The Spunk Library (also known as Spunk Press) was an anarchist Internet archive. The name "spunk" was chosen for the term's meaning in

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

("anything we want it to mean"),

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

("courage or spirit"), and

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

("an attractive person"), summarized by the website as "nondescript, energetic, courageous and attractive". According to anarchist

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...

Chuck Munson, the library was begun as Spunk Press in 1992.Alasbarricadas interviews Infoshop founder, Chuck Munson
", Infoshop.org, 2008-02-20. The founding contributors – Ian Heavens, Jack Jansen, Andrew Flood, Iain McKay and '' Practical Anarchy'' editors Munson and Mikael Cardell – originally met via an online forum, namely Jansen's Anarchy Discussion email list. The Library was run by an editorial collective during the 1990s. It was not intended to replace print publishing, but rather served a

shop window A display window, also a shop window (British English) or store window (American English), is a window in a shop displaying items for sale or otherwise designed to attract customers to the store. Usually, the term refers to larger windows in the ...

promoting anarchist book publishers, newspapers and journals. 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 Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

such as the

Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF, ; , ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (, , active 1970–1998), was a West German far-left Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group founded in 1970. The ...

, of providing instructions for bomb-making and of coordinating the “disruption of schools, looting of shops and attacks on multinational firms.” The Library remained largely inactive during the first decade of the 2000's, with the

home page A home page (or homepage) is the main web page of a website. The term may also refer to the start page shown in a web browser when the application first opens. Usually, the home page is located at the root of the website's domain or subdomain. ...

last being updated in March 2002. The ''Rough Guide to the Internet'' described the Library as being "organized neatly and with reassuring authority".

Chris Atton Christopher Frank Atton (born 10 March 1959) is Professor of Media and Culture in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University. His work focuses on Alternative Media where his contribution has concentrated on the not ...

, writing in ''Alternative Media'' (2002) hailed the site as an "advertisement for socially responsible anarchism with a significant

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

pedigree", remarking that " 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

External links

Spunk library manifesto
{{Anarchism Anarchist websites Internet properties established in 1992 Online archives

See also

References

External links