Announcing the Radical’s Guide to New Librarianship

I have just signed a contract with MIT Press for the publication of The Radical’s Guide to New Librarianship, a follow up to The Atlas of new Librarianship. Over the next few weeks and months I will be reaching out to you for help in ensuring the Radical’s Guide helps you to better serve our communities, become better librarians, and transform librarianship into a profession of radical positive change.

I am not doing this alone. To help make the Radical’s Guide a reality Kimberly Silk, Wendy Newman, and Lauren Britton have joined me in a self-titled group calling itself the “New Librarianship Collaborative.” Together we’ll be reaching out to look for stories, ideas, and contributions (and yes, we are always looking for more members).

What will the new book offer (besides being paper back, lighter, and also have an ebook version)? I have three major goals:

• Expand the ideas of the Atlas into libraries as institutions and a deeper look at communities
• Provide a curricular view of New Librarianship for easy incorporation into classes and continuing education
• Provide hands on tools for implementing New Librarianship in your community.

This is not another edition of the Atlas. Rather it focuses on making things happen by building upon the Atlas’ focus on deep theory and concepts.

Because of the new effort you will see a few changes in the very near future:

• I have set up a page on New Librarianship and a sub-page specifically for the Radical’s Guide that includes ongoing information on the new effort, and New Librarianship in general. The new page will include calls for feedback and polls on topics in the new book.
• The existing Atlas website is being folded into my personal site (over time). This will make the incorporation of new materials from the Radical’s Guide will be easier to maintain and update. Eventually the domain newlibrarianship.org will point to this site. So if you want to keep up with developments, you are int eh right place.

I am thrilled to say MIT Press is again the publisher of this new effort. Our goal is to make a book that is immediately useful, as well as easily accessible in content and form. In that light we are hoping for a final book that is portable and very affordable (seriously, like plus or minus 20 bucks).

I hope you will join Kim, Wendy, Lauren and myself in creating a tool for radical positive change agents seeking to unleash the potential and knowledge of their communities.