Complementarity
Description
Noon:
"Finally, complementarity is “a way of seeing non-hierarchical difference as something generative” (Srsly Wrong ep 200). This is perhaps the most important conceptual shift from capitalist social relations to Library Socialist social relations, because unlike usufruct and the irreducible minimum, it is antithetical to the compulsory individualism and competitive drive of capitalist economies. There is a common claim that capitalism is extremely efficient – which it is in certain ways – but modern consumer capitalism involves immense duplication of effort: Nike and Adidas are in a constant arms race to develop better shoe technology. They are constantly replicating each others' developments because they are in competition with one another. Imagine how advanced our footwear would be if these two instead complemented each other's research – Nike looking at soles, while Adidas focuses on laces, or what have you.
In the context of Library Socialism, complementarity leads us to a constantly expanding realm of goods and services available at libraries. In fact, this is already happening – as mentioned above, libraries around the world have been early adopters of public computers. This is because information in books and information on the internet complement each other, and librarians, being curators of their space, understand this complementarity. This is also why so many libraries have story time, or children's entertainers: librarians know that a lot of children and parents come to libraries for books, and by providing complementary services like edutainment they can massively increase the benefits they provide to their patrons. This is also the reason for medical clinics, or physios who work at gyms; they have understood the way specialists are complementary to one another.
It is the contention of Library Socialism that libraries are the perfect locus for complementarity. They are definitionally accessible to everyone, and the non-financial relationship between the staff and the library users means that the librarians aren't incentivised to deny people access (unlike shops, where the staff are incentivised to deny access to goods until customers pay). Instead, they are incentivised to make the library as useful and beneficial as possible, which they do by curating complementarity."
(https://www.neweconomy.org.au/journal/issues/vol2/iss4/library-socialism/)