Spunk Library

Infobox Website
name = Spunk Library



caption =
url = http://www.spunk.org/
commercial =
type = Archive
language =
registration =
owner = Spunk Collective
author = Ian Heavens, Chuck Munson
launch date = 1992
current status =
revenue =
slogan = Anarchy, anarchist and alternative materialsThe Spunk Library (also known as Spunk Press) is an anarchist Internet archive. The name "spunk" was chosen for the term's meaning in Swedish ("anything we want it to mean"), English ("courage or spirit"), and Australian ("an attractive person"), summarized by the website as "nondescript, energetic, courageous and attractive". [cite web
url=http://www.spunk.org/name.html
title=Spunk Library - the name
publisher=www.spunk.org
accessdate=2008-04-25]

According to anarchist librarian Chuck Munson, the library was began as Spunk Press in 1992." [http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2008spain-interviews-chuck Alasbarricadas interviews Infoshop founder, Chuck Munson] ", Infoshop.org, 2008-02-20.] The founding contributors – Ian Heavens, Jack Jansen and "Practical Anarchy" editors Munson and Mikael Cardell –originally met via online fora, namely Jansen's Anarchy Discussion email list. The Library was run by an editorial collective during the 1990s. [cite web
url=http://www.spunk.org/manifest.html
title=Spunk Library - Manifesto
publisher=www.spunk.org
accessdate=2008-04-25] It is not intended to replace print publishing, but rather serves a shop window promoting anarchist book publishers, newspapers and journals.cite book |last=Atton |first=Chris |title=Alternative Media |publisher=Sage |location=Thousand Oaks |year=2002 |isbn=0761967710 ]

By 1995, it was already the largest anarchist archive of published material catalogued on computer networks, though it faced a media assault accusing it of collaborating with terrorists such as the Red Army Faction, of providing instructions for bombmaking and of co-ordinating the “disruption of schools, looting of shops and attacks on multinational firms.” [cite journal
url=http://www.greenleft.org.au/1995/190/11856
title='Netwars': Politics and the Internet
journal=Green Left
accessdate=2008-04-25
date=1995-06-07
last=Wehling
first=Jason] [cite journal |last=Owens |first=Lynn |coauthors=L. Kendall Palmer |year=2003 |month=December |title=Making the News: Anarchist Counter-Public Relations on the World Wide Web |journal=Critical Studies in Media Communication |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=335 - 361 |doi=10.1080/0739318032000142007 |accessdate=2008-04-25 |quote=] The Library is largely inactive, with the mainpage last being updated in March 2002. [cite web
url=http://www.spunk.org/
title=Spunk Library - Anarchy, anarchist, and alternative materials
publisher=www.spunk.org
accessdate=2008-04-27
last=
first=]

The "Rough Guide to the Internet" described the Library as being "organized neatly and with reassuring authority". Chris Atton, writing in "Alternative Media" (2002) hailed the site as an "advertisement for socially responsible anarchism with a significant intellectual pedigree", remarking that " [i] n a world where anarchism is still largely derided or maligned by the mass media, that is an important function" and drawing a comparison to Infoshop.org.

References

See also

* Alternative Media Project
*Anarchy Archives, an online research center on the history and theory of anarchism founded in 1995
*List of anarchist periodicals
*Shawn P. Wilbur, a member of the Spunk collective during the 1990s

External links

* [http://www.spunk.org/ Spunk.org]