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FoAM Library rough guide
Here are some tips and hints on using the FoAM library and its online catalogue, focusing on its own particular idiosyncrasies. This is not a guide on using Zotero or library systems in general. Please refer to the following links or do a search to find out more about this.
Physical organisation
The library is organised into the following sections, with their corresponding catalogue tags (Books
, Periodicals
, etc.):
- Books shelf
Books
A to Z by author or title - Disks shelf:
Disks
CDs, DVDs, CD-ROMs, but also a few video tapes and some peculiar and archaic software - Ephemera boxes: brochures, leaflets, postcards, flyers, etc. organised by year
- Fiction shelf:
Fiction
mostly paperback fiction books - FoAM Propaganda shelf: a shelf of readily accessible FoAM brochures, publications, postcards, etc. for convenient proselytising
- Magazine and Journal shelf:
Periodicals
periodicals, including many titles with only one issue - Temporary Autonomous Sections:
TAS
modular extensible subsections that can coagulate or dissolve at any time for particular people, projects, themes - Unperiodicals shelf:
Unperiodicals
reports, conference proceedings, yearbooks
Books shelf
The books shelf is arranged alphabetically from A to Z. In cases where there's no explicitly designated author/editor, items are filed by title. Find things manually by perusing the shelves themselves, or better still search the catalogue by any field (keyword, title, subject), find the author/editor's name, then locate the item on the shelf.
Digital Media shelf
Like other sections, this one is not ordered in any discernible way, but since it is so small, you should still have a chance of finding what you are looking for. You'll just have to browse patiently.
Fiction shelf
Filed by author from A–Z.
Magazine and Journal shelf
Periodicals with of more than one issue are filed together, mostly in order of issue/date. Titles with only one or two issues are arranged on the shelf roughly by year. Within these parameters, things are largely random (as usual). You will just have to ogle the shelves directly (in conjunction with searching the catalogue) to find what you want.
Unperiodicals shelf
There is no apparent order to these shelves (if you can devise or suggest one, please do so!). Once you determine that an item is located in this section (by referring to the catalogue), it is largely a matter of trial and error to find it on the shelf.
Ephemera boxes
Good luck in finding anything here. There are roughly three groups of ephemera boxes: 1) ephemera sorted by year, 2) ephemera with no apparent date, and 3) ephemera related to FoAM. If you would like to try to find something specific in this section, we recommend setting aside several hours for random, serendipitous, or stochastic beavering.
FoAM Propaganda shelf
Temporary Autonomous Sections
These form and dissolve according to need. For example, a TAS could be made for a residency or project related to cooking. Books, journals, and ephemera could be extracted from their usual locations in the library and brought together to form a temporary reference shelf. The only proviso here is that items should be returned to their original locations after the TAS is dissolved. TASed items can be conveniently tracked with tags (see Digital organisation).