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What does it mean to imagine beyond existing infrastructure? While there are certain systems we can easily identify as targets to dismantle, whether it's the carceral state or the museum space, there are others that still feel valuable or worthwhile to preserve, like the post office or the library. While these systems are not without flaws, there are elements that many of us have identified as worthwhile and meaningful, making them an ideal site for re-imagining.

Growing up, my mom would drop me off at the library for hours to just roam around. The library became a babysitter. I would get on the computer and start messing around with the games on there, or I would gather every animal book I can find and lay them all open on the floor, a spontaneous zoo before my eyes. As I got older, I would slowly gravitate towards different sections of the library, a deep dive into comics, a detour into the world of art history, a few trips to different countries via travel guides. Sometimes I would just pick a random number on the Dewey Decimal System, and see what awaits me, philosophy textbooks, self-help books, antique catalogs.

The worlds that the library provided became gateways into the hobbies, passions, and politics that I have now—the value of the library is obvious. But what does it mean when the state holds the keys to these worlds? Even in an ideal situation where we are not worried about funding getting cut, or censorship being mandated by the government, the reality of a state-supported project is still one that is often bogged down by the bureaucracy of the systems its beholden to.

What might it mean to build our own library, not necessarily as a replacement for existing libraries, but as an alternative, as a multitude of alternatives? When we build our own libraries, we get to build them in ways that meet the hyperlocal needs and wants of our communities. They can be the little free libraries where people can just drop off or take a book. Or it can be someone's highly curated collection of books on fish. Or someone's eclectic selection of underground music zines. A library is when you loan a book to a friend and ask them to scribble notes in them—or maybe a library is when you ask them to make sure to treat the book like it's your baby.

And so suddenly, the idea of building this alternative infrastructure, this system that previously seemed daunting to manage and felt like it required the facilitation of the state, is now something that many of us are already doing, in big and small ways. The beauty of the libraries that we are already putting into practice is that we're already doing it, that it is already embedded in the ways in which we socialize and build community. The task is not to make anew but to give language to what we are already doing, to iterate and improve upon it, and to provide a little structure to allow the ways we are building to flourish and connect.

So from there, we can build our own inter-library loaning system. We can start to entangle our different collection of books. We can have a bookshelf at our local cafe that interacts with someone's personal collection. And then that can be mixed in with books that an event series curates, or an art collective maintains. This challenges the idea that an institution has to be in place to build out a structure or system with a certain level of complexity and nuance. Or that said structure has to be centralized. Instead, it can be a mishmash of different scopes and rules, various individuals and communities coming together. Some libraries might only be open on a full moon, others might be particular about which books they are loaning out. This negotiation might require building out a few rules, but that too is part of the process. In fact, that is actually one of the most valuable things that come from building alternative infrastructure. Not only are we enriched by the diversity of tactics that is only possible when a multitude of minds are co-creating a system together, but it also means that there are many hands that are directly building and maintaining this system. The knowledge and work is shared, everyone is engaged in the process of figuring out what they would like to see in a library, and what it would take to maintain it.

There will be friction and setbacks, books will get lost, and there will be disagreements on how much structure is too much. Do we maintain a database of books? Do we create physical check-out cards? Do we have volunteers distribute books that have been spread to different parts of the city? As we chart out what an inter-library loaning system looks like, we're also digging into the real work of what does labor and compensation look like, examining the lines of personal and collective property, and more! It might bring up tough questions like, is it praxis to let someone dog ear bookmark my book? But these are also the questions that we need to work through as a community to get to answers on how do we share resources equitably, how do we build bridges between communities that currently exist in disparate spaces?

Just as browsing the library as a kid laid the foundation for future passions, the work we do figuring out how we share books are the seeds for how a forest of shared resources can look. The work we do connecting different types of libraries together are the groundwork for building coalition. By manifesting a library of entanglements, we are giving shape to our interconnected realities to create the entangled futures we envision. And that is something worth checking out.