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Library onboarding and other information

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The Anarchist Library introduction for new and aspiring librarians

Welcome, new librarian! This document is a short overview about the library and how you can get started.

Volunteers without an account

You don’t need an account to help out! The first thing you can do is join the library chat, either via Matrix or IRC. Read more about how to join here. Once in the chat, you can ask about which texts need work.

[QUESTION by notnull: I'm not sure what this means; as far as I can tell, non-registered users can't copy-edit texts but can submit them, am I wrong about this?]

Volunteers with an account

Join the mailing list and the chat

First, be sure you are added to the main library mailing list, as well as the mailing lists for any language you'd like to receive email updates for. Learn more about how the mailing lists work [here; TODO: add info about the mailing lists either here or as a stub to be placed on the book shelf)

Second, join the library chat, if you haven't already, either via Matrix or IRC. Read more about how to join here.

The mailing list and the chat are the main methods of communicating with other librarians and asking questions, as well as answering questions sent by others. The mailing list is better suited for long-form questions and content, while the chat is great for shorter comments or comments in need of urgent feedback.

Browse the library wiki

Visit the wiki for some general information about the library.

Check out the Amuse markup documentation

Take a look at the Amuse markup manual for an overview of the specific flavor of markup used on the library. When a text is waiting in the queue to be published, one role of the librarian is to make sure that the text is formatted correctly according to these rules. (The markup rules are also included in the editor for quick reference).

Get started!

Log in at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/login using the credentials given to you. Once you are logged in as a librarian, select the user icon in the menu. You will see many options, but for now we'll focus on three:

• Pending revisions: Revisions in the queue that are expected to be published. They have been reviewed by others and perhaps are awaiting more copy-editing or a final review before publication.

• All revisions: All submitted texts, including published and unpublished texts. This is where you will find brand new texts.

• Deferred/Deleted texts: Texts the library has declined to publish.

The best place for a new librarian to start is to select Pending revisions. These are texts waiting to be published, and you can edit the text for spelling and formatting mistakes while also familiarizing yourself with the built-in editor and editing process. There's is no pressure to make any decisions or changes right away (although if you feel comfortable, go for it!) You can always ask questions on the mailing list or in the chat.

How to decide which new texts to publish

Under All revisions you will see newly-added texts. The first step is to check whether or not the text is already on the library by searching for the text in the library search. If it already exists on the library, [protocol for dealing with duplicate texts here]

If the text is not already published on the library, the next step is to decide whether or not it belongs on the library. There are no strict, definitive rules about what texts are published on the library, but one important criterion is that the text is anarchist. A text can fall into a grey area--it might be 'light on anarchy" (e.g., a heavily Marxist-Leninist texts that mentions 'anarchism' once), and it might not get published. Or it might be highly-relevant to anarchism but not itself "anarchist," and it might get published (or it might not! There have been many spirited library discussions about such texts.)

A second important guideline is that the library only publishes texts that have previously been published somewhere else. The library is an archive, not a publisher. But there are exceptions here as well: What about personal blogs? What about the personal blog of a well-known anarchist who has published several books versus an anonymous blog? What if the famous anarchist's post sucks while the anonymous post is amazing?

Browse the Deferred/deleted texts and you will find reasons such as:

• doesn't mention anarchist word once

• Bloggish, low quality, google doc.

• self-submission, not anarchist. blogish

• Discussion pending

• zero formatting/footnotes broken

• duplicate text

• "wtf"

Over time you will get a sense for what does and doesn't get published. There's no rush to make these decisions right away. If you see a new text that is not a duplicate and that should be published to the library, feel free to begin the process of editing the text for formatting mistakes. If you are uncertain, feel free to ask in the chat or on the mailing list.

[QUESTION: what is the practice for 'redirecting' a delete'? is this when a text is a duplicate? and does this mean that texts deleted as duplicates should have been redirected instead? I understand it's not too formal, just curious if these are the same)]

[NOTE: This is just my attempt to contribute to an outline about how a new librarian might get started. I welcome others to chime in with feedback, questions, edits, clarifications, corrections, and anything else! If you are a new librarian, is this helpful to you? Does this answer some questions and raise others? Is there more detail that could be added? --notnull]