Not just books - how renting a sewing machine from the library can improve democracy

For The People

We all love libraries, and we all love reading - but that’s not enough. It’s essential that more leftists become involved in their local libraries. We’re being out-organized by a right-wing movement that’s focused on taking over public institutions to privatize & weaken them.

Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

Read the free, open access editionBuy: Amazon, Bookshop, Narrow Gauge Book Co-op, UC Press

Bluesky 101: How-to Guide for Progressives

The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.

Funding the Commons | Public Goods Funding

We convene researchers, builders, and institutions to develop the funding mechanisms, governance systems, and coordination tools that public goods need in an age of AI.

Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

Welcome. I’m a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I direct the Media Economies Design Lab and teach and learn from our students. I’ve written a book each on online democracy, cooperative enterprise, the Occupy movement, and God, and I’ve edited ones about solidarity economies, crypto, and co-ops. Reporting articles for both magazines and academic journals keeps my notebooks filled. Working with others to build a democratic economy keeps me accountable.

The Anarchist Library

The Anarchist Library

The Skeleton Library

On Interpolatable Archives, Part 1: Compulsions to Connect, Warburg, Borges and Goldsmith, Cultural Technologies and Digital Oralities

Libby

All over the world, local libraries offer millions of ebooks and audiobooks. You can borrow them — for free, instantly — with a library card and Libby: the award-winning, much-loved app for libraries.

Reinventing Commons Governance in Modern Times | David Bollier

I gave the following remarks about commons governance on September 27 as part of the U!REKA Lab Lecture Series. U!REKA -- which stands for Urban Research and Education Knowledge Alliance -- is a consortium of eight European universities that studies urban commons. The subtitle of my talk was "Find Answers by Living the Questions."

Plurality

A book by E. Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and the Plurality Community exploring how technology can support and strengthen democracy.

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

Libraries can't afford e-books. D.C. lawmakers have a plan.

The demand and price for e-books is up — and it’s busting the D.C. Public Library budget.

A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons

A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons” The traditional economic definition of “the commons” are those resources...

10 Design Principles for Governing the Commons

In 2009, Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in Economics for her “analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.

What Libraries Actually Do – Libraries as Epistemic Institutions

One of the biggest challenges for libraries telling their story is that the library means something different depending on who’s in the room. For a student, it’s a place to study and a staff full of people who want them to succeed. For a faculty member, it might be the invisible infrastructure that delivers electronic articles or the subject liaison who visits their class each year. For a graduate student, it’s often something more: a research partner, a data collaborator, a guide through the methodological expectations of a discipline. And that’s before accounting for the larger information environment that those users are already swimming in, where disciplines publish at high rates; trade publications and newsletters and Substacks produce sense-making content daily; and social media, messaging apps, and community channels add still more. The information environment is a flood around us, and the library is one stream of that flow.