Borremans 1979, Guide to Convivial Tools

Disposition: stated. Illich's preface was read from search text (long excerpt) on 2026-10-16. The full scan was downloaded (115 pages, image-only, needs OCR) but not read. Scan: http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/cd3wd/1005/_at_410_Guide_to_Convivial_Tools02_83_jf_en_118410_.pdf (part of the cd3wd appropriate-technology library, from the Volunteers in Asia collection). Catalogue: https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/999513602002121

What: a 112-page annotated bibliography of reference tools for "convivial" research, with a section on "Sources in tradition", an alphabetical bibliography and a subject index. Illich's preface calls it "the champion list of un-listed reference tools: a bibliographic claim to a new kind of territory", a literature "that so far no library has collected". Who: Valentina Borremans came from France to Mexico in 1961 to run a small research library on social change. From it she built CIDOC in Cuernavaca (incorporated 1964), "meant to be the inverse of a university: a library centered place for advanced learning where courses grew out of self-organized reading". About 18,000 people came over 12 years and more than 300 titles were published. She closed it in 1976 "rather than allow CIDOC to become one more university" (Illich's preface). The surprise: Illich's Tools for Conviviality acknowledgments say the "multidimensional analysis of ceilings for industrial growth was first formulated in a Spanish document co-authored by Valentina Borremans and myself", written for "two dozen Chilean socialists" at CIDOC (Chile under Allende, 1972). He ranks her first among influences, ahead of Fromm and von Foerster (https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Illich_Tools_for_Conviviality.pdf, search text). The convivial-tool idea had a co-author, and a librarian built its institution. Context: Illich's "research by people" (Shadow Work, 1981), quoted at https://illwill.com/illich-as-revolutionary (read in full): research "with few or no funds, no sponsorship", "primarily for results that directly shape their mode and style of living", with Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly and Growing Without Schooling as its press. Borremans' Guide was the attempt "to sum up and map out these new initiatives". Next: OCR the scan (no OCR tools on the host) to see which tools and which "sources in tradition" she listed. Used on: philosophy-of-technology, trail-2026-10-16.