UbuWeb

A very exciting technology-related thing in the world of libraries is the ever growing world of digital libraries. UbuWeb is an extensive online digital library collection of avant-garde material featuring visual, concrete and sound poetry in addition to film and sound art mp3 files. UbuWeb was founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in response to what he considered a “marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material.” (found in UbuWeb’s manifesto) UbuWeb provides access to out-of-print avant-garde material as well as representing the work of contemporaries through the digitization of text, image, film, and sound. UbuWeb is completely independent from any institution and therefore free from any academic bureaucracy. The web space is provided by donors with an excess of bandwidth willing to contribute to the building of this digital collection. Other supporters include WFMU, PennSound, Artmob, Greylodge, Art Torrents, Electra, and Roulette. Below is an excerpt from the “About UbuWeb” section of the website:
Essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice utopian politics. Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome fabrication considerations, information can literally “be free” on UbuWeb, we give it away and have been doing so since 1996…we’ve gotten queries from Ph.D. candidates seeking information to third graders researching a paper on concrete poetry.