Alison Macrina is a librarian, internet activist, founder and executive director of the Library Freedom Project.

Biography

Macrina grew up in

Collingswood, New Jersey Collingswood is a borough in Camden County, New Jersey, located east of Center City Philadelphia. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the borough's population was 13,926,Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then calle ...

. She received an

Master of Library and Information Science The Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS), also referred to as the Master of Library and Information Studies, is the master's degree that is required for most professional librarian positions in the United States. The MLIS is a relativ ...

from

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, ...

in 2009. Macrina was a librarian at the Watertown Free Public Library in

Watertown, Massachusetts Watertown is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and is part of Greater Boston. The population was 35,329 in the 2020 census. Its neighborhoods include Bemis, Coolidge Square, East Watertown, Watertown Square, and the West End. Waterto ...

and a member of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Radical Reference Radical Reference is a distributed collective of library workers, students and information activists who work on social justice issues. They provide professional research support, education and access to information to activist communities, prog ...

Collective. While at the public library, Macrina made a

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

for librarians titled ''We Are All Suspects'' offering a "quick and dirty introduction to basic privacy and security tools." She founded the Library Freedom Project in 2015 in order to help non-techie people learn to protect their privacy online. As a victim of online harassment for her work on racial and gender justice, Macrina teaches other professionals, especially librarians, to use available tools to manage and deal with inappropriate behavior, saying "The thing about privilege isn’t just that it shields you ... It also gives you a platform." Macrina is vocal in her opposition to digital surveillance, and was a core contributor and Community Team Lead on the

Tor Project Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

. She is the co-author of ''Anonymity'', the first book in the American Library Association's Library Futures Series. She was also one of the librarians protesting the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

's recruitment attempts at the American Library Association's annual conference in 2019, co-publishing a letter with librarian Dustin Fife entitled "No Legitimization Through Association: the CIA should not be exhibiting at ALA."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macrina, Alison Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Internet activists American librarians American women librarians American librarianship and human rights Drexel University alumni Temple University alumni 21st-century American women