Paper short abstract:

Paper will be based on project with a goal to collect and process the data related to the Czech and Slovak subcultures including developing online platform to publicize them. I will discuss questions on infrastructure, technology and access in light of three paradigms – archive, library, collection.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will be based on experience with the project that had a goal to collect and process the data related to the Czech and Slovak fanzines. Within the project we have collected and digitized more than 3000 zines and conducted more than 50 interviews with zinesters and we started to develop online platform to publicize them. Our collection comprises mainly digitized materials from punk, hardcore, skinhead, metal, environmentalist, anarchist and feminist scenes from 1980s to 2010s.

These data have been produced by non-institutionalized networks of independent publishers and activists and were made in DIY way mostly for informal communities that position themselves as alternative or politically oppositional movements. This fact raises several challenges for archiving practice. In my paper I will address three questions that respond to the theme of the panel based on our experience and informed by debates we have had with subcultural archivists from Germany, USA, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia. What is the institutional infrastructure that enable/disable archiving of subcultures? What are the technological decisions that must made and what is their impact? What kind of access to the data is possible in terms of technology, legal regulations and ethics? I will discuss these three questions in the case of our data collection on subcultures in view of three paradigms – archive, library and (private) collection. All these three paradigms offer significant limits in data collection, management and access and I will present our approach to these challenges.