*** Next Meeting/Social will be at 6:00 on Monday, June 29th, at
the Northampton Brewery. Meet on the deck upstairs, unless it's
raining, in which case look for us near the bar. ***

Western Mass Radical Reference
May 9, 2009 Meeting Notes

So, we had a small meeting in May at the Amherst Brewing Co, and
discussed a number of things:

1. seems like folks are still not so clear about the radref mission of
providing reference services to our local activist communities - see
www.radicalreference.info/about

2. we have not yet figured out what are the pressing issues for local
activist communities are that our group might address. There seems to
be a sense that interest in the group is waning because we do not have
a project we are currently working on.

3. a number of ideas continue to be tossed around including:

a. rad ref can assist local groups like the western mass prison book
project (or others) in various ways
b. local rad ref members can become involved with the larger group by
contributing to the rad ref website (e.g. the reference shelf, or our
western mass group page), answering reference questions, and meeting
with rad ref folks at national meetings.
c. western mass rad ref can continue to try to map out and make
connections with local activist communities in order to try to be of
use.
d. It might be worthwhile to have more of a presence at local library
related as well as activist events.

4. Decisions

a. There seemed to be agreement that it was valuable to maintain a
local radref networking base, through meetings, our (fairly inactive)
listserv, our Facebook and local RadRef collective page. Keeping
these in place will allow us to mobilize when an issue presents itself
that members would like to work on. Other folks felt it was
worthwhile to keep meeting socially once a month. Next RadRef Meeting
will be at 6:00 on Monday, June 29th, at the Northampton Brewery.
Meet on the deck upstairs, unless it's raining, in which case look for
us near the bar.
b. we are planning to have a Librarian Work Day at Western Mass Prison
Book Project. This seems like a good tangible project to get radical
librarians involved and would really help out PBP! PBP needs help
weeding, sorting, and shelving books, among other projects. Date is
still to be decided.