Radical Reference is a distributed collective of library workers, students and information activists who work on social justice issues. They provide professional research support, education and access to information to activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists who they describe as their "patron base". The organization was formed in 2004 by Jenna Freedman, Chuck Munson, Ellen Knutson, Kris Kasianovitz, James R. Jacobs, and Shinjoung Yeo in order to coordinate a team of volunteer library workers in assisting demonstrators and activists with their activities surrounding the

Republican National Convention The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the Republican Party in the United States. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal o ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. The group used a combination of pre-made "ready reference kits" which contained "maps, legal information, lists of events". The reference volunteers who were working at the event wearing "Info Here" shirts were also connected to home support volunteers who could answer more complex questions using their home computers. Librarians Melissa Morrone & Lia Friedman say the group is "a traditional and technological mashup of activism, outreach, and teaching for a new socially conscious user." Michael Hughes comments that the group "eschew neutral practice, recognizing that information access is always political." Radical Reference has spawned over fifteen local Radical Reference Collectives which have worked on activist issues in their communities. As one example, the North Texas Radical Reference Collective created an Alternative Guide to Dallas in advance of the American Library Association's 2012 conference which highlighted restaurants with vegan offerings and bike and public transportation options. Other members of the group have worked on other information projects including: * Signing up as a partner organization of the NYC Grassroots Media Conference organizing committee in 2007 * Creating a lending library of books and resources at Bitch Magazine in Portland Oregon in 2009 * Hosting an

unconference An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as sponsored presentations and top-down organizati ...

as an unofficial preconference to the

Association of College and Research Libraries The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes library, libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th ...

meeting in Seattle in 2009 * Organizing a Critical Library Symposium, "Practical Choices for Powerful Impacts: Realizing the Activist Potential of Librarians," in Boston in 2012 * Setting up Radical Reference "stations" at existing activist events such as the Really Really Free Market in Manhattan and the Mid Atlantic Radical Bookfair * Publishing a zine ''We Are All Suspects : a Guide for People Navigating the Expanded Powers of Surveillance in the 21st century'' in 2014 The group is decentralized and international, communicating mostly via email and a

drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

-based website which also serves as a

knowledge base In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a knowledge representation language, with interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questions about what is known, where either of these interfaces migh ...

of archived reference questions. They answered reference questions through their website from 2006 through 2013.Hoyer, J & Almeida, N. ''Referencing Revolution: Information Access and Activism.'' zine. Brooklyn, NY: Interference Archive, 2016. https://interferencearchive.org/wp-content/uploads/zine_infoactivismexhibit.pdf

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Library science Access to Knowledge movement Library-related organizations Organizations established in 2004