Mutual Aid, Generous Thinking, Shine Theory, Polycentrism: How dLOC Works & How I Always Want to Work/Be

Below is my draft for my conference paper for ACURIL. I’m sharing because I love that I get to work with wonderful people on wonderful projects, and to do so in generous and generative ways. I’m also super thankful for recent work, like that by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, that advocates and explains how we can all work in more generous and joyous ways together!

WHEN LINES ARE DOWN: CELEBRATING CUBA! AND THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF THE CARIBBEAN (DLOC) COLLABORATION, SOLIDARITY, AND MUTUAL AID

Abstract:Libraries are abundant, and are always more than collections of books and other materials. In our long and storied histories, librarians have provided resources, served as experts for consultation and collaboration, and worked in solidarity with struggles for justice. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) was born from this long history, and continues to grow in terms of community, capacity, and collections. The dLOC partner institutions created dLOC in 2004 to ensure preservation and access to materials, and to support growing the community of practice and capacity with libraries, archives, museums, and our connected beloved communities. Over dLOC’s many years, dLOC has and continues to develop processes to best support collaboration, solidarity, and mutual aid. The spirit of this work is essential to all work because technocratic solutions alone are insufficient for community needs. For example, dLOC regularly utilizes sneakernet, or sharing of materials by physically transporting hard drives and DVDs, when Internet speeds are too slow and when lines are down. dLOC partners also regularly collaborate with other institutions, to find resources not held by partners but which are of critical interest for research, cultural patrimony, and other needs. The Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí (BNJM) joined as a dLOC partner in 2012, contributing materials transported by DVD and hard drives. In 2016, BNJM leveraged prior work to collaborate further with another dLOC partner, the University of Florida (UF), to have UF coordinate collaborative collection development for comprehensive collections on Cuba. The project is Celebrating Cuba! Collaborative Digital Collections of Cuban Patrimony. This paper covers the work of the project to date. Activities include:

  • conducting core bibliographic work;
  • developing a database of all known historical books published in Cuba;
  • sharing catalog records of holdings at BNJM through WorldCat;
  • collaborating to confirm permissions and then coordinating digitization for current periodicals to have complete years online;
  • identifying holding locations of materials from various worldwide libraries;
  • targeting specific areas for developing comprehensive collections, with contributions from dLOC partners and other institutions;
  • completing US compliance requirements to be able to transfer hard drives filled with digitized materials to and from Cuba for access within and outside of Cuba.

Partners have pursued these activities in the spirit of true collaboration, mutual aid, and solidarity, to ensure that people in Cuba and the world have access to materials from Cuba, and to ensure that Cuba can tell the stories of Cuba, in furtherance of a more just world. 

Introduction: Solidarity, Mutual Aid, Generous Thinking, Polycentrism, Shine Theory

In creating the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), the founding partners put forward a model for a digital library that was polycentric and based on principles of shared governance, mutual aid, and generous thinking. In defining dLOC’s model, the founders affirmed several principles including shared governance for collective action for the common good, where partners would determine materials to digitize and work together to digitize materials for Open Access and long-term digital preservation, with all materials shared openly online. Partners affirmed that all partners would be the ones to select materials from their own collections, with no top-down mandates. Partners also affirmed that partners retain rights to their materials, and grant permissions for the sharing of these materials for access and preservation. Further, partners emphasized that this digitization and digital library work would be part of a larger mission for building the community and developing capacity for libraries, archives, museums, scholarly work, teaching, and other needs, with shared governance to ensure equity alongside engagement on immediate and long-term goals.

In establishing this model, partners created dLOC as a polycentric system based on mutual aid and generous thinking. As described by Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess, “polycentric” refers to systems and processes designed so that “there will be decentralized, alternative areas of authority and rule and decision making” (55). As explained by Margaret Heffernan:

“Ostrom’s work proved to her that what works best is collaborative pluralism: lots of different solutions, applied and devised locally by those with an immediate and personal investment. Left to their own devices, individuals can create solutions together that are superior to those imposed by external authorities or managing agents. […]  Ostrom called this opportunity ‘polycentrism,’ by which she meant that the hard problem of managing limited resources creatively was best organized from the ground up in ways that fitted with, and articulated, social norms.” (317)

Heffernan explains Ostrom’s articulation of the critical importance of face-to-face communication: “the absolute requirement of trust, the sharing of resources and denial of dominance […] we thrive when we acknowledge our mutual dependency” (318). Ostrom’s articulation of polycentric with the acknowledgement of mutual dependency connects with the concept of mutual aid.

Writing in part about digital libraries, Bethany Nowviskie explains mutual aid as “based on collaborative principles for social and material support.” In viewing societal-scale needs, Peter Kropotkin defined mutual aid as the fundamental factor in evolution. Where Darwin’s writing emphasized competition, Kropotkin counters that collaboration and aid—aid without hierarchy and in solidarity, in recognition that what helps one helps all—is how species survive and evolve. For humanity specifically, Kroptkin rightly argues that the basis for society is human solidarity which derives from: “mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own.” (Introduction). Writing of the role of academic institutions in serving the public good, Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues that we must embrace generous thinking (Generous Thinking), which follows from mutual aid where aiding another is to each and our collective benefit. Similarly, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman explain mutual aid and generous practices in their articulation of “shine theory” which “is a practice of mutual investment in each other” which they summarize as “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” 

All of these names—polycentrism, mutual aid, generous thinking, shine theory—recognize that people are always simultaneously both individuals and part of our collective communities. For libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions, this recognition is inherent, with the missions of our institutions being the mission to support communities (with individuals) and as we relate and connect with others. Mutual aid is too often obscured or lost in discussions of competition and evolution. So, too, we focus too often on individual development alone, instead of individuals as part of our collective development.  For example, Karen Lincoln Michel explains how the familiar Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was based on Blackfoot beliefs, but critically removed the highest community aspects. Where Maslow’s hierarchy ends with self-actualization, the next layers are community actualization and cultural perpetuity.  These core concepts and ways of thinking that embrace individuals always in solidarity with our communities—past, present, and future—are fundamental to the founding and operations of the Association of Caribbean University, Research, and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL), and, also, to dLOC which was born from ACURIL.

When Lines Are Down

            ACURIL and dLOC fundamentally function following principles of solidarity, mutual aid, generous thinking, polycentrism, and shine theory. Within the generous and abundant community where all seek to support each other and all of us collectively, we work together across our national borders, languages, environmental disasters, and politics.

With Cuba, the United States has erected obstacles, both for colleagues in the US and others. Despite this, libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions in Cuba continue to succeed in core work to share and preserve materials from and about Cuba, as well as to participate and aid our communities.

Celebrating Cuba! Project

The Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí (BNJM) joined dLOC as a partner in 2012. Initially, BNJM contributed materials transported by DVD and hard drives, with dLOC also sharing materials on DVD and hard drives. Materials shared included historical materials, historical reprints, current research, archival documents, maps, books, photographs, newspapers, and much more.

In 2016, BNJM leveraged prior work to collaborate further specifically with another dLOC partner, the University of Florida (UF), to have UF coordinate collaborative collection development for comprehensive collections on Cuba. The project is Celebrating Cuba! Collaborative Digital Collections of Cuban Patrimony. For this, BNJM has asked partners and other collaborators to contribute in specific areas, to build a comprehensive collection. As with dLOC, all partners and collaborators select if and what materials to contribute, which may be based on local priorities, condition of materials, resources, and other considerations. In the spirit of mutual aid and generous thinking, many contribute in significant ways. Project work to date includes:

  • creating a US partner community (with dLOC partners and others) for the identification and digitization of materials from and about Cuba;
  • targeting specific areas for developing comprehensive collections, with contributions from dLOC partners and other institutions;
  • sharing catalog records of holdings at BNJM through WorldCat;
  • conducting core bibliographic work to determine publication histories;
  • developing a database of all known historical books published in Cuba;
  • collaborating to confirm permissions, and then coordinating digitization for current periodicals to have complete years online;
  • identifying holding locations of materials from various worldwide libraries;
  • completing US compliance requirements to be able to transfer hard drives filled with digitized materials to and from Cuba for access within and outside of Cuba.

Within and outside of Cuba, partners have pursued these activities in the spirit of true collaboration, mutual aid, and solidarity, to ensure that people in Cuba and the world have access to materials from Cuba. Partners engage in this work to ensure that Cuba can tell the stories of Cuba, in furtherance of a more just world. 

            In 2016, BNJM had completed a major portion of record conversion, moving previously print-only catalog records to digital. With the incredible work to convert these records from print to digital, the problem remained that the digital records were only accessible in Cuba. Through the Celebrating Cuba! project, UF transported the digital records via sneakernet, worked internally to support record validation, and collaborated with OCLC to have all of BNJM’s records added to WorldCat. BNJM has additional materials with records pending. Even with more to share, BNJM now has over 13,450 catalog records in OCLC for worldwide discovery. Over 97,000 of these records are unique. The enormous amount of work for creating the digital records and sharing the records is one of many foundational activities in BNJM’s wide-ranging work. All of the work by BNJM and other partners support developing comprehensive collections from and about Cuba.

BNJM is leading the work to develop other foundations for comprehensive collections on Cuba. BNJM collaborated with UF to identify four major projects for initial development: Cuban monographs; Cuban journals and newspapers; Cuban legal materials; and Maps of Cuba. BNJM identified each of these as priority areas to help focus the collaborative and cooperative work. For each, BNJM serves as an advisor, and digitizes and contributes copies of materials not held elsewhere. With the overall goals identified along with these specific projects of interest, other projects have emerged in support of the overall goals. One example of new project is the collaboration with the Synagogue Bet Shalom in Havana, for the digitization of their unique holdings.

The many defined projects and activities are interrelated and have many related impacts. One example of this is with Maps of Cuba. For this project, the Library of Congress (not a dLOC partner) is contributing maps of Cuba, including working with UF to support additional inventorying of their collections to identify maps of Cuba for digitization. This collaboration supports a more comprehensive collection of maps.

Another example includes working by identifying important periodicals and newspapers, and then working with collaborators to identify how many issues should exist, and to find holding locations for issues, to allow all to be digitized. In some cases, single institutions have nearly completed holdings. However, in most cases, a comprehensive run for any given title can only be created with the aid of five or more institutions working together.

Another example of this is the collaboration with the Synagogue Bet Shalom in Havana. Many of their materials are now digitized and online through Celebrating Cuba! However, Internet access is limited in Cuba. To ensure the Synagogue has access to their materials, UF installed the standalone version of Zotero, which is a bibliographic reference database that also manages research files, commonly used by researchers in the humanities. Using Zotero, UF loaded all of the records and PDFs for all of the scanned items from the Synagogue. Now, the Synagogue has a local database of all of their materials, for their use.

For all of the projects and examples, all resulting digitized materials are accessible through BNJM, through the contributing partners in the venues they select, and through the Internet with Celebrating Cuba!

Ongoing work on Celebrating Cuba! is made possible by BNJM, UF, and other dLOC partners, as well as affiliated partners who are part of Celebrating Cuba! The work continues to develop and evolve, with the relatively new steering committee of US participants in the project, and with UF hiring a new coordinator for supporting the project for the deep collaboration needed to collect, review, and synthesize data to enable widespread cooperative digitization.

Cultural Perpetuity: Long Histories and Futures of Collaboration

Celebrating Cuba! presents an important extension of dLOC’s model, and an opportunity to continue to grow dLOC with new partners, who may not all identify initially as institutions with Caribbean collections, and with new processes for how we can work together from our core partners to our wider communities for collaborative work that supports us all. Like dLOC and like ACURIL overall, Celebrating Cuba! provides yet another example of how libraries contribute to peaceful and just societies. Libraries contribute to justice through our ways of working following principles and practices for mutual aid, generous thinking, shine theory, and cultural perpetuity.

Thanks go to ACURIL for laying the foundation for radical collaboration (radical being at the root, or at the heart) thanks to ACURIL’s revolutionary work for justice and liberation, for a more just world.

References

Celebrating Cuba! (2016).http://dloc.com/cuba

Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).(2004). Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). www.dloc.com

Fitzpatrick, K. (2019). Generous thinking: A radical approach to saving the university. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Heffernan, M. (2014). A bigger prize: How we can do better than the competition. New York: PublicAffairs.

Kropotkin, Peter. 1902. Mutual aid: A factor of evolution. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1902/mutual-aid/introduction.htm

Lincoln Michel, K. (2014). Maslow’s hierarchy connected to Blackfoot beliefs.          https://lincolnmichel.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/maslows-hierarchy-connected-to-blackfoot-beliefs/

Nowviskie, B. (2019). “From the grass roots.” http://nowviskie.org/2019/from-the-grass-roots/

Ostrom, E., & Hess, C. (2007). A framework for analyzing the knowledge commons.” In C. Hess & E. Ostrom, (Eds.), Understanding knowledge as a commons: From theory to practice (41-82). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. http://www.wtf.tw/ref/hess_ostrom_2007.pdf

Sow, A., & Friedman, A. (2013). Shine Theory. https://www.shinetheory.com/