The Illicit Information Community: Information-Practical Reflections on the Shadow Library AAARG

"Abstract: This paper presents a netnographic analysis of information needs and practices related to the shadow library AAARG. AAARG is regarded as a portal and community for the sharing and distribution of academic and artistic texts, books and articles. The portal in question is defined as an actor within the guerrilla open access movement, a radical node within the larger open access movement, which is analysed as a cultural field using the theoretical framework of Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. AAARG is thereafter discussed in an information-practical sense with regards to social interaction between individual users’ needs as well as discursive and constructional origins of such needs. These needs and the practices they create are then examined with regards to the order that the platform itself creates, tied to the cultural field which it is a part of. The conclusion is that alternative knowledge organizational platforms such as AAARG have had and will continue to have a big influence on the discussion of today’s open access models, since they clearly fill a certain demand. The discrepancy between such initiatives and institutional open access activities will therefore need further analysis in a library and information scientific context."