The history of intellectual progress focuses mostly on individuals—Thales, Socrates, Confucius, Archimedes, Bacon, Aquinas, Da Vinci and so forth. It isn’t all that often that you hear of institutions. There is the Academy of Athens, of course, the University of Alexandria, and later organizations like monastic orders and finally the earliest beginnings of the university in late medieval Europe. But in spite of the important role played by groups and organizations in the story of intellectual progress, individuals are the benchmarks by which progress is measured.

In modern times, however, institutional affiliation has become all-important for being taken seriously as someone working in intellectual fields. In some cases it can be as crucial as a college degree. In my last piece I talked a little bit about think tanks and how they operate as purveyors of information and opinion. The people who work in them can carry titles like “Scholar in Residence” or some other flowery accolade, and yet don’t need to have a degree. For that matter, they don’t even need to know what they are talking about, but let’s not digress in that direction just now. In the think tank, we see the triumph of the institution as an intellectual entity unto itself. The universities have done this to some extent as well, but their influence has been shaped by a more rigorous tradition as well as their need to conform to the requirements of state regulations and national accreditation bodies. So they are a bit more constrained in how they comport themselves in the intellectual marketplace.

This is a double-edged situation for the guerrilla scholar; one of my personal rules for independents is, “You are an institution.” By this I mean several things, one of which is that “institutions” are essentially artificial constructs that give support to the people who work there. A university professor can enjoy the company of colleagues, libraries and laboratories, graduate assistants, grants and funding, and so forth. I maintain that many of these same perks are available to the guerrilla scholar who is willing to do a little extra outside work to build a support structure for themselves.

The personal network is one of the independent scholar or amateur scientist’s most priceless assets. A good rolodex can solve a multitude of problems. In fact, I consider spending a hour or two a month reviewing and updating my contact file to be time very well spent. This network is how you get most of the perks that the pros enjoy. Tap into the local community college programs for interns or “learning contracts” and you can find resources that can get you a research assistant if you want one. Make friends with the reference librarian at your local public library, then the big city library or college library nearby. Is there a government documents repository near where you live. By law, every Congressional district must have at least one. These are untapped gold mines. Do you know a handy, helpful nerd who can assist when you have computer problems? Is he or she (Who am I kidding? He.) in your contact file? Ditto that nice clerk at the copy shop. Keep an eye open for the people you need to make your work happen and before long, you’ll find yourself at the center of an informal but very real working group…an institution, if you like.