I'm very much indebted to a friend and fellow Technobabe, Rachael Stark, for urging me to see that librarians are natural allies for those of us who are working to bridge the nonprofit digital divide.  Rachael - who has a background in social work, nonprofit technology, and librarianship - is highly qualified to point this out.

While other folks are talking about knowledge in the public interest, human-computer interaction, information architecture, and accessibility - librarians are dealing in these issues on a retail basis.  Librarians have a built-in incentive not just to show people where the information lies, but to teach them how to discover it for themselves.

I've been musing on this as I've been reading Andy Carvin's blog reports of the conference on "Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility" that was recently convened by the Berkman Center.  One of his dispatches is titled "Karen Schneider: Don't Forget the Digital Divide."  (For a podcast of her remarks at the session conference, click here.)  As a blogger, she is also known as the Free Range Librarian, and as I peruse her blog, I am reminded of how wonderful it is that so many librarians get it about information technology as a tool to get the job done, and how little we in the nonprofit/philanthropic sector do to make common cause with them.

I'd like to challenge myself - and my colleagues in nonprofit technology - to forge a stronger alliance.