radical reference

Lia Friedman is what some might call a super-librarian. She's the head of public services at the UCSD Arts Library, the staff librarian for make/shift magazine, and an active member of Radical Reference (an organization whose Portland chapter helped set up the Bitch Community Lending Library). Bitch recently caught up with Friedman, who told us a bit about where librarianship and social justice intersect.

What's an office with over 800 page-turning books to do? Lend them out to the public, of course! That's what we here at Bitch Headquarters decided to do after we realized that our 13-years-in-the-making book collection, covering topics such as feminist theory, media studies, art, queer and gender studies, history, and sociology, was too impressive to hoard to ourselves. So last summer, an admirable group of radical librarians offered to come into the office and catalog our books for us so that we could start lending them out. We got ourselves an account on LibraryThing.com (which you can use to view our online catalog by clicking here), designed some library cards, and now we're up and running. And don't worry--even if you're not in Portland, there are still ways to get involved.