Amids all the screaming speakers and chanting crowds at today's demonstrations at the state Capitol Building was a group more used to talking in whispers.
Wanda Marsolek held aloft a sign saying simply "Ask Me." She's with Radical Reference, a group of librarians and library assistants who organized at the 2004 New York Republican National Convention to provide protesters with any information they might need.
Each member at the rally carried a binder with information such as marching routes, bicycle and car maps, lists of places to park and get water, the reasons protesters typically are arrested and ways to get in touch with a lawyer. And if they don't have a piece of information with them, they have reserve librarians waiting at home in front of their computers, cell phones at the ready.
The group's motto is "Answers for those who question authority."
In addition to traditional research methods, Marsolek - who wears her hair dyed and spiky and had a labret piercing through her bottom lip - said the new media has been particularly helpful to the group. Holding up her iPhone, she showed how Radical Reference monitors the Twitter microblog feeds from groups like the Coldsnap Legal Collective and the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group. The feeds provide information such as where police are gathering, she said.
And, would they give police protester locations if they asked? "I think so," Marsolek said, after a pause. "That's part of what a librarian is. We give out information."
Steve Labash, who was the general library director at the University of Baltimore before his retirement, was in New York in 2004. He said Radical Reference is a logical extension of its workers library pedigrees. "I think it's a logical connection of our conviction that people have a right to information," he said. "That's what libraries are for."
(By Rob Margetta)
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