Annoyed but Inspired

Here’s the thing: I thought about writing a post about this whole Annoyed Librarian brouhaha that has erupted all over the librarian blog universe. I sat at my desk and actually drew up an outline, came up with citations, links, and relevant blog posts that would support my argument (that allowing an anonymous blogger to publish in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal would have a negative effect on the perception of the profession). I really wanted to write about it.
But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that what librarianship needs more than anything else is for more librarians/library staff to take the piss about the impervious structures, institutionalized group-think, and archaic policies that keep our profession rooted in the last century. We could all stand to take ourselves a little less seriously.
I can’t say what the editors of that scholarly journal were thinking when they turned an entire issue over to the Annoyed Librarian (no link because, frankly, they don’t need the page impressions), and I won’t speculate on what the long-term effect this decision will have. But you know what? They tried something new. They decided that they’d rally against the closed-system that is academic publishing and give someone with a divergent, dissonant voice a larger, more mainstream platform. This decision may turn out to be an epic fail, but at least they tried, and they — and hopefully the rest of the profession — will learn something from it.
So despite your opinion of the Annoyed Librarian (whiner) and whether s/he is a “good thing” for the profession, try to think of it in terms of the “Library 2.0″ framework so many of us are all het up about (myself included). Publishing power to the people, bringing peripheral voices to the center, and exploring new avenues for collaboration an uncovering emergent voices, and all that stuff.
When you look at it through that lens, it looks a little better, doesn’t it?