Back in November the Associated Press ran a story about a group of library volunteers who made themselves available to answer reference questions during the Republican National Convention.

Started at Barnard College (my alma mater), the group is national now, and kicking up dust: it calls itself Radical Reference. Here's a paragraph from Advice to New Librarians: "In spite of its deserved reputation as a profession where eccentrics, nerds, free-thinkers, and alternative people of all kinds can find refuge, public libraries can still be bastions of gender conformity. As in other fields, male librarians often float to the top. Female librarians are often promoted based on how well they do femininity (attractiveness, wardrobe, ability to follow orders) rather than how well they do librarianship." Let's hope it's not true everywhere, at least not in San Francisco.

One thing that's absolutely certain is that the research skills learned in library school can help enormously in almost any endeavor that depends on information. When public monies are short and staffing of libraries gets cut, nobody wins: most of us just don't have time to pull together the information we need without the help of a skilled person.

Political people have staff for this. Members of the public, no matter how devoted to education or the environment, are on their own in backing up their viewpoints. So it's nice to know we have a group of local volunteers with reference skills we can ask to help us: take a look at their web site. Click on Reference Shelf at the top, and explore as many of the links as you have time for: some real time-savers are there.

Another certainty is that there is a network of radio and print media that can be termed an alternative media. It is not fringe, it is just not as large as any major network. It is also not automatically responsive to the well-formatted Press Packages sent out weekly from the White House. Often it takes time to find the best of these sources, and library skills take time to acquire.

Within the nationwide American Library Association, the site of the Social Responsibilities Round Table is a good resource. ALA is a huge organization. This part of it has come together to serve those individuals and groups that use well-researched, well-documented arguments to influence public policies on socially important issues in the news. You'll want to bookmark it.

Another site I really like is Librarian.net. It's just a blog done by a rural college librarian. What's worthwhile is that she's making her skills available for reference questions...take a look. I found here, for example, a pilot project running in Illinois called InfoEyes. It enables those with visual impairments to get their questions answered by making an appointment with a librarian. It's free. See what you think.