New Babylon Library

The world of books and libraries became yet another battle field, where copyrights along with corporate interests are controlling knowledge. But there are the tools and techniques available to create autonomous access to text-based knowledge.

New Babylon Library is evoking the 1958 manifesto Déclaration d'Amsterdam written by Lettrist Guy Debord and Situationist Constant who tried to change the close physical environment, creating a world-wide network without end or centers. New Babylon is not shaped by interest any more, but by playful people. We keep that Babylon in mind. New Babylon Library is connecting printed collections. In books there are condensed centuries of common sense. So we remember the Bibles Babel, thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, and mind the gap.

There are lots of libraries, booksellers and open shelves. But the public by preference quick-reads slogans, logo's and images, mostly on screens. Screens are the LAGLAB's realm. Find abundances of text online as seen in printed books. And still we add ideas, scans of physical books, copies of copies, quotations of different content and entire books in the format of e-books to worldwide amenable libraries.

Special devices called clouds, readers, or memories host tenthousands of e-books,. To get your personal portable library just save copies offline. Online e-book libraries come and go – new ones appear all the time. This is in keeping with the underlying structures of online systems combined with the power and depth of offline systems.

It's not possible to provide a comprehensive list. On the other hand, just search on Google for free downloadable books. Claims of rhizomatic strength mask the actual precarity of the individuals operating these systems. This precarity is amply balanced by offline file sharing systems. Stay sharing personal portable libraries. There are plenty of those in Amsterdam.