Members, potential members and allies of Radical Reference met in Philadelphia at the A Space, who graciously offered us accommodations for our meeting for a small donation. Thanks A space!
Introductions were made, including a brief history of Radical Reference and our website and it's sections, including the opensource software we use and our dream projects page.
Local Collectives Reports:
San Diego and the greater Los Angeles Collective: are meeting in January--hopefully they will be able to put an idea together for the upcoming annual meeting of ALA in Anaheim.
San Francisco: There are 14 or so members on the SF rad ref list, many members are very busy but are looking into being involved in Labor Tech's upcoming conference.
NYC Collective: Busy planning for the upcoming Grassroots Media Conference where they are presenting a whole track of workshops in March. They will participate in the NYC Anarchist Bookfair coming up in April, and Jenna is presenting at the Women In Media Conference as well.
Next came a brief discussion on how best to start a local collective, with posting to library listservs and flyering places of interest were encouraged.
The next ALA conference is in Anaheim as noted before and there was a discussion on a free Rad Ref workshop on openness, opensource and copyright issues as an answer to the program offered by ALA as a $385 pre-conference on opensource software and possibilities.
Next came a discussion on the upcoming RNC and DNC and protests planned around the two. There is lots of organizing already going on outside of Rad Ref, with plenty of opportunities to get involved. Look for the Welcoming Committee, for instance to see what is coming up. If you are interested in going to either protest, Alicia has sent a call out to the list to gage interest. There is always the option of doing home support if you don't feel you can travel the distance.
Next, an announcement that James, Shinjoung, Melissa and Lia are drafting a proposal for the next IFLA conference.
Next, what is the future of Radical Reference? James, Shinjoung and Jenna would like to shift some of the responsibilities that they have been shouldering to others.. Look at the dream projects page and feel free to start working on something that strikes your fancy. For instance, James and Shinjoung will start a wiki concerning the Devils's Library Dictionary, outlining how words like "branding" and "customer" are detrimental to our field.
A Web Re-design Task Force was formed, Alicia is sending out a call to the list to see if others are interested in helping.
Elaine Harger gave a brief overview of PLG, and added some inspirational words of support to Radial Reference, saying "we are at the intersection of where the knowledge meets the people".
There were announcements concerning the Cup By Cup Program, encouraging conference goers to bring their own cups to ALA. Aaron from The Open Library gave a brief introduction on a project he is working on called the Open Library, an alternative to Worldcat--very exciting.
