View source for Chapter 3: Tool building

== Tool building == 

=== Summary ===

This chapter discusses the ways in which tools (in the context of
self-organized collective work) may or may not be perceived and
actualized as purposeful objects that can be used, or are designed to be
used. More specifically, I will discuss an ongoing, non-conclusive
process of collectively imagining, building, and modifying a set of
digital tools entitled \'Feminist Search Tools\'.

Drawing on Sara Ahmed\'s exploration of the concept of \'use\', and on
the metaphysical meaning of \'tool\' and \'broken-tool\' as discussed by
Karen Barad, Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, the inefficiency of a
collective tool building process brings to the fore
other-than-utilitarian articulations of tools. That is, the processes of
collective tool building, through their distributed and fragmented
character, can create conditions in which tools are not presumed as an
inevitable outcome but as ongoing and discursive.

=== Introduction: Situating tools within the H&D collective === 

In the context of Hackers & Designers, \'tools\' usually refer to
digital tools, software or hardware that we, as designers, artists,
technologists and organizers interact with, on a daily basis. H&D tends
toward free and open-source tools. In H&D workshops, the accessibility
of source code offers possibilities for using, copying, studying and
changing, thus learning from and with technical objects. In contrast to
the restrictions of using, sharing and modifying proprietary software,
free and open-source principles derive from software development
practices where technical objects \"are made publicly and freely
available.\"[^1] According to the Free Software Foundation, \'free\' is
defined as liberty, as "free from restriction, not as \'free of
charge.'"[^2] The collective aspects of free and open-source software
are expressed through particular modes of licensing and the practice of
documentation and publication of source code on platforms for
distributed version control and source code management such as Github
and Gitlab. In the context of H&D, these principles are explored in and
outside of the domain of computer programming.[^3] Such principles are
nurtured through a shared understanding that nothing is really made from
scratch, and that the software and hardware we are working with, have
been passed through many hands.

There are certain open-source tools that H&D accumulated around
organizational activities, such as the web spreadsheet tool
Ethercalc[^4] to create overviews for budgets and plans or the real-time
collaborative note taking tool Etherpad.[^5] As free and open-source
projects, these tools are used by many collectives and individuals who
put them into practice across various contexts. For H&D, such tools are
enmeshed with organizational routines, with other technical systems and
are also connected to other communities of toolmakers and users.

Furthermore, H&D builds and works with digital tools that are situated
in the realm of experimental publishing and graphic design. These
include self-made publishing tools such as ChattyPub,[^6] Momentary
Zine,[^7] and the Heartbeat-to-print tool.[^8] In experimenting with
design and publishing tools, H&D draws inspiration from other
collectives and individuals, such as the Brussels-based collective Open
Source Publishing[^9] and \'Constant Association for Art & Media\',[^10]
the Rotterdam-based collective Varia,[^11] the Amsterdam-based
collective fanfare,[^12] the publishing practice of Vienna-based artist
Eva Weinmayr,[^13] or the embodied publishing practices of
Rotterdam-based designers Amy Suo Wu and Clara Balaguer.[^14] In
addition, the knowledge and practices evolving from educational
environments are encapsulated by the student-led interdepartmental
initiative PUB at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam[^15] or the
experimental publishing program XPUB at Piet Zwart Institute in
Rotterdam,[^16] as well as the digital and hybrid publishing research
groups of the Institute of Network Cultures.[^17]

At H&D, such tools are often activated through workshops and are used to
design small edition self-published printed matter. H&D\'s experiments
with design tools have challenged my design routines, more specifically
the relationships I have built with design software, the tools I have
become used to since my design education. In the context of H&D,
publishing tools are not replacements but function in parallel to
proprietary tools. They are indicative of an attempt to envision a
process of designing a publication differently than it would be
conventionally done. The practical and experimental approach to
conceptualizing and building design and organizational tools differently
has allowed me to test out other scenarios for tool-designer
relationships and interactions.

Furthermore, H&D's hands-on workshops bring together people and tools,
in a temporary, focused environment. Such workshops feed off and nurture
communities of tool users and makers who consider it relevant to expand
the conception of tools and tool-building processes, to learn about the
ways in which tools are constructed in a hands-on, practical and often
playful manner. In all instances it seems to me that people involved
with H&D ascribe a certain value to toolmaking. Yet, it also seems as if
the shared enthusiasm for experimenting with tools cannot be located
within the tool itself, nor in the products or outcomes these self-made
tools produce. The appreciation for such self-made tools seems to lie in
the *process* of building tools. In my experience of experimenting with
tools in the context of H&D, there is a common understanding that tools
are not mere instruments but that, as tool-users and makers, we are
implicated in them, in ways that go beyond their immediately evident
utility or the products they may produce.

In this chapter I will discuss the implications of tools in collective
practice. More precisely, I will attend to the ways in which tools (in
the context of self-organized collective work) may or may not be
perceived and actualized as \'purposeful\' objects that can be used, or
are made to be used. Through my work with H&D, I realized that the
particularity of a collective environment contributes to the ways in
which tools are used, produced and discussed. Conversely, tools and
processes of toolmaking can also affect the ways in which a collective
environment evolves. These processes influence how H&D is organized as a
group, how activities and interests are pursued and how certain values
are articulated and rearticulated. In my experience collective practices
are constantly in flux and tend to lean into their entanglements with
tools in ways that make it difficult to sustain the perception of tools
as being for something. In fact, the articulation and actualization of
\'tools\' within the context of H&D is driven by a certain resistance
towards the conception of tools as simply practical and discrete
objects.

In his book *Tool-being* (2002), the philosopher Graham Harman refuses a
conceptualization of the tool as a merely pragmatic entity. Harman
discusses Martin Heidegger\'s tool analysis, where the philosopher pays
particular attention to tools as metaphysical objects. According to
Harman, a tool is a relational thing that \"does not merely have some
neutral presence that could be viewed from the outside, but actually
exists in a network of forces and meanings that determine its
reality.\"[^18] Following this understanding of \'tools\' they \"cannot
be confined to officially sanctioned tool-items such as picks, drills
and chains.\"[^19] Due to the ways in which tools take part in a network
of forces and meanings, it can become rather difficult to determine
where a particular tool begins and ends. This is evident in my work with
H&D, where relational aspects of tools come to the fore. Tools are
sometimes introduced with a certain purpose in mind, but then travel
through different contexts and change their function and meaning along
the way. The role and function of a tool within collective practice may
change over time and influence how it is spoken about and actualized.
Collaborative writing tools such as Etherpad or Ethercalc serve a
certain organizational purpose, such as keeping track of budgets, plans
and assemblies. However, such collaborative tools may also become the
subject of a workshop or are conceptualized as a site/place/space in
which workshops take place. An example is the *Temporary Riparian
Zone*[^20] workshop that was hosted by two members of the Varia
collective, Cristina Cochior and Angeliki Diakrousi, during the Hackers
& Designers Summer Academy of 2020. Another example is the short
workshop sequel *Ethercalc routines* hosted by H&D member Karl Moubarak
and myself, during the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy of 2021. In
both workshops, participants joined remotely and spent time navigating
through timed prompts and exercises on Ethercalc and Etherpad.

At H&D we sometimes speak about how \'self-made\' tools (self-made not
in the sense of made-from-scratch but rather as participants become
involved in their making process) can estrange design processes, break
with the routines we may have already established and instill in us a
greater sense of our interdependence. When my relation to the tools I
use has reached a point of routine, when a process \'goes without
saying,\' so to speak, the use of the tool becomes subconscious and
unquestionable. In her book *What\'s the use?* feminist writer and
scholar Sara Ahmed stated, \"When mechanisms work to enable or to ease a
passage they become harder to notice.\"[^21] Furthermore, Graham Harman
described such \'tools-in-action\' as \"operat\[ing\] in an
inconspicuous usefulness, doing their work without our noticing
it.\"[^22] When a tool is not functioning in a seamless manner, it may
be perceived as broken, failing or unusable. This is what Harman refers
to as the \'broken tool\', which does not mean literally broken. Rather,
it describes the moment in which a tool is considered directly. It comes
to the fore, is rendered noticeable. There is thus, a double life in
tools, *tool-in-action* and *tool-out-of-order*.

It seems a \'tool-in-action\', as Harman describes it, or a
\'tool-routine\' as I would describe it, does not require explanation
and therefore goes without saying. Yet I have come to question the
refusal of tool-routines, particularly when it becomes inherently part
of the functioning of a collective to continuously question, alter and
change the meaning of tools. Can the so-called \'brokenness\' of a tool
become a tool\'s purpose? Is there such a thing as a
broken-tool-in-action? Or to formulate this idea more broadly, are
other-than-utilitarian relationships to tools possible? If so, how could
such relationships be articulated?

In the following section, I attend to these questions by drawing on a
collaborative project Feminist Search Tools (FST). The FST project
encompassed a set of tools-in-the-making and is an ongoing
self-organized collective process crossing various collective
environments and breaching different discourses and fields of knowledge.
I will begin by contextualizing the project and discussing my personal
involvement in it. My personal perspective and motivations form one
amongst many different viewpoints and incentives that were involved and
evolved as part of this toolmaking process. I pay attention to the
fragmented and contingent character of the process, its interwovenness
with various collective environments and timelines, as well as the
significance of such a fragmented process for the ways in which the
\'tool\' is conceptualized and materialized. Additionally, I will focus
on the (re)articulation of a tool\'s \'usefulness\' -- when determining
what is considered a useful or usable tool is not about defining a
common goal for it. Instead, the question of what is a useful/usable
tool may emphasize the differences of personal desires, expectations,
frustrations and feelings of responsibility towards others.

I then discuss aspects of digital interface design as part of the
process of imagining, articulating and making the FST. I examine
interfaces\' relation to the systems they interact with, and the ways in
which certain interface design conventions can be related to the
concepts of \'tool-in-action\' and \'broken tool\'. I also reflect on
the concept of versioning and the notion of the 1st version, in
particular how it has been used to negotiate the pressure of publishing
a \'functioning\' search tool on the one hand and the resistance to
resolving, finishing or releasing it on the other. I will go on by
contextualizing the significance of the different environments, in which
the tool versions have been brought and evolved within. More precisely,
I will attend to the permeability of the collective toolmaking process,
and its receptiveness to context-specific terminologies, cultures and
conducts. I will analyze how the context of the Amsterdam-based Digital
Methods Summer School (DMI) has introduced specific divisions of roles
and tasks, and specific understandings and actualization of design and
visualization practices that had significant influence on the
continuation of the toolmaking process.

Drawing on an example of an off-shoot tool that was also produced during
DMI, I will elucidate how the particular contexts the collective
toolmaking process passed through and brought together were not always
in alignment. Such moments of incompatibility were occasions to express
commonalities and discrepancies regarding values and ethical concerns.
In the chapter\'s conclusion, I propose an approach that I call \'slow
collective processing\'---an approach to collective tool-building that
is reflective of the diverging socio-economic realities of a collective
on the one hand and, on the other, precipitates the constant questioning
of the tool-in-the-making.

=== The Feminist Search Tools project === 

\'Tool\' in the context of the FST project describes a digital search
interface in different iterations that allow for textual search queries
within digital catalogs of libraries and archives. There have been
various focal points within this project. One focus has been the context
in which the tools have been developed and conceptualized, such as
library catalogs, as well as the knowledge economies that libraries as
institutions represent. This includes the ways in which libraries and
the knowledge they hold are made (in)accessible through search tools
that build upon standardizations of search categories such as the
Library of Congress subject headings.[^23]

As the title of the project suggests, the initiative is guided by
feminist thinking, practices and principles. The FST project took as a
starting point library search engines that are intertwined with
underlying systems of categorization, which are a result of and
reproduce structural discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation,
age, race, class, (dis)ability. The question of the purpose or
usefulness of the FST closely relates to the project\'s emphasis on such
discriminatory effects and on rendering them tangible or even undoing
them by building new/other tools.

The group that evolved around the FST project is composed of the two
collectives Read-in[^24] (Annette Krauss, Svenja Engels, Laura Pardo)
and Hackers & Designers (Anja Groten, André Fincato, Heerko van der
Kooij, and previous member James Bryan Graves). Members of the Varia
collective (Angeliki Diakrousi and Alice Strete) and frequent
collaborator Ola Hassanain are also participants. The members involved
in the FST have in common that they are not experienced in designing,
conceptualizing or building search engines, including working with large
datasets. They are artist researchers, gender studies scholars,
designers (architectural, graphic and web design), educators,
(self-taught) computer programmers, librarians and archivists.
Throughout the project, the group met sporadically and consulted with
librarians, information specialists and other artists and researchers
working with and around subjects related to libraries and librarianship.

The FST project followed different incentives, timelines and levels of
intensity in terms of involvement with various collaborators. I cannot
speak on behalf of all members but I will try to describe how I became
part of this initiative and how my connections and appreciation for it
have developed and have been challenged. When I got involved in this
collaboration, I was already working with the Read-in collective in the
role of a graphic designer. I designed and built Read-in\'s website, and
worked on some of their publications.[^25] I became interested in their
project *Bookshelf Research*[^26] for which Read-in members looked
closely at different libraries, such as their own private libraries or
the library of the art institution Casco in Utrecht.[^27] The group
considered each library book closely and created a statistical breakdown
based on self-chosen categories. Categories entailed \'gender of the
author\', \'place of origin\' as well as \'material condition\' of the
books. I invited Read-in to join one of the H&D meetups[^28] in 2015,
during which we looked into ways of searching within the digital catalog
of the public library in Amsterdam. In retrospect, this marked the
beginning of the collective exploration of digital search tools and the
relation of such tools to library cataloging systems.

This particular project is prescient to this dissertation as it has
challenged me in its resistance to finality. It has been ongoing since
2015, and yields a manifold of documentation such as workshop outlines,
code repositories, collaboratively written texts, audio recordings and
transcripts of interviews and conversations, photographs and videos,
collective notes and annotations of interfaces. The challenge of
determining where a tool begins and ends becomes, in my view,
particularly stark in this project. Karen Barad argues that \"what is
needed is a method attuned to the entanglement\"[^29] of what she calls
"apparatuses of production."[^30] These require \"genealogical analyses
of how boundaries are produced rather than presuming sets of well-known
binaries in advance.\"[^31] The purpose and meaning of the FST have been
(re)articulated and actualized throughout and in a non-conclusive
manner, and fostered a relational understanding of tools-in-the-making.
That is, the characteristics, possibilities and limitations of the tool,
and the way the members of the FST group related to it, were not known
in advance but evolved through the coming-into-being of the different
tool iterations within particular contexts. Collective and individual
understandings of what constitutes a (useful) tool seem to have been
(and still are) continuously in-the-making, as the feminist search tools
are also continuously in the making (including the different
understandings of feminism and intersectionality that are also
continuously in the making). Materializations that evolved from this
collective toolmaking process cannot be understood in terms of finality.
Yet there also seems to be relationships evolving from toolmaking and
tool-imagining processes, which bind those involved---people and
(imagined) tools---to each other over a long period of time. The
question is, what precisely motivates and connects the tool-collective,
if the final destiny of the tool(s) is uncertain or perhaps not even the
goal?

A challenge in discussing this particular tool project as a case study
is its connection to a manifold of people, as well as various critical
discourses, such as feminist and decolonial theory, critical
librarianship, critical studies of web search engines and algorithmic
bias. At the same time, the project\'s distributed character is
indicative of its potential, as it brings tool-discussions into a
variety of contexts.[^32] However, discussing the multiple implications
of this project is beyond the scope of this dissertation. I will
therefore relate the project more specifically to the subject matter of
this chapter and focus on the evolving understandings, articulations and
purposes of self-made tools (or lack thereof). In addition, I will
examine the implication of such tools-in-the-making within
self-organized collective practices.

By elucidating the project's composition and purpose, I explore how my
perception of \'use\' or \'usefulness\' of evolving tools relates to the
collective toolmaking process. For instance, the activity of organizing
workshops and meetups has been significant throughout the FST project,
and was precisely what allowed this \'new\' FST collective to evolve.
Such short-lived gatherings energized the process and contributed to its
continuation and at the same time to its non-conclusiveness. In
approaching the question of what is considered a useful tool, this
workshop-based approach needs to be taken into account, as it hints at
both a fragmentation of the process and a fragmentation of the tool and
its envisioned purpose. Reflecting back on the initial meetup with H&D
and Read-in in 2015, the emphasis was on \'scraping\'[^33] datasets from
the internet. We used the digital library catalog of the public library
in Amsterdam as an example.[^34] The interest in datasets was not
entirely connected to the project FST. In fact, the FST project, as it
is referred to today (with the recurring project title and a committed
group of collaborators) was not perceived as a project/tool/collective
at the time of the initial meetup. Rather, it is only in retrospect that
this meetup is understood as a significant moment in the FST\'s
genealogy. The group evolving around the FST continued to focus on
working with datasets, on trying to make sense of them and
(re)organizing them, on finding other ways of searching in them. In my
view, this emphasis on datasets may be partially related to this initial
meetup, to the people that happened to be there, and hence my perception
of it as the retrospective beginning of the FST collective.

To summarize, a collective toolmaking project such as the FST project
needs to be understood as distributed and fragmented---contingent in the
ways it evolved. Its unfolding journey was not always deliberate, which,
as I will explore in the following section of this text, may have also
affected the perception of the (im)possibility of the FST to become a
useful/usable tool. Therefore, a toolmaking process such as the FST
requires articulation that resists linearity and progress-based
understandings of the design process.

=== Distributed articulation of use === 

Collective practices such as the FST, could also be described as
continuously changing socio-technical configurations. Short-lived group
gatherings, such as H&D workshops, as well as various configurations of
people that continued working together for longer and shorter periods of
time and across different contexts took part in the FST\'s different
iterations. The process has been dispersed and contingent and, as such,
puts into perspective collective conditions in which the purpose of the
FST can neither be predefined nor concluded. In fact, the question of
what the FST is for remains unresolved. Nevertheless, the FST
materialized into several digital interfaces along the way, which were
referred to as prototypes, as iterations or as versions. At first, the
tool was understood as a search interface for digital catalogs of
libraries and archives. Throughout the process the tool also evolved
into a shadow search engine and an interactive visualization of a
library catalog. To clarify, when I refer to \'tool versions\', my
intention is not to suggest that one tool version is an \'improvement\'
of the previous one. While the different tools relate to each other,
they are also materializations of specific moments in a tool-building
process that influenced perceptions and expectations of what constitutes
a tool, in addition to the usability or usefulness of a tool.

The question of what the tools are or will be for remains pending. The
desire for the FST to be useful has been one of its underpinnings.
However, throughout its process, it became clear that the notion of
usefulness and usability cannot be taken for granted. As a
socio-technical object-in-the-making, the FST posed more questions than
it resolved. For instance, in what context should it exist? How does it
relate to existing search engines, including the people who built,
maintain and use them? What and who should the tool be useful for? The
definition of use or use-value depends on who you ask. In a
conversation, one of the members of the FST group, Sven, articulated
their personal criteria for the purpose of the tool:

> Sven: \[\...\] I do have to admit there is also a desire around
> usability of the tool, which for me simply stems from, really wanting
> to find queer literature. I want to be able to find that
> identification in the material I am looking for and I still find it
> very frustrating not being able to find that within mainstream media
> outlets or libraries. So I think we should also not do away so easily
> with these hopes and desires that come with the use value of a tool.
> \[\...\] we need to understand where that desire is coming from --
> wanting the tool to function and being able to provide something
> valuable to the person who is engaging with the tool.\
> (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\', 17 February 2021)

Sven\'s hopes for the tool-in-the-making seems to derive from a
frustration with a gap in mainstream media outlets and libraries. In
articulating their hope for the tool to be *for* something (*for*
finding queer literature), they ascribe a personal desire towards its
use, which informs their expectation of the tool (finding
identification). In my interpretation, this also implicitly suggests
responsibility towards someone who may be using the tool in the future.
In my understanding, Sven\'s articulation of all of these aspects form
their conception of a tool and its potential use-value. It seems these
characteristics of a potentially useful tool are distributed across
people, objects and time, which relates to Ahmed\'s concept of \'use\'
as \"an intimate as well as a social sphere.\"[^35]**\
**

In \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans\" Bruno Latour (building upon
Heidegger), proposes conceiving of the relationship between tools and
people as constituted by what he calls a symmetry between a materialist
and a sociologist perspective. With reference to the materialist
perspective, he describes a tool as an autonomous entity with a
\'script\'. The script determines its destiny and has a significant
influence on the person who uses it. Considering the sociological
perspective, he maintains that a person sustains full control over a
tool\'s action, the tool plays \"the role of the passive
conductor.\"[^36] By proposing a symmetry between the materialist and
sociologist perspectives, Latour argues that a person changes with the
tool in their hand and that the tool changes when a person holds it.
This reciprocal tool-person relation, brings about a condition in which
the outcome of such a relation is neither determinable by tool or person
entirely. This contingent \'outcome\' could constitute an ephemeral
characteristic such as an attitude towards tools. Rather than explicitly
articulated, an attitude towards tools may evolve latently, through
certain gestures or the use of specific vocabulary. This vocabulary may
be established through repetitive use or resistance to using specific
kinds of tools.

Sven\'s manner of articulating the tool-in-the-making is imaginative,
reflective, but also concrete and consequential,---all attributes that
resonate with what Barad referred to as \'Gedankenexperiment\'.
According to Barad, \"Gedanken experiments are pedagogical devices. They
are tools for isolating and bringing into focus conceptual
issues.\"[^37] For Barad, while thought experiments are non-material
eventualities, they do matter in material ways. \'Real\' experiments on
the other hand, which incorporate real apparatuses and measurement
devices, can be flawed as we cannot presume \"independently existing
objects -- separate from the measuring agencies.\"[^38] According to
Barad, apparatuses are entangled in ways that make them not \"passive
observing instruments. On the contrary, they are productive of (and part
of) phenomena. \[\...\] \[A\]n \"\'apparatus\' emerges within a specific
observational practice\"[^39] and it is unclear where the apparatus
\'ends\'. Barad\'s ideas on entangled, (im)material apparatuses can be
related to the evolution of the FST and the difficulty of determining
where the FST may \'end up\'. The FST's resistance to absolute
determination, in my view, requires articulation that accounts for a
tool-in-the-making*,* a tool that is imaginative as well as concrete and
material, including different scenarios for future use. At the same
time, its relation to past experiences and personal frustrations have
also shaped expectations, hopes and desires for another kind of tool and
other tool articulations.

To recap, in the attempt to determine criteria for usefulness of a
collectively made tool, the notion of a tool-in-the-making (determining
its meaning and purpose through the process of making it) is intertwined
with the notion of tool-imagining. With reference to Barad's proposition
*Gedankenexperiments* and their significance to the material world, the
process of collective tool-imagining in the FST project distributes the
task of determining and articulating criteria for usefulness of the tool
across different people, objects and temporalities.

=== Interfaces as tool simulations === 

The first version of the FST[^40] \[see image 1\] was developed in the
context of the Utrecht University Library, more specifically their
digital library catalog. The FST group has referred to it as \'1st
version\', even though there was initially no other version planned. The
formulation \'1st version\' became part of a shared vocabulary and was
adopted even by collaborators who joined the project after this \'1st
version\' was built. This expression conveys that this \'1st attempt\'
at designing a search tool should not be perceived as a final product. I
would also relate the notion of the 1st version to the rushed manner in
which this particular search interface was implemented, to how \'1st
version\' became an apologetic phrase for publishing something that I
was not convinced was, or perhaps ever would be ready for release.

The Read-in collective was invited to participate in the project \'Zero
Footprint Campus\' organized by \'Department of Search\', which took
place at the Utrecht University in 2016.[^41] This research project was
supposed to result in new work and to be presented at the Science Park
campus public areas in Utrecht, at the end of the research trajectory in
June 2017.[^42] I recall a lot of our time being spent on negotiating
time schedules of everyone involved, on attuning the ethos of the two
collectives working together and on understanding what it is we wanted
and could achieve together. Perhaps, the expression \'1st version\',
suggests that the tool is still under development, that it is not
completed (yet).

Nevertheless, the 1st version of the FST materialized into a web
interface with a search function. The search takes place within a
dataset of library records.[^43] The dataset of records we worked with
were based on a number of so-called MARC21 fields, which one of our
collaborators Sven carefully selected in conversation with a
librarian.[^44] When conducting a search in this tool, a page opens and
displays the search result in the form of a numerical breakdown of
library records found under each category.

To anyone who has used a search engine before, the interface will look
somewhat familiar. It is approximate to the many search interfaces we
have learned to recognize due to the ubiquity of major web search engine
monopolies such as Google Search, Bing or Baidu. A border around the
search field suggests the possibility of clicking inside the box. If you
do so, the cursor blinks and invites the user to type something. The
search interface of this first tool version, could be considered
*usable* as a search tool, through its recognizable aesthetic and
interactive properties.

![](media/image1.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="3.513888888888889in"}

Image 1: \'1st version\' of the Feminist Search Tool.

https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H\_D_fst.014.jpeg

Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) play a significant role in the ways
digital tools are conceived. They influence the perception of usability
of computers and software by adding a visual layer between its user and
its code and hardware. The interface design of the 1st version of the
FST to some extent relies on the recognizability of its elements such as
the search input field and the search button. However, the expectation
of usability may be disrupted once the tool is actually in use. The
first disruption in the flow of interaction arises from the appearance
of the question on top of the search field: \"Why are the authors of the
books I read so white so male so eurocentric?\" The question causes
confusion. Who is the \"I\"? People who encountered the tool on their
own told me later that they weren\'t sure if they were supposed to use
the search field to respond to the question. They assumed the tool was
\'speaking\' to them. Others embodied the question, typed in a keyword,
an author or book title and expected to receive some sort of answer to
the question. Some people expected to receive suggestions for books
\'other\' than those written by \'white, male, or eurocentric\' authors.
This created another rupture in the search flow, as the search result
does not show books (as some expected), but a barebone list of subject
headings. Underneath each heading, library records are listed. A graphic
layover functions as a legend to the subject headings and contextualizes
the system of categorization.

I recently revisited the discomfort I experienced at the moment of
uploading the 1st version of the FST onto its domain, the moment when it
became accessible to anyone on the internet. At first, I thought I was
uncomfortable with losing control over the moment of encounter between
the user and the FST. Perhaps, I was discomforted by the possibility of
it being misunderstood. However, I later realized I had not understood
the meaning and functioning of the tool myself. The process of figuring
the tool out was (and still is) ongoing. Rather than weariness about
exposure and potential judgment, the issue may be that, on its own, the
tool is missing the articulation work necessary to turn it from
\'broken-tool\' to \'broken-tool-in-action\'. While users can interact
with the tool, click buttons, open pages, read and navigate, the
interactive features of the interface seem metaphorical and are missing
the context they emerged from. Distilled from its collective activation
moments, the tool seemed to me only half-actualized. In the way I relate
to it, despite its interactive features, the 1st version is a still
image of a collective process, a capture of a tool-in-the-making, a
figure, like a figure of speech that, if someone does not speak the
language, needs some figuring out.

In their introduction to *Reflect and Act! Introduction to the Society
of the Query Reader* (2014), researchers Miriam Rasch and René König
write: \"While most users feel confident with search engines (simply
because they use them every day), they usually don't know much about how
they actually function and how to operate them efficiently.\"[^45] This
confidence seems necessary for a search tool to be perceived as
operational.

The appearance of the 1st FST version, through its recognizable features
caters to such confidence of a user, who is used to using search engines
every day without having to deal with the ways it actually works. Yet,
through producing an expectation of operationality the confidence of a
user is also frustrated once actually using the FST.

Rosie Graham, lecturer in contemporary literature and digital culture,
wrote that

> \"\[u\]sers do not need to know how search engines work to find out
> the year Barack Obama was born, or the date he became president. When
> our tools work, specific language or specialized knowledge may seem
> unimportant. When our expectations, intentions, and results are in
> line with one another, a deeper understanding of a technology and the
> vocabulary with which to discuss it, recedes into the
> background.\"[^46]

Thus, in the case of the 1st version of the FST, the functioning of the
search tool could perhaps be described in the opposite manner. In my
estimation, the tool \'worked\' when it was involved in figuring out
specific language that springs from specific constellations of people
and technical objects, collective configurations that converged
different domains and experiences. Digital user interfaces (not only
search engines) are usually perceived as usable if they work intuitively
and if interaction works somewhat subconsciously. For digital tools to
function effectively, their user interfaces need to be unquestionable.
Brian Rosenblum, a librarian at the University of Kansas Libraries,
warns of incontestability in the context of digital library search
engines as \'affordances of ignorance\' that are reproduced through
certain conventions of \'usable\' \'interfaces that may obscure their
biases.

The usability of digital interfaces may be connected to an individual\'s
feeling of being in control. As part of a long history of human computer
interaction, interfaces were conceptualized within the context of
military projects.[^47] Contemporaneously, they have evolved into
universalized cultural objects that build upon specific kinds of
psychologies of perception, visualization, and \'liveness on
demand\'.[^48] Digital interfaces ought to give a \'user\' the feeling
of \'mastery\' over their computer programs.[^49] According to Wendy Hui
Kyong Chun, scholar in media studies and cultural theory, \"\[t\]he
notion of interfaces as empowering is driven by a dream of individual
control: of direct personal manipulation of the screen, and thus, by
extension, of the system it indexes or represents.\"[^50]

Digital search engines make library catalogs (in)accessible through
their interfaces, which are perceived as useful if they sustain a
certain incontestability. While this version of the FST introduced some
ruptures---such as questionable moments in user-tool interaction---it
also reproduced a common image of what a search tool should look like
and how information should be delivered (the answer being only one click
away). The aesthetic choices may obscure the processes the tool is
involved in and gets its \'user\' involved in.

The function of the first version of the FST is that of a collective
study object that, through its evolution into what resembles a search
interface, created occasions to concretely and imaginatively reflect and
disentangle the ways people and tools are involved in making items
(in)accessible in digital cataloging systems. Certain rhetorical tricks,
such as the notion of the 1st version, are a collective attempt to
articulate a tools\' unresolved issues, preparing someone for the
experience of the \'broken-tool\'. However, the rushed process of
designing what could be conceived as a \'functioning\' website also
contributed to the FST\'s conceptualization and materialization as a
digital search interface that can work \'on its own\'.\
This also led to the digital interface being actualized---to some extent
in the most obvious manner. The recognizable image of a search interface
may not fully satisfy the expectations it creates, but simultaneously
conveys a certain ambition. If there wasn\'t the pressure to produce and
present what would be regarded as a \'tangible\' end result (which we
interpreted as a search interface), the notion of the \'1st version\' of
the tool would perhaps have not emerged, along with the implied promise
to continue and to produce a 2nd or 3rd version of the digital
interface.

Contextualizing visualization

The FST collective was introduced to different cultures and conditions
of working together. These included different terminology and social
conduct and diverging ways of understanding and speaking about
\'tools\', \'design\' and \'collectivity\'. One context, which has been
significant for the continuation of the FST collective, was the
\'Digital Methods Summer School\' (DMI), a two-week program organized by
the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) at the University of
Amsterdam.[^51] DMI is an Internet Studies research group, directed by
Richard Rogers, professor of New Media and Digital Culture since 2007.
DMI's objective is to design methods and tools for doing research with
internet platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google but also with
digital applications and devices. Rogers describes Digital Methods as:
"redoing online methods for different purposes to those intended."[^52]

In July 2019, I signed up to participate in DMI. The program was
explained as a collaborative, interdisciplinary and explorative research
environment, bringing together practical and theoretical knowledge. It
seemed to have common ground with the H&D approach and with the
characteristics of the FST collective. Yet, DMI turned out to be a
rather different work environment, in which separations between tasks,
roles, subjects and approaches were quite distinct, compared to what I
was familiar with. The understanding that a tool-building process could
be experimental, open-ended and discursive, which were possibilities I
had become used to in the context of the FST project were not applicable
in the same manner within the working environment of the DMI.

It was striking how much of the terminology used in the context of DMI
seemed familiar. Yet, the way in which certain terms and concepts were
understood and put into practice was quite different from what I knew
from the H&D Summer Academy, from H&D workshops and from working with
the FST group. The notion of \'design\' seemed to be dedicated to the
fields of 'user experience', 'data visualization' and 'information
design' and was impersonated by a distinct group of designers from
DensityLAB, based in Milan.[^53] The people from DensityLab were
introduced and referred to as \'the designers\', who could be consulted
and had the authority to translate the researchers\' ideas and
spreadsheets into data visualizations. Furthermore, the notion of
\'tool\'[^54] occurred in the context of tutorials and referred to code
repositories, also described as 'scrapers', and 'crawlers', that could
be used to extract data from the internet and to accommodate processing
of such data for further analysis. Participants could sign up for
tutorials in which they would familiarize themselves with those tools.

The DMI took place at the University of Amsterdam, during the summer
break. Participants were able to receive ECTS credits. Thus, there were
other incentives at play for participation than in the context of H&D,
where collaborative learning environments mostly evolve outside of
accredited educational institutions. Participation was possible only
through full commitment to the two week long program. In addition, the
participation fee was high (EUR 995,00). This financial commitment did
not align with the fiscal realities of the FST collective. Fortunately,
through my research position I was able to get my own participation fee
reimbursed. I participated in the full program and negotiated on the
part of my collaborators to join free of charge for the second part of
the program. The FST group got to work together in this environment for
a full week, which in comparison to previous work rhythms, was an
extraordinarily commitment from the group members.\
\
I participated in tutorials in the first week of the program and sat in,
with another research group, trying to grasp the dynamic and terminology
of the environment. In the second week of the program, I 'pitched' the
FST project with three of my peers from the FST group. A project pitch
at DMI refers to a five minute presentation during which participants
try to convince other participants to work on their research project for
one week. Our proposition was to explore with researchers from other
fields and contexts (im)possibilities of incorporating feminist
approaches into discovery tool development.

During the week the group spent together, we had the chance to revisit
the 1st version of the FST, which we had not considered with much
attention for about one and a half years. Having to explain the tool to
the other participants, we were reminded of the choices we made in terms
of its interface design. We benefited from those participants who were
familiar with methods of \'query design\'[^55] and helped us consider
different search methods.[^56] We tested out the method of \'negative
query\' to intervene with search results by consciously excluding items
or categories that are usually most visible. Taking the time to actively
and intensively \'use\' the 1st version of the FST as a group, while
speaking about it and trying to make sense of it, created momentum in
the collective process. It felt to me as if we had become more familiar
with it and felt increasingly connected to the tool and to each other.

![](media/image6.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="3.513888888888889in"}

Image 2: Screenshot of the \'visualization tool\'
[[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H\_D_fst.020.jpeg]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Presentation_H_D_fst.020.jpeg)\]

One of the outcomes of DMI was another 2nd tool version. The so-called
\'visualization tool\'[^57] refers to an interactive browser animation
that shows little colored squares, each of which represents a book in
the catalog. The squares are organized in groups within two axes. The
X-axes represented gender categories as they were applied in the first
version of the tool, the Y-axes listed all publishers represented in the
library catalog. Thus, the books were organized \'spatially\' according
to (assumed) gender of an author of a book and the publisher. This
second version of the tool was supposed to \'visualize\' which
publishers represent more or less female/male/transgender authors. The
way the books are organized around the axes is animated in an
entertaining and lively manner. I recall the moment when we first saw
the animation on a screen, some of us (including me) burst out with an
excited \"Ohhh\". This moment was referred to and critically reflected
upon repeatedly throughout the continuation of the project:\
![](media/image3.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="3.5277777777777777in"}

DMI, 2019

> Sven: I still find it a bit funny that you are so excited about the
> visualization tool Anja, since you were the one at the beginning of
> this project who was cautioning us not to expect too much, or like you
> put it, don\'t trust the \'magic,\' of a visualization. You said, the
> visualization will only give you what you're asking for, which really
> stayed with me. And yet, when we get to the visualization and
> everybody gets excited. \[laughs\]
>
> Annette: I agree that we should not project too much on
> visualizations. But for me the visualization tool has finally been the
> moment that allowed us to investigate our own tool, the first
> prototype of the Feminist Search Tools.
>
> Anja: In my view the big difference the visualization tool made, is
> that we see books and not only records. \[\...\] you can click on a
> square that represents the actual book and see more information about
> the book. This was not possible before. It was just numbers and
> records, which was an abstract idea and difficult to relate to, for
> me. Being able to check and see some of the flaws of our initial tool,
> by checking the actual books was an important moment for me.\
> (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\' recorded and collectively edited
> conversation between the FST group, 17 February 2021)

According to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, \"interfaces seem to concretize our
relation to invisible (or barely visible) "sources" and
substructures.\"[^58] Being able to \'see\' books (represented through
colored squares) that were spatially organized on our screen, produced
the impression of a more concrete relation to the invisible
sub-structure of the library catalog and its system of categorization.
In my recollection of the situation, my enthusiasm for witnessing visual
squares moving around on a screen stems from not having to conceptualize
a library catalog as an abstract system of categorization, or a large
intangible knowledge institution. Rather, I could conceptualize and
visualize the library catalog as some kind of container that holds
distinct, countable items. The recognizability of \'books\' as distinct
objects created a sense of comfort. The impression of seeing books
represented in this way made me feel that I knew what I was looking
at---books. The concept of a \'library record\', a textual
representation of a system that groups, moves and fixes books based on
classification standards, felt rather abstract. When I saw colored
clickable squares, I *felt* as if I could finally \'see\' the books. The
emphasis here is on feeling, and the excitement caused by encountering
something that seemed familiar. Digital interfaces and the ways they
work as simulations, rely on emotional responses. Perhaps,
subconsciously, I felt as if I could \'manage\' such books. In the case
of the FST, it meant that by visualizing books as squares and ordering
them in certain ways, I was under the impression that I could gain a
better understanding about which books are represented and which books
were missing from the digital library catalog. This moment of enthusiasm
also made me feel more connected to the tool and it\'s coming into
being.

Returning to the aforementioned diverging culture and terminology of the
DMI context, it seems significant to mention the way the visualization
was presented to us. We approached the designers of DenisityLab to
support our group halfway through the week by suggestion of one of the
facilitators of DMI. We tried to explain to them what we were trying to
do with the tool and asked them if they could think with us about ways
to visualize the library cataloging system. Where the previous tool
showed search results in a textual way and as a list, we were curious
how a more visual approach could provide new insights. The designers
left the room and worked on the visualization somewhere else before
returning the next day to show us the result. The translation of a
textual representation into a visualization of the search results in my
expectation would bring new insights, perhaps more clarity about the
functioning of the tool and its underlying system of categorization.
While aiming to see rather than read search results, the process of
making the visualization happened out of sight. That is, the FST group
was not present during its making process.

In "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the
Privilege of Partial Perspective,\" (1988), Donna Haraway wrote, "Vision
is always a question of power to see.\"[^59] She asked: \"How to see?
Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see
with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded?
What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision?\"[^60]
I relate this quote by Haraway to the visualization the designers
produced. More precisely, I question what we saw in the visualization
and our responses to it; how it created a certain comfort and also joy
to look at and perhaps made me feel more connected to the tool and the
collective.

The fact that the designers left the room to work somewhere else is
worth noting. Their leaving the room signifies the division of labor
conceptualized and put into practice in the context of DMI, and which
also had implications for the way in which the FST further evolved in
that particular context. When we saw the visualization for the first
time, we were looking *at* it and not *with* it. There was labor implied
in the visualization that was not visible to us at that moment. There
was a certain distance to the making process of the visualization, which
created the surprise effect. We were impressed because we had not
observed the process of its production, the sweat and struggles. As I
understood later from reading back through time stamps of messages sent
by the designers, they worked late and long hours, material conditions
that had not been visible to us.

To recap, the participation in the 2-week at DMI was significant for the
way in which the FST has been conceptualized and actualized as a tool,
as well as the ways in which our understanding and problematization of
it as a \'useful\' tool has unfolded along the way. Through our
participation concepts and questions of visualization were introduced
and developed, but also made apparent how specific contexts can produce
tools, tool concepts and conditions for toolmaking. The condition of an
(for the FST collective) exceptionally committed working environment
made it significant and distinct. It is referred to often with fondness
and criticality equal measure. In my view, it contributed to people
feeling enthusiastic and connected to the FST, but it also shows how
permeable collective projects such as FST are; how they are receptive to
the contexts in which they evolve.

Discontinuation and reorientation

The Feminist Search Assistant[^61] is a shadow search website, which was
developed during the Digital Methods Summer School as a parallel project
to the visualization tool. It was developed in collaboration with two
DMI researchers Emile den Tex and Lonneke van der Velden. This tool
version intended to provide a more gender sensitive search experience on
Amazon. The Feminist Search Assistant consists of a search bar that
builds on Amazon's algorithmic recommendation system, which suggests
books that are oriented towards topics related to feminism and
intersectionality. This tool version was built to rethink how
algorithmic recommendations work, as they are known to personalize
search results in an opaque manner. It addressed matters of search
engine development that we had not explored before, although these
questions had been raised as a concern by the librarians of the UU
library. Their concerns were that people who search in a library catalog
most likely have already searched on Google or Amazon search engines
before. Thus, they already know what they are looking for and use
library search tools for so-called \'known-item search\', rather than a
\'discovery search\'. The amount of so-called discovery searches in
library search engines has decreased tremendously since the invention of
Google Search. The basic principles of the Feminist Search Assistant,
was to provide a search bar and a set of specific interests to choose
from, of which the term 'feminism' was added by default. The queries
were then sent to amazon.com. This set of interests were embedded in the
link sent to Amazon in the initial search page and prompted Amazon's
advanced search feature to configure around those interests (called
'departments' in amazon.com). This was supposed to make it more likely
to find results by feminism-filtered sources.

![](media/image11.png){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="3.638888888888889in"}\
Image: Interface of the Feminist Search Assistance
[[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screenshot-2019-07-12-at-12.08.05.png]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screenshot-2019-07-12-at-12.08.05.png)

I decided to include this short off-shoot project, even though it
concluded with a shared agreement not to continue and not to publish it.
It is a good example of how the evolving FST collective practice and its
different contexts were not always in alignment. These instances of
incompatibility and disagreement were important moments in which to
express commonalities and discrepancies. Expression of disagreement is
essential for the preservation of values and the ethical concerns around
collective tool-building.[^62]

The Feminist Search Assistant included and built upon book selections,
which were carefully curated by different grassroots libraries and
archives such as Mapping Slavery,[^63] The Black Archives[^64] and Atria
Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis.[^65] Similar to
the 1st version of the FST, this tool version also functioned as a
simulation of a search tool. It produced very specific search queries
and, as expected, most of the time the search result showed \'0 found
items\'. The fact that books were hard to locate with this tool seems
indicative of the heteronormativity of mainstream media outlets. Yet, on
its own, the tool seemed to have missed crucial reflection on the
context and conditions in which the references were initially sourced.
At the beginning of the FST project in 2017, when we were still working
in the context of the Utrecht University Library, Annette and Sven
contacted various grassroot communities and libraries with an invitation
to curate book selections. We printed out covers of selected books and
glued them onto bok-sized wood panels. These \'book dummies\' were
placed in book-trolleys outside the Utrecht University library,
\"drawing attention to silenced and marginalized voices excluded from
our current knowledge economies.\"[^66] The Feminist Search Assistant
was missing crucial contextualization of these book selections, which
the search queries were based upon. This made the tool ignorant of the
work and efforts libraries and archives did to curate the book
selections to create visibility for marginalized communities who are
excluded from mainstream media outlets and current knowledge economies.
It seemed irresponsible to use these book selections to \'feed\' online
platforms that run personalization algorithms, which we will never
understand and don't trust.

The installation of bookshelf trolleys by Read-in in 2017 included
another crucial gesture that was missing in this digital tool---the
gesture of reciprocity. The invitation for proposing book selections was
extended to visitors who could \"select books of their choice,
responding to and intervening into the question: Why are the authors of
the books I read, so white, so male, so Eurocentric?\"[^67] While this
tool version was discontinued, the trajectory of the FST seems
incomplete without mentioning it. Creating this particular tool version
was significant to our continuation. It made apparent ethical aspects
inherent in our work, as well as aspects of labor, time and effort. We
became more aware of our own investment in the project and
simultaneously more critical and selective about the contexts and
collaborations we chose to engage with. We decided not to continue
spending time investigating large search engines such as Amazon and
Google and connect more actively to smaller initiatives such as ATRIA
and IHLIA, two archives based in Amsterdam.

This short experiment was a crucial moment in the process and evolution
of FST. It raised important ethical concerns but also posed new ideas
for future tool versions. The possibility for a search tool and its
underlying categorization system to sustain some form of mutability
sparked excitement. In addition, incorporating recommendations for books
and search categories which could be curated by grassroots initiatives
and communities holding specialized collections was invigorating. Such
grassroots libraries, of which ATRIA and IHLIA are two examples, develop
specialized vocabularies according to which they organize books.

Intersecting and complexifying

Throughout the collective process of making the FST, I frequently asked
myself if I (and perhaps others in the group) had fallen into the trap
of a linear, progress-oriented understanding of collective toolmaking.
Features were implemented at certain moments with the idea of being
replaced or improved upon at a later stage, which the collective
toolmaking process, due to its fragmented nature, could not live up to.
I felt there were many weak spots within various implementations of the
tools that were a result of rushed processes, lack of understanding in
terms of computer programming and working with datasets. At times,
technical terminology dominated the 'tool' narrative, which seemed to
reduce important socio-political debates around feminist, queer,
anti-racist, intersectional, decolonial discourses to overly utilitarian
and simplistic reasoning. For the first version of the FST, Sven had
looked at all MARC21 fields and made a selection of search categories
that seemed most relevant to us. In conversation with the librarians of
the UU library, Sven and Annette formulated a question as a guideline
for this selection: How many female, non-Western authors and authors of
color are represented in the library? Examples of fields that Sven
selected were \'place of publication\' and \'language\'. They also
inquired about the possibility of retrieving information about the
gender and nationality of an author.

Yet, as we discovered through conversations with the librarians,
information about authors is generally not retrievable in European
library cataloging standards, while information about books is
retrievable. James, who worked on the development of the tool, explored
other \'tactics\' to find information about authors. James did this by
linking the library dataset to Wikidata. Wikidata gender entries
encompass more than the usual binary gender categories (female, male,
transgender-male, transgender-female, unknown). However, these extended
categories still did not represent the wide spectrum of gender
identification. James also introduced other datasets as a \'fall back\'.
In the case that no gender category could be found in the Wikidataset,
the tool would resort to the so-called Gender API, a commercial closed
source application that assigns the normative binary gender categories
\'female\' and \'male\' based on names. The Gender API is usually
implemented in commercial websites in order to optimize customer
experiences (i.e. people identified as female get to see search results
that are considered relevant for their gender category from a marketing
standpoint). The Gender API does not address non-binary gender
categories at all. Due to its closed source, it was also not possible to
reconstruct how the program determined and applied gender categories.

Another issue that arose from trying to categorize authors according to
gender, is that it does not allow for ambiguity or mutability. For
example, what is not addressed when attributing gender categories (on
the basis of the name) is self-narration. Mutability of gender
categories and names as well as gender fluidity is particularly
important when it comes to trans\* and non-binary identities. In the way
gender was attributed to authors in the 1st and 2nd version of the FST
stabilized such categories in ways that risk misrepresentation.

The workshop at DMI led to the realization that we had focused on one
problem for too long; the problem of not being able to search by means
of gender categories. In 1989 Kimberle Crenshaw[^68] stated: \"When
feminism and anti-racism are non intersectional, when feminism does not
contest the logic of racism, when anti-racism refuses to take up
questions of patriarchy they often wind up reinforcing each
other.\"[^69] By taking a rather pragmatic, and linear approach at
first, taking one step at a time we, the FST group, had separated the
topic of gender discrimination and prioritized it over other forms of
discrimination. While it was known quite soon in the process of
conceptualizing and building the FST, it would not be possible to
retrieve information about the author, the process continued as if we
could find out eventually. We also knew the information we retrieved
through Wikidata or the GenderAPI could not be representative of the
gender of authors. Yet, gender categories were applied using these
approaches as \'a first step\'. Rehashing the chain of choices that led
to the technical implementations of the first and second version of the
FST the utilitarian approach to addressing questions of systemic
discrimination is difficult to reason with. I came to wonder if the
desire for a tool to \'function\', to show any result at all, attracted
approaches and technologies such as the Gender API into the process.
These may deliver quick results but are also unethical implementations,
especially considering the subject matter of the FST project.

The 3rd version focused on implementing an intersectional approach by
offering the possibility of selecting different clusters of intersecting
search categories, on the bases of which books were displayed. The
subject categories such as \'race\', \'gender\', \'class\', were
selected by Sven and Annette and were highlighted through specific
color-coding.[^70] Instead of searching for information on the identity
of an author, the new method of categorization was applied based on the
descriptions of books and the descriptions of authors as they were
inserted by the librarians. Thus, the tool catered to searching about
the content of the book rather than based upon the identity of an
author.

An important moment for this version of the FST was the \'Unbound
Library\' work session[^71] organized by Constant in 2020.[^72] The
one-week session took place online and brought together artists,
technologists and researchers who were given a space to exchange and
work together on the subject of digital libraries. The starting point of
the session was that "tools cannot be separated from the knowledge
systems in which they have been imagined and in which they were
made."[^73] For the FST group the session provided another committed
environment for working together and an occasion to introduce two
collaborators to the project. Alice Strete and Angeliki Diakrousi had
met the Read-in collective during a studio visit by students of the
experimental publishing Master XPUB at Piet Zwart Institute.[^74] As
part of their studies, Alice and Angeliki had worked on a collective
pirate library XPPL,[^75] which is described on their project
documentation wiki as \"a space for potential pirate librarianship aimed
at people who are studying the field of media culture.\"[^76] The
various initiatives connected through their shared interest in
rethinking the manner in which libraries and library catalogs can be
made (in)accessible through tools.

![](media/image4.png){width="6.267716535433071in" height="4.0in"}

Unbound Libraries hosted on the open-source video conferencing software
BigBlueButton, 31 May to 5 June 2020.

The context of the work session motivated us to reconnect to the IHLIA
LGBTI Heritage collection, an archive that is located in the public
library of Amsterdam and specializes in literature (and other materials)
about and by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people.
Similar to the participation at DMI, this session also offered a
concrete context for the otherwise fragmented working process; a context
that was facilitated, committed and focused. Yet the atmosphere and
collaborative conditions were entirely different to DMI. There were less
participants. Most people participating were also working in various
self-organized collective constellations. The session was organized
bottom-up. The structure and approach were determined together, through
getting to know the other participants by way of a centralized check-in
meeting each morning in which plans were shared and in which a time
table was composed together. A modest compensation for our participation
was distributed amongst those of us who did not receive any grants for
our participation. The wish to connect to smaller self-organized groups,
as it evolved during DMI, was revitalized. With IHLIA as a potential
collaborator, we hoped for more frequent exchanges with people who
worked with library cataloging on a daily basis and who were
thematically aligned with the issues the project was investigating.

In the first meeting with IHLIA, I tried to explain what we were trying
to do with the FST to the head of collections and to someone who was
knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the cataloging system.
IHLIA provided us with access to the digital catalog of their
collection. This allowed us to start developing a new version of the
tool. We also started looking closer into the *Homosaurus,* a research
tool and controlled vocabulary of lesbian, gay, bi, transgender and
intersex index terms that are applied in IHLIA\'s cataloging system. The
*Homosaurus* can also be found on IHLIA website as a search enhancement
tool that offers broader, narrower or related search terms. The
*Homosaurus* also exists as a text document. We started reading this
vocabulary more closely and became interested in its structuring
mechanisms.

![](media/image2.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="4.694444444444445in"}

Image caption: Looking over the shoulder of the information specialist
Thea in the basement of the Public Library in Amsterdam, I saw her
navigating a software called Cardbox -- with care and attention.
Apparently the Cardbox software only runs on this old Linux desktop
computer. There were no windows in the office. Thea seemed surprised
about the attention. Why would anyone be interested in this old
cataloging system? The Dutch version of the *Homosaurus* was lying next
to her keyboard, printed out and ring bound.

IHLIA office, cataloging
[[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_4451-768x576.jpg]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_4451-768x576.jpg)\]

*Homosaurus* interface on the IHLIA website:
[[https://ihlia.nl/search/index.jsp?q%3Asearch=feminisme&q%3Azoekterm.row1.field3=&rows=10&lang=nl]{.underline}](https://ihlia.nl/search/index.jsp?q:search=feminisme&q:zoekterm.row1.field3=&rows=10&lang=nl)\]

Connections and relations in the *Homosaurus* vocabulary are established
through a long process of labor (on the part of librarians). This
involves careful and critical consideration, in addition to a general
commitment and dedication to this tool. As we learned from the
librarians and staff of IHLIA, it was mostly due to the personal
investment of the by now retired head of collection Jack van der Wel and
his collaboration with the international *Homosaurus* committee that the
English version of the *Homosaurus* was updated frequently and is
functioning well (in comparison to the Dutch version of the *Homosaurus*
or the Vrouwenthesaurus, another similar project implemented by Atria
which is less well maintained.)[^77]

The 3rd tool version of the FST converged IHLIA\'s digital catalog, the
visualization tool as developed with DensityLab at DMI and the
*Homosaurus*. The integration required Angeliki and Alice to restructure
the dataset that we had received from IHLIA.

> Angeliki: Having to find solutions for the axes was an interesting
> process. I was wondering how the code could actually also become part
> of this dialogue. \[\...\] creating \'intersectional\' axes meant that
> we had to bring everything into the same place. Everything had to
> become one script.\
> (excerpt from \'Tool conversation\', 17 February 2021)

![](media/image5.png){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="2.8472222222222223in"}

> Image: Visualization Tool
> [[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screenshot-from-2020-11-02-14-53-56.png]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screenshot-from-2020-11-02-14-53-56.png)

In conversation with IHLIA information specialist Thea Sibbels, Sven and
Annette rethought the X-axes through clustering terms[^78] that derived
from the Dutch *Homosaurus*. Clusters were incorporated into the design
of the interface and were being sketched collectively in an open-source
video calling software called Big Blue Button,[^79] which provided us
with a collaborative drawing option. During the \'Unbound Library\'
workshop, we started sketching on top of a screenshot of the latest
version of the visualization tool and included the feedback and input
from other participants who joined us for the sessions.

We had been thinking of the concept of the \'red link\', as it is also
known from Wikipedia, for a while.[^80] A red link on
Wikipedia/MediaWiki is the highlighting of terms that are \'missing\'
and need to be added. The red link seemed an interesting concept to
consider---an approach that would not only aim at correction or
improvement of the tool, but also point at what can be improved in the
classification system itself. Another inspiration for this approach is
the project Infrastructural Maneuvers,[^81] initiated by the
(self-taught) librarians at the Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut
in Amsterdam, who we had crossed paths with several times during the
toolmaking process. They also joined the Unbound Library sessions.
Infrastructural Maneuvers built a cataloging system that allows catalog
users to propose new search categories to the cataloging system. These
categories can then be reviewed by the librarians who decide whether
they would be implemented as part of the cataloging system.

In the third tool version, the idea of showing what is missing was
translated in relation to search categories (not books). The concept of
\'missing\' was interpreted in different ways. 'Missing' was understood,
not only as \'what is missing but should be there\', but also as \'what
is there but should be revisited or should perhaps not be used any
longer\'.

-   ~~Strike-through~~: Terms were crossed out when they should not be
    > used anymore, for instance because they are discriminatory.[^82]
    > Crossing out indicates that a term is still in usage (for now).
    > For instance, terminology now considered offensive but not
    > considered problematic at the time of authorship may appear in
    > certain historical texts and would be struck through. The
    > strike-through signals a general disapproval of the existence and
    > usage of this term.

-   Red terms show when no book is found in the catalog under a certain
    > category.

-   USE: indicates when another term should be used.[^83]

-   ADD: signals suggestions that were made by the FST group for adding
    > certain terms.

-   (Exclude): The term (exclude) signals terms that the FST group has
    > excluded from the search, for instance to give space to other
    > categories that are less represented in the catalog.

This version of the tool has been shown and tested on different
occasions, usually in the context of workshops during which the tool
could be contextualized, including choices that led to certain functions
as well as malfunctions and shortcomings. The tool requires a login,
which was a condition for IHLIA to let us use their dataset. Every time
we would be workshopping the tool in a new context, we would inform
IHLIA and ask permission, with an explanation of the context and our
motivation for bringing it into the context. We would provide short
updates after workshops about how the tool was used, perceived and
discussed in the respective context. I perceived IHLIA's request for a
login as a gesture of care, rather than a restriction. This request sets
a condition in which tool use requires a certain commitment to
contextualization in order for it to be used. Without explicitly
articulated as a required condition, this tool version has always been
part of a workshop situation and has never \'taken off\' on its own
terms, meaning it was never used independently of the collective
condition in which it was developed.

This version of the FST (in comparison to the other versions) and its
conceptualization and actualization of tool and tool-use was rendered
more complex in various ways. In terms of its interface design, the
x-axes is more dynamic. It can be adjusted according to thematic
clusters of search terms, which were curated on the basis of the Dutch
version of the *Homosaurus*, by members of the FST collective and in
sporadic collaboration with a librarian and information
specialists.[^84] The search for the gender or nationality of an author
has not been further pursued in this tool version. Instead intersections
of themes and categories have been combined. Through color coding,
overlaps of different thematic clusters are made visible. This means
that when a book is part of several thematic clusters, it will be
visible, in addition to others it is a part of. The vocabulary of terms
that was used for the X-axes derives from the context-specific
vocabulary of the library itself---a text document which the librarians
initiated, used and took care of for many years. Interventions by the
FST group as well as interventions from the *Homosaurus* were
differentiated in the tool.

This version of the tool shifted from searching and displaying results
based on author\'s identities as the main organizing principle, to
looking at other factors of categorization such as publishers,
description of books, as well as applying a specialized situated
vocabulary of searched terms. To clarify, the search categorization in
the IHLIA catalog is based on a cataloging system called Cardbox, a
system IHLIA uses, which is linked to the widely used MARC21 and
Worldcat cataloging standards. However, it also exists independent of
them. The *Homosaurus* is an integral part of the Cardbox system and the
librarians use it every time a new item is added to the catalog.

This version of the FST still applied search categories in an
accumulative way. Examples of search categories coming from the
*Homosaurus* were \'racisme\', \'discriminatie\', \'homofobie\',
\'sexuele_minderheden\', \'genderidentiteit\', \'transfobie\',
\'klassisme\', \'validisme\'. Adding and combining categories and
creating clusters of categories remains questionable. If a book
description contains terms such as race, gender or social class it
cannot be determined with certainty how these terms are used in the
respective book. However, by sustaining a closer connection to the
context within which the tool is developed and by implementing a
categorization system based on vocabularies and tools developed within a
particular context, this tool version seems to have followed a situated
trajectory and creates separations and intersections in less crude ways
than previous versions.

Conclusion: Slow collective processing

In this chapter, I discussed a distributed process of collectively
imagining and building tools -- more specifically different tool
versions that are referred to as \'Feminist Search Tools\'.

The FST project moved through and fed off short-lived formats for
working together across different contexts. This included workshops
(some of which self-organized and some were organized by like-minded
initiatives), summer schools and events by universities, art academies,
cultural institutions and meetings with librarians and archivists. Such
contexts became significant for the tool-building process. Workshops,
meetups and recorded conversations energized the collective tool
imagining and making process and contributed to its continuation as well
as occasional postponements.

In approaching the question of how the meaning and purpose of a tool is
articulated through a collective process, the workshop-based approach to
collective work needs to be taken into account. It signifies the manner
in which fragmented, unconcluded definitions of the meaning and
functioning of the 'tool' are also related to the fragmentation of its
process of development. The distributed character of collective
tool-building and tool-imagining also carries the potential to enter
into and combine various contexts. The manner in which purpose and
meaning are continuously rearticulated contributes to the possibility of
context-specific and relational understandings, in addition to
articulations of tools-in-the-making.

The answer to the question, 'what is the FST for?' will most certainly
vary depending on who poses and who is asked the question. The
distributed process of collective toolmaking also distributed the task
of determining and articulating criteria for usefulness of the
tool-in-the-making across different people, contexts, and timelines.
This makes it difficult to sustain a generalized conception of what the
tool may be for. Yet, I would argue there is also a common ground, which
is a refusal of \'tool-routines\' (when tools become unquestionable).
The process of continuous tool interrogation, collectively imagining
tools *differently*, as well as actually altering them, became inherent
to the collaborative processes adopted by the FST group; how we worked
together and established relationships with the tools-in-the-making.
Thus, to some extent, the so-called \'brokenness\' (the moment in which
a tool becomes noticeable) of the FST tool became its purpose.

The pressure to produce something that can be considered \'functioning\'
(a tool-in-action) combined with rushed processes can result in
approaches and technologies that may deliver quick results but may also
contradict values and ethics that evolve as part of the longer
trajectory of collective toolmaking. Yet, notions such as 1st version\'
are a way to articulate and uphold their unresolvedness and, at the same
time, lay the path for continuation, for future (unresolved) versions.
On their own, such unresolved tools miss the articulation work necessary
to turn them into meaningful discursive objects. However, by drawing
boundaries that are responsive to specific contexts and conditions (i.e.
including context-specific vocabularies, limiting full access through a
login or activating the tool within workshop contexts), collective
tool-building can incite critical conversations, in addition to the
questionability and mutability of the 'tool'.

One of the challenges of the FST project has been to accommodate various
levels of involvement, states of precarity and the different timelines
of the collaborators. As a collective toolmaking project, the FST
required articulations and approaches that resist linearity and
progress-oriented understandings of a design process. With reference to
Barad, what is needed in such a process \"is a method attuned to its
entanglements.\"[^85] Collectively imagined and built tools are
relational things and time is needed to get used to them. The same
applies to the systems and contexts they evolve within and interact
with, which also require attunement. These environments seem to render
separations between tasks, roles, subjects and approaches, bringing
about their own vocabularies and social-technical conducts. Such
conditions have implications for the tool-building process and those who
are involved in it. Collective tool-building processes are receptive to
influences that come with the contexts they move through.

This chapter discussed the manner in which a tool can \'emerge\' from
particular configurations of short-term as well as longer-lasting
collectives, socio-technical configurations. The \'inefficiency\' of the
process constituted the way relationships to the tool and those involved
with it developed. Such processes may confront expectations of a
productive and rewarding process as they resist linearity and
progress-oriented understandings of a design or development process.
Yet, I argue it is precisely through the slowness of process that the
tool can be questioned conceptually, technically, ethically and not
necessarily conclusively. Observations and issues that emerge can be
repeated and rehearsed across different contexts and at an inclusive
pace, regardless of whether participants are able to attend each
workshop and meeting.

Moments of demonstrating collective tool-in-the-making, explaining
intentions and negotiating terms of publishing are important moments in
which to reflect on the context and imagine the various ways in which
the tool could live on. These meetings, workshops, presentations and
demonstrations create a culture in which the tool is not presumed as an
inevitable outcome. By repeatedly explaining and demonstrating the tool,
by reconstructing its timeline, imagining its future use and hearing
others explain it, the tool develops relationships in
other-than-utilitarian ways. Narrating such a tool in the context of
more and less public moments, revisiting the same issues over and over
again is a generative, inventive process in and of itself---sometimes a
rehearsal, sometimes a ritual, sometimes a practice.

The collective slow processing of potential meaning and functioning of
the tool in these moments, occurred with the digital interface(s) as a
central reference point. We gave so-called \'tool tours\'. However,
throughout its various phases and contexts, the FST has also produced a
series of non-tool artifacts that took center stage at certain moments
as well: stickers and bookmarks, paper prototypes, wooden book dummies,
recordings and transcriptions of conversations. Reintroducing the tool
over and over again meant that every time our perception of the tool had
a slightly different emphasis. In addition, our interpersonal
relationships emerged and changed through these different
\'tool-encounters\'.

I argue that this consciously \'inefficient\' approach to toolmaking is
indicative of the manner in which collective toolmaking practices
attempt to, and sometimes succeed in upholding critical, ethical, and
sustainable ways of working and being together. Such an approach is
certainly not suitable for any context. It will not produce search tools
that take the place of existing library search engines. However, such
processes bring about *other* formats, methods and articulations for
tool-relationships that are contextual and self-critical, with the
purpose of readjusting general perceptions of what is inevitable and
what is useful in conceptualizing and actualizing tools.

![](media/image10.png){width="6.236111111111111in"
height="6.222222222222222in"}

Workshop: Repository of Feminist Search Strategies, 08.02.2020

[[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies\\]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies%5C)

![](media/image7.jpg){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="4.430555555555555in"}![](media/image8.jpg){width="6.069444444444445in"
height="8.083333333333334in"}

Images: Paper prototyping workshop, H&D Studio, (2019)
[[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/599cf406-ffb0-4dab-a7b9-59a962a01731.jpg]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/599cf406-ffb0-4dab-a7b9-59a962a01731.jpg)\
[[https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/paper-proto-02.jpg]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/paper-proto-02.jpg)

https://feministsearchtools.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Repository-of-Feminist-Search-Strategies_2.pn

![](media/image9.png){width="6.267716535433071in"
height="3.6944444444444446in"}

Feminist Search Meet-up #2: 2021, with a presentation by guests:
Infrastructural Manoeuvres, Rietveld and Sandberg Library Amsterdam

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Relevant Links:

https://feministsearchtools.nl/

https://feministsearchtool.nl/

https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-viz-tool

https://fst.hackersanddesigners.nl/

https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-amz-shadow-search

GNU Bulletin, Volume 1, No. 1, 1986,
[[https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt]{.underline}](https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt)

Homosaurus IHLIA:
[[https://www.ihlia.nl/van-schoenendoos-tot-homosaurus/]{.underline}](https://www.ihlia.nl/van-schoenendoos-tot-homosaurus/)

Women's Thesaurus Atria:
https://institute-genderequality.org/library-archive/collection/thesaurus/5710/

https://womensbios.lib.virginia.edu/about.html

[[https://feministinternet.com/]{.underline}](https://feministinternet.com/)

[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre]{.underline}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre)
(Kimberlé Crenshaw - On Intersectionality - keynote, 2016)

\'Teaching the radical syllabus\' in collaboration with Lucie Kolb and
Eva Weinmeyr
https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant-in-Teaching-the-Radical-Catalogue-Een-syllabus.html

\"Feminist Search Tools. "Intersectional Search: addressing own
complicities"

https://vimeo.com/660599698?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=45925538

Feminist Search Tools Meetup, 2021
https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/H%26D_Meetup_2%3A_Feminist_Search_Tools

\"Intersectional Search in Queer and Trans Archives\", IHLIA Amsterdam
\"https://ihlia.nl/events/intersectional-search-in-queer-and-trans-archives/

Feminist Search API Workshop
https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Feminist_Search_API_Workshop

Unbound Library Worksession organized by Constant in 2020
https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html

\'Repository of Feminist Search Strategies\', 2020
https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies

https://read-in.info/

https://read-in.info/bookshelf-research/

https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/no_innocent-reading_red.jpg

https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Unlearning-My-Library-Forum1-Copyright-Coco-Duivenvoorde-38-768x512.jpg

H&D Meetup \"Scraping, counting and sorting\", 2015
https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting\"

http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019

http://densitydesign.org/2014/05/an-interview-with-richard-rogers-repurposing-the-web-for-social-and-cultural-research/

http://densitydesign.org/

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase

https://mappingslavery.nl/educatie/publicaties/

https://atria.nl/bibliotheek-archief/collectie/thesaurus/459/

https://www.theblackarchives.nl/

https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/

https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en

[[https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL]{.underline}](https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL)

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL_Documentation

http://wiki.evaweinmayr.com/index.php/Project_2\_\*\_Library_of_Inclusions_and_Omissions

[^1]: Christopher Kelty, *Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free
    Software* (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008): xi.

[^2]: \'Free Software\' was defined and written by Richard Stallment and
    published by the Free Software Foundation. \"The Free Software
    Foundation is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying,
    redistribution, understanding and modification of software. The word
    \"free\" in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom.
    First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your
    neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. Second, the
    freedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of
    it controlling you; for this, the source code must be made available
    to you.\"

    *GNU Bulletin* 1, no. 1, (1986),
    [[https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt]{.underline}](https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^3]: In his dissertation \"Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application
    of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural
    Production\" Aymeric Mansoux wrote about the ways in which
    principles of free and open-source have been interpreted and
    actualized in free and open-source software on art and culture since
    the late nineties.

    Aymeric Mansoux, \"Sandbox Culture: A Study of the Application of
    Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural
    Production\" (PhD diss., Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths,
    University of London, 2017).

[^4]: Documentation of the Ethercalc instance hosted by H&D:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Ethercalc]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Ethercalc),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^5]: Documentation of the Etherpad instance hosted by H&D:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Etherpad]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/H%26D_Etherpad),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^6]: ChattyPub documentation can be found at:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Chattypub]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Chattypub)
    [[https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/]{.underline}](https://chatty-pub.hackersanddesigners.nl/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^7]: Momentary Zine documentation can be found at:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Momentary_Zine]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Momentary_Zine),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^8]: Documentation on the Heart-beat-to-print tool can be found at:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Heartbeat-to-print]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools/p/Heartbeat-to-print),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^9]: Website of Open Source Publishing:
    [[http://osp.kitchen/]{.underline}](http://osp.kitchen/), last
    accessed March 2022.

[^10]: Website of Constant Association for Art and Media
    [[https://constantvzw.org/site/]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^11]: Website of Varia -- Center of Everyday Technology:
    [[https://varia.zone/]{.underline}](https://varia.zone/), last
    accessed March 2022.

[^12]: Website of fanfare:
    [[https://fanfarefanfare.nl/]{.underline}](https://fanfarefanfare.nl/)
    [[http://fanfareinc.world/colophon]{.underline}](http://fanfareinc.world/colophon),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^13]: Website of Eva Weinmayr:
    [[http://evaweinmayr.com/work-categories/publishing/]{.underline}](http://evaweinmayr.com/work-categories/publishing/)
    [[http://andpublishing.org/]{.underline}](http://andpublishing.org/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^14]: Lecture and workshop by Clara Balaguer about \'\'Publishing as
    Bloodletting,\'\'
    [[https://www.kabk.nl/agenda/studium-generale-lecture-clara-balaguer]{.underline}](https://www.kabk.nl/agenda/studium-generale-lecture-clara-balaguer)
    [[https://pub.sandberg.nl/sessions/pub-e-pub-4-session-3-publishing-as-bloodletting-w-clara-balaguer]{.underline}](https://pub.sandberg.nl/sessions/pub-e-pub-4-session-3-publishing-as-bloodletting-w-clara-balaguer).\
    Example of Amy Suo Wu\'s \'embodied publishing\' practice:
    \"garments \[that\] are experiments in embodied publishing, spectral
    publishing, navel expanding, and ghostwriting\"
    [[https://amysuowu.net/content/dear-ursula]{.underline}](https://amysuowu.net/content/dear-ursula)
    [[https://amysuowu.net/content/shapeshifty-0]{.underline}](https://amysuowu.net/content/shapeshifty-0),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^15]: Website of the student initiative of the Sandberg Instituut, PUB
    [[https://pub.sandberg.nl/]{.underline}](https://pub.sandberg.nl/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^16]: Website of the Piet Zwart Experimental Publishing Master:
    [[https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/]{.underline}](https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^17]: Hybrid Publishing Toolkit:
    [[https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/from-print-to-ebooks-a-hybrid-publishing-toolkit-for-the-arts/]{.underline}](https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/from-print-to-ebooks-a-hybrid-publishing-toolkit-for-the-arts/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^18]: Graham Harman, *Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of
    objects* (Chicago: Open Court, 2002): 39.

[^19]: ibid. 36.

[^20]: Documentation of the *Temporary Riparian Zone* workshop:
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020/p/Temporary_Riparian_Zone]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2020/p/Temporary_Riparian_Zone),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^21]: Sara Ahmed, *What\'s the use? On the uses of use* (Durham: Duke
    University Press, 2019): 12.

[^22]: Graham Harman, *Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of
    objects* (Chicago: Open Court, 2002): 45.

[^23]: Emily Drabinski, \"Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the
    Politics of Correction,\" *The Library Quarterly: Information,
    Community, Policy* 83, no. 2 (April 2013): 94-111.\
    Hope Ohlson, \"Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing
    Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains,\" *LIBRARY
    TRENDS* 47, no. 2, (Fall 1998): 253-254.

[^24]: Website of the Read-in collective:
    [[https://read-in.info/]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/), last
    accessed March 2022.

[^25]: Some examples of my graphic design work for Read-in:
    [[https://read-in.info/example-1/]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/example-1/)

    [[https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/no_innocent-reading_red.jpg]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/no_innocent-reading_red.jpg)\
    [[https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Unlearning-My-Library-Forum1-Copyright-Coco-Duivenvoorde-38-768x512.jpg]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Unlearning-My-Library-Forum1-Copyright-Coco-Duivenvoorde-38-768x512.jpg),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^26]: *Bookshelf Research* is a project initiated by Read-in:
    [[https://read-in.info/bookshelf-research/]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf-research/),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^27]: Casco Art Institute Working for the Commons
    [[https://casco.art/]{.underline}](https://casco.art/)

[^28]: H&D Meetup \"Scraping, counting and sorting\", 2015
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^29]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and
    the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
    University Press, 2007).

[^30]: ibid.

[^31]: ibid.

[^32]: Selection of different contexts in which the FST has been
    presented:\
    \'Teaching the radical syllabus\' in collaboration with Lucie Kolb
    and Eva Weinmeyr
    [[https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant-in-Teaching-the-Radical-Catalogue-Een-syllabus.html]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant-in-Teaching-the-Radical-Catalogue-Een-syllabus.html),
    last accessed May 2022.\
    \"Feminist Search Tools. "Intersectional Search: addressing own
    complicities"\
    [[https://vimeo.com/660599698?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=45925538]{.underline}](https://vimeo.com/660599698?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=45925538),
    last accessed May 2022.\
    Feminist Search Tools Meetup, 2021
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/H%26D_Meetup_2%3A_Feminist_Search_Tools]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/H%26D_Meetup_2%3A_Feminist_Search_Tools),
    last accessed May 2022.

    \'Feminist Search Tools talk and mini workshop with Alice Strete,
    Sven Engels and Anja Groten\', at \'Post-digital archiving and
    publishing\', organized by Maria van der Togt, Sandberg Instituut,
    2020

    \"Intersectional Search in Queer and Trans Archives\", IHLIA
    Amsterdam
    [\"<https://ihlia.nl/events/intersectional-search-in-queer-and-trans-archives/>]{.underline},
    last accessed May 2022.\
    Feminist Search API Workshop
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Feminist_Search_API_Worksho]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Feminist_Search_API_Workshop)p,
    last accessed May 2022.\
    Unbound Library Worksession organized by Constant in 2020
    [[https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html),
    last accessed May 2022.

    \'Repository of Feminist Search Strategies\', 2020
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Events/p/Workshop%3A_Repository_of_Feminist_Search_Strategies),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^33]: \'Scraping\' refers to Web scraping, or web data extraction and
    is used for extracting data from websites. l

[^34]: The title of the meetup was \"Scraping, counting and sorting\"
    [[https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting]{.underline}](https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Activities/p/Scraping%2C_counting_and_sorting),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^35]: Sara Ahmed, *What\'s the use? On the uses of use* (Durham: Duke
    University Press, 2019).

[^36]: Bruno Latour, \"A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following
    Daedalus\'s Labyrinth.\" In: *Pandora\'s hope: essays on the reality
    of science studies* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
    Press, 1999): 174-215.

[^37]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and
    the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
    University Press, 2007): 100.

[^38]: ibid. 107.

[^39]: ibid. 199.

[^40]: Website of the 1st version of the FST:
    [[https://feministsearchtool.nl/]{.underline}](https://feministsearchtool.nl/),
    last accessed February 2022.

[^41]: \"Zero Footprint Campus was an art program in the public area of
    the Utrecht Science Park, the area formerly known as De Uithof in
    Utrecht. Twelve artists selected from the Netherlands and abroad
    have been commissioned to conduct a one-year artistic study into the
    possibilities and impossibilities of Zero Footprint Campus.\"

    [[http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/participants/read-in/),
    last accessed March 2022.\
    \"The initiative of the Department of Search was taken by the
    Aardschap Foundation and the municipality of Utrecht in
    collaboration with the Utrecht Science Park Foundation and
    University Utrecht.\"

    [[http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^42]: [[http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/]{.underline}](http://www.zerofootprintcampus.nl/en/about-zero-footprint-campus/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^43]: The search takes place specifically within works published in the
    period of 2006 till 2016\
    This version of the Feminist Search Tool provides a possibility to
    query an xml file containing a selection of 355000 records that were
    added to the Utrecht University Library in the period of 2006-2016.\
    The selection of fields was composed mostly by Sven Engels in
    collaboration with information specialists from the UU library and
    in conversation with other members of the FST project about the
    relevance of the fields for our inquiry. The selection consisted of
    the MARC21 fields:\
    Predominant language, Original language, Place of publication,
    Country of Publishing, Publisher, Date of publication (part 1), Date
    of publication (part 2), Relator term

    'Gender' is not an MARC21 field but was added to the database by
    trying to find the author on wikidata and using the "gender API" as
    a fallback if there was no entry on wikidata
    (https://gender-api.com/de?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ga3&gclid=CjwKCAjw36DpBRAYEiwAmVVDMCdx8cQDbNKIyoR0p_nJjxS3JwVd26ac2_Lklob-VeAboDtiZov2yBoCEk0QAvD_BwE)

[^44]: MARC21 (abbreviation for Machine-Readable Cataloging) is an
    international standard administered by the Library of Congress; it
    is a set of digital formats used to describe items that are
    cataloged.

[^45]: René König and Miriam Rasch, \"Reflect and Act! Introduction to
    the Society of the Query Reader,\" *Society of the Query Reader*.
    Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014): 14.

[^46]: Rosie (Richard) Graham, \"A 'History' of Search Engines: Mapping
    Technologies of Memory, Learning and Discovery,\" *Society of the
    Query Reader*, edited by René König and Miriam Rasch (Amsterdam:
    Institute of Network Cultures, 2014): 107.

[^47]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*
    (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 60.

[^48]: Lev Manovich, *The language of new media* (Cambridge,
    Massachusetts, London, England: MIT Press, 2001).

[^49]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*
    (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 66.

[^50]: ibid. 62.

[^51]: Wiki of the Digital Methods Summer School of 2019:
    [[https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019]{.underline}](https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2019),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^52]: Interview with Richard Rogers published on the website of the
    DensityLab:
    [[http://densitydesign.org/2014/05/an-interview-with-richard-rogers-repurposing-the-web-for-social-and-cultural-research/]{.underline}](http://densitydesign.org/2014/05/an-interview-with-richard-rogers-repurposing-the-web-for-social-and-cultural-research/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^53]: Website of DensityLab:
    [[http://densitydesign.org/]{.underline}](http://densitydesign.org/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^54]: Tools documented on the DMI Wiki:
    [[https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase]{.underline}](https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^55]: Richard Rogers, \"Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design\"

    *The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data*., edited by
    Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
    Press 2017): 75-94.

[^56]: We queried the feminist search tool (feministsearchtool.nl) for
    different terms and did some initial comparisons for publishers and
    the gender of authors. For a dataset to visualize, we queried the
    tool with the search string \[gender OR race OR intersectionality OR
    transgender OR \"social class\"\]. In order to get data on each
    individual record in the query results, this was done through the
    Solr search interface that is part of the feminist search tool with
    the following URL:
    https://feministsearchtool.nl/solr?q=gender%20OR%20race%20OR%20intersectionality%20OR%20
    transgender%20OR%20%22social%20class%22&rows=3000&fl=gender_s%20AND%20a_title_stat
    ement_t%20AND%20b_title_statement_t%20AND%20title_statement_t%20AND%20imprint_s

    The results were extracted into a json file and each record was
    annotated with the search terms that occur in the record (gender,
    race, intersectionality, transgender, social class).

    Using the javascript library D3.js, the records were color-coded by
    search terms and spatialized according to gender (horizontal) and
    publisher (vertical).

[^57]: Documentation of the visualization tool:
    [[https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-viz-tool]{.underline}](https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-viz-tool)
    in collaboration with DMI and Density Lab. Last accessed March 2022.

[^58]: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, *Programmed visions: software and memory*
    (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2011): 59.

[^59]: Donna Haraway, \"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
    Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,\" *Feminist
    Studies*, 14, no. 3. (Autumn, 1988): 575-599.

[^60]: ibid.

[^61]: The \"Feminist Search Assistan\" was a collaboration with Emile
    den Tex, at Digital Methods Summer School 2019.
    [[https://fst.hackersanddesigners.nl/]{.underline}](https://fst.hackersanddesigners.nl/)

    [[https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-amz-shadow-search]{.underline}](https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/fst-amz-shadow-search),
    last accessed May 2022.

[^62]: There were many more moments such as these, moments that were
    less distinct and seeped through different timelines, tool versions
    and group constellations. For clarity\'s sake, I decided to make
    this point by focusing on this specific tool version.

[^63]: Website of Mapping Slavery:
    [[https://mappingslavery.nl/educatie/publicaties/]{.underline}](https://mappingslavery.nl/educatie/publicaties/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^64]: Website of The Black Archives:
    [[https://www.theblackarchives.nl/]{.underline}](https://www.theblackarchives.nl/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^65]: Vrouwenthesaurus of Atria Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en
    Vrouwengeschiedenis
    [[https://atria.nl/bibliotheek-archief/collectie/thesaurus/459]{.underline}](https://atria.nl/bibliotheek-archief/collectie/thesaurus/459/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^66]: Bookshelf Trolleys:
    [[https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/),
    last accessed March 2022.
    [[https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/teppich-install_uithof1.jpg]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/teppich-install_uithof1.jpg),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^67]: \"Bookshelf Research\":
    [[https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/]{.underline}](https://read-in.info/bookshelf_research-2/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^68]: Kimberle Crenshaw, \"Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
    Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,
    Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.\" *University of Chicago
    Legal Forum* 1, no. 8 (1989).

[^69]: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre]{.underline}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&ab_channel=SouthbankCentre)
    Kimberlé Crenshaw, \"On Intersectionality\" keynote, 2016.

[^70]: Green: gender, Light-green: race, Blue: Social class, Purple: ?,
    Light Yellow: Social class, race, Light purple: Transgender, Pink:
    Intersectionality, Orange: gender, race

[^71]: \"Constant organises a worksession every six months. They
    function as temporary research labs, collective working environments
    where different types of expertise come into contact with each
    other. Worksessions are intensive otherwise-disciplined situations
    to which artists, software developers, theorists, activists and
    others contribute. During worksessions we develop ideas and
    prototypes that in the long-term lead to publications, projects and
    new proposals.\"
    [[https://constantvzw.org/site/Unbound-Libraries-Worksession.html?lang=en]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/Unbound-Libraries-Worksession.html?lang=en),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^72]: Information on the worksession \"Unbound Libraries\"
    [[https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^73]: [[https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en]{.underline}](https://constantvzw.org/site/-Unbound-Libraries,224-.html?lang=en)
    Cited:\
    Martha Nell Smith, \"Frozen Social Relations and Time for a Thaw:
    Visibility, Exclusions, and Considerations for Postcolonial Digital
    Archives.\" *Journal of Victorian Culture,* 19, no. 3 (July 2014):
    403-410. Last accessed March 2022.

[^74]: Wiki of the experimental publishing Master XPUB at Piet Zwart
    Institute:
    [[https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/wiki/]{.underline}](https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/wiki/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^75]: Student project \'XPPL,\'-- a collective pirate library
    [[https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL]{.underline}](https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/XPPL)
    [[https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL_Documentation]{.underline}](https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL_Documentation),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^76]: Documentation of \'XPPL,\'
    [[https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL]{.underline}](https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/XPPL),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^77]: In October 2018 we introduced the Feminist Search Tools project
    to Atria Kennisinstituut voor Emancipatie en Vrouwengeschiedenis and
    IHLIA LGBTI Heritage collection. There were short presentations of
    the Women\'s Thesaurus by the initiators of the Women\'s Thesaurus
    (Maria van der Sommen & Gusta Drenthe) and the Homosaurus by the
    initiator, current board member of the *Homosaurus* and head of
    collection in 2018 of IHLIA (Jack van der Wel). The session brought
    these different projects into dialogue with each other and reflected
    on the first prototype of FST. Furthermore, the roundtable aimed to
    gain deeper insights into the design and drafting process of the
    Women\'s Thesaurus (Atria) and the *Homosaurus* (IHLIA) as well as
    aligned content to see how the latter could inform the new iteration
    of FST. For Atria and IHLIA, their distinct thesauri functioned as a
    form of self-empowerment by not trusting the mainstream method of
    searching and offering additional tools -- namely thesauri -- to the
    communities or people that use their archives. This has been an
    important entry point for our research in digital library catalogs.\
    Audio fragments of the roundtable are made available on the
    project's website of the new iteration:
    https://feministsearchtools.nl/. Furthermore, the event was the
    starting point for our collaboration with IHLIA LGBTI Heritage
    Collection and more in-depth conversations about the cataloging
    system used for their collection, CardBox and the Homosaurus.

[^78]: The clusters are: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability and
    Structural Oppression and each contained terms that were selected by
    Sven and Annette from the Homosaurus, in conversation with Thea
    Sibbels.

[^79]: Hosted by Constant\'s Big Blue Button instance.

[^80]: \"A red link, like this example, signifies that the linked-to
    page does not exist---it either never existed, or previously existed
    but has been deleted. It is useful while editing articles to add a
    red link to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an
    article should be created for the topic because the subject is
    notable and verifiable. Red links help Wikipedia grow. The creation
    of red links prevents new pages from being orphaned from the start.
    Good red links help Wikipedia---they encourage new contributors in
    useful directions, and remind us that Wikipedia is far from
    finished.\"
    [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link]{.underline}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^81]: Development website of \'Infrastructural Maneuvers\':
    [[https://jekyll.all-syste.ms/]{.underline}](https://jekyll.all-syste.ms/),
    last accessed March 2022.

[^82]: An example of that is the term ~~blanken~~, which is a Dutch term
    that refers to white people as superior.

[^83]: For example \'witte\' instead of ~~\'blanken\'~~

[^84]: The clusters were curated by Sven Engels and Annette Krauss and
    were called: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability, Structural
    Oppression. Repeated here. Already mentioned in a previous footnote.

[^85]: Karen Barad, *Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and
    the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning* (Durhan, London: Duke
    University Press, 2007): 29.