Since 2006, Radical Reference has been providing online reference services to activists, journalists and researchers who requested help looking for information and resources. Over the years, we've answered questions that have ranged in scope from mail tampering in prison to the history of radical education to the future of librarianship. Yet as we’ve evaluated the quality and efficacy of this service, we’ve been confronted with difficulties of providing in-depth answers in a timely way. As a result, we've decided collectively to suspend this service indefinitely.
This decision was not reached easily, as for many of us, answering reference questions has been a vital part of fulfilling the Radical Reference mission statement of supporting activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists by providing professional research support, education, and access to information. Nevertheless, we've decided to suspend reference services in order to concentrate on other areas of activism, including connecting activists to librarians on a local level, maintaining and developing information resources on the website, and using social media to connect people interested in information activism.
For general online reference support, we can point you to ASK NYPL, your local public library, the Internet Public Library, or Ask MetaFilter.
