ShinJoung Yeo, Lia Friedman, and Greg Hom will all be speaking as representatives of Radical Reference at the Spectrum Institute, in Anaheim (?), on June 27, 2008. Our panel will be moderated by professor Clara Chu of UCLA.

Since 1997, the American Library Association's Office for Diversity has sponsored a program called Spectrum, which provides funds to people of color so they can be supported through their MLIS (Master's in Library and Information Studies/Sciences) education. The program also sends students to an annual institute, which is held prior to the American Library Association's annual conference. The institute has a number of speakers and workshops to help these scholarship students think about their future careers in librarianship or associated fields. There are a number of other scholarships to help you get through library school if you are interested. Check out the ALA website.

Since i'm a recipient of the Spectrum scholarship, i'm very excited to be presenting to other Spectrum scholars about Radical Reference. Many librarians, as well all know, can sometimes be infected by a trend towards liberalism, i.e. not taking a stand on anything. In the conference i attended a coupla years back, we had "leaders in the field" speaking to us about our "great future careers"- not once did these folks even have the ability to mention the word "diversity"- at a conference for students who are essentially in a program of affirmative action! So to be able to explicitly say that our work/skills can contribute to social justice movements working against the "white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy" [hooks] (and the other injustices we deal with in this world, too) feels like a great opportunity.