPING A CITY
THROUGH MEDIA

2. CULTURAL MEMORY

3. ERASURE BY
OMISSION

4. ARCHIVE
EVERYTHING.

5. COMMUNITY IS NOT
READ-ONLY…

6. …AND IT ALREADY
HAS A VOICE

7. NEW VALUES:
CONTEXT

8. NO QUALITY OR
IMPORTANCE

9. NICE, CLEAN DATA

10. NICE, CLEAN DATA
(NOT LIKELY.)

12. ORGANIZING ALL
THIS INFORMATION

13. OBLIGATORY
LITERAL PHOTO
OF SILOS

14. CATALOG +
COMMUNITY
HISTORY

15. PARALLEL
NETWORKS

16. NETWORKS
ON THE GROUND

17. COMMUNITY IS
SELF-DEFINING

21. NETWORKS
ONLINE

25. GUIDING
PARTICIPATION

27. HUB-AND-SPOKE
MODEL

28. CULTURAL MEMORY

29. ATTENTION VS.
NEGLECT

30. NEIGHBORHOOD
CASE STUDY

31. REPLICATION FOR
OTHER CITIES

32. READ/WRITE
LIBRARY Nell Taylor
nell@readwritelibrary.org
@nelltaylor @TheChibrary
www.readwritelibrary.org
Chicago photos courtesy of Katherine
Hodges / flickr: katherine of chicago
Thanks: @margaretheller, @kdc,
@nickd, @me3dia and @agentfin