SHAPE researchers Pablo Velasco and Christian U. Andersen participated in a workshop with the Royal Danish Library, organized by Information Specialist Karoline Liv Vildlyng (Royal library/AUL liaison librarian network). The goal of the event was to discuss the role of the librarians and researchers as providers of knowledge, as well as sharing librarian practices. The workshop consisted of a series of talks from AU and the Royal Library members, including Ashley Keheller (Department for Digital Cultural Heritage, Royal Danish Library), and the director of the TEXT research center, Mads Rosendahl (Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric, AU). 

During the workshops, the participants explored mainly the following questions:

How can university libraries, in collaboration with academic communities, continue to develop information services and infrastructures that foster accurate knowledge sharing for researchers? What technical strategies can university libraries use to promote reliable information access for research projects?

Pablo Velasco and Christian U. Andersen shared their work within the history of "shadow libraries", and the social and material elements associated with them, for example, the need for independent collections in times of political uncertainty. In this context, SHAPE researchers addressed the importance of developing infrastructures that favor knowledge production outside of a platformization culture dominated by tech giants. Not only that, but also infrastructures that are rooted primarily in social needs and community practices, and not scalability, data-extraction, or profit. The talk allowed to showcase the "library" infrastructure the researcher use as part of SHAPE, an open software service hosted in a university server, tuned for shared readings and communal note-taking.

The dialogue at the event allowed for a productive discussion on the importance of the librarian work, the nuances of copyright and equality of access, and the stability and mobility of alternative collections, among other topics. But, perhaps more importantly, the workshop reinforced the alignments between the royal library and SHAPE researchers, as "servers" and maintainers of infrastructure for knowledge.

This event is part of the “Knowledge Servers” project, which focuses on examining the reliance on corporate services, and on generating infrastructures for research production.

Read more about the event here.