I read with interest a recent letter published in Science (4 April 2014) where young scientists were asked to send their ideas about what they would do in support of Science Advocacy.  A host of answers was shared, most revolving around children and young adults. Ideas included volunteering at high schools to provide presentations, using social media to blog or post about science, writing informative articles, becoming a science mentor and my personal favorite – becoming a magician in order to fascinate children and teach them about science.

While I found this NextGenVoices survey to be a great way to generate ideas and share suggestions, I started to think how librarians, informationists, or information professionals could also partner with our researchers as science advocates – we could help research and locate science literature geared to specific age levels, we could retweet our researchers’ blog posts, we could establish current awareness alerts to support our researchers’ writing attention-grabbing articles for high school students, and perhaps we could even locate magician’s tricks worth sharing!

What a perfect collaboration — and for an excellent cause!

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services