Occupy Wall Street and me

I wrote a report back on going to the Occupy Wall Street Library (OWSL) with Radical Reference this weekend over on the Rad Ref site.

I thought I might follow up, perhaps a little defensively, but I mean it to be reflective, on one of the things I brought up, and that is my feeling ashamed that I/we hadn't gotten involved sooner. Folks from the library first reached out to us on 9/21, but we couldn't rally to get involved. Five, even three years ago, we probably would have been engaged with the project from its conception, maybe even conceiving it ourselves.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can try to reason out why I'm less likely to be involved in street protests and activist events these days. And it's only partially a symptom of middle-age and love-induced idleness. While it's true that between my cats and my spouse, and working really hard at my hour-commute-each-way job, I'm looking for less outside stimulation than I once was, but truthfully, at least I think it's the truth, my calling these days is revolutionary cataloging.

After I complete my forty-hour work-week in four days, I take a day semi-off and then I spend two full days cataloging zines, many of which are not currently represented in WorldCat or the open web.

You can more or less keep an eye on what I'm adding to WorldCat and the Columbia/Barnard catalog via RSS if you want to. (There's a delay before newly cataloged items show up; I'm not sure how long.) One example that I added today is Freak Nasty, written by a young woman named Holly in the mid-1990s.

So, part of me would love to be helping out every day at the People's Library, maybe even sleeping there, but mostly I'm following my own activist muse these days. Not everyone can make the revolution; a few people have to preserve and provide access to it.