The Music Never Stopped: The Deadhead Information Community: Deadheads comprise a vibrant and enduring information community by fostering an information exchange in the form of swapping tapes of live performances, and unique to their contemporaries, outlasted the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The band toured for thirty years until the death of Jerry Garcia, the group’s guitarist and frontman, and the group’s consequent disbanding in 1995. However, the information community endured and continued to thrive thanks to Deadhead’s early adoption of the internet, where the community uploaded their coveted recordings for the world to access and share. Today, the community persists with an online presence, making them valuable subjects of investigation within the information sciences. The group’s shared values of mutual exchange, cooperation, and community stand in sharp contrast to the transactional nature of capitalist society. These principles also impact the scholarship that discusses them, making a unique study into the behaviors and impacts of the information community.

Quin Fraley (she/her) is a native Oregonian currently working as a library assistant in special collections at a research library in Los Angeles. She loves histories of artistic rebellion and counterculture. In her spare time, she spends as much of her time as she can at the beach, cooking, and annoying her sister.