Today I did something I wasn’t planning on doing - I joined APSA (the American Political Science Association). As I’ve recently written, I’ve been on the hunt for a new field of research and information policy was my ‘aha’ moment. I had been thinking of joining another, smaller, subject based association, but I had been thinking that it would be ASIS&T. But even though they have some amazing publications, as well as the Information Policy SIG, the cost was just a little high ($140) to join yet another library association (I’m already paying dues out to ALIA, ALA, PLG, and IFLA). So APSA, on a whim, it was.

Last year I made an effort to start again with political science. I read Locke, Hobbes and Mill. It’s funny how I’ve gone back to a discipline I last studied as an undergrad. The APSA membership form asked what areas I was most interested in, and they are essentially the same as they ever were.

But even when I was in library school I had a feeling I’d find a way to return to polsci. Information policy, public policy and public governance are the links between libraries and politics for me. And more than ever, librarians are making those links with groups like the Information Policy SIG in ASIS&T, the SRRT Taskforce, Information Policy in the Public Interest (IPPI), and more widely within IFLA.