Attempting Elegance

Librarian. Geek. You can’t take the sky from me.

oh yeah, it’s a library “science”

Because in the sciences it’s totally okay to blow the concept of peer review out of the water in service of being trendy, right?  I roll my eyes.  For those not yet following along at home, some links:

The problem:

Journal of Access Services 5:4

The blowback, and only the parts that show up in my FriendFeed as of 3:20pm.  I’m certain there’s more:

Apparently Annoyed Anonymous Bloggers can get published in peer-reviewed journals

Officially Annoyed

Being Annoyed with out Being Annoying

Professionally Annoyed
Ridiculous.  Frustrating.  Stupid.  I want it to be some kind of joke that we just missed the punchline on.  Barring that, I can’t wait to hear what Haworth has to say for themselves; I hope they have some excuse for their blatant disregard of their own editorial policies other than “don’t people love the AL? Now they’ll love us, too!”

November 17, 2008 - Posted by Jenica | Growly, Libraries, The Profession, annoyed librarian, library blogs, scholarship | | 9 Comments

9 Comments »

  1. [...] working in the field, but instead lobbing cow patties from outside it. update: Jen also has some useful links on the story. Posted by lalcorn in Library Rants at 17:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) Defined tags for [...]

    Pingback by Beyond Annoyed - Librarian's Rant | November 17, 2008

  2. I must wonder if AL is laughing his/her self to death in his/her mother’s basement? Clearly the publishers thought this was a “new voice” in the field, when in fact it may very well not be someone officially working in the field, but instead lobbing cow patties from outside it.

    Comment by Louise | November 17, 2008

  3. I wonder if the AL is laughing at us all, too. My frustration, as I think more about it, is that if Haworth thought this was a good way to shake things up or showcase dissenting voices from the fringe, they’re doing neither. The AL was far more interesting and relevant a year ago, and if that’s the best voice from the fringe they could find, they’re looking in all the wrong places.

    It’s just sad, on a lot of fronts.

    Comment by Jenica | November 17, 2008

  4. I don’t get it.

    Comment by Bill Drew | November 17, 2008

  5. [...] there’s a new controversy regarding the AL and this one has gotten a lot of my very level-headed friends in a lather. I don’t blame them. Apparently, the Journal of Access [...]

    Pingback by I’m REALLY not the Annoyed Librarian (nor am I annoyed) | Information Wants To Be Free | November 18, 2008

  6. Haworth is the publisher – I think we need to be asking questions of the editors and editorial board. What were they thinking? I really expected an intro from the editors – not a guest editor – and essay on making exceptions to their standards/rules for submission/publication.

    Comment by Lisa | November 20, 2008

  7. Lisa, if only the editorial board were involved, that’d be a great approach. Add this wrinkle to the mix, and it gets more perplexing and even less appealing:

    http://distlib.blogs.com/distlib/2008/11/the-annoyed-librarian-goes-for-world-domination.html

    “I’m on the editorial board for this journal and this was news to me; it just showed up in my mail Friday afternoon.”

    Comment by Jenica | November 20, 2008

  8. [...] The third answer is the correct one, however bizarre it sounds. But it gets better than that, because even though this stunt had plenty of coverage, it turns out that the journal’s editors weren’t in on the joke. [...]

    Pingback by Free Range Librarian › The death of peer review | November 20, 2008

  9. [...] Articles in journals known for particularly rigorous standards of peer-review (unlike certain library science journals of late)? Or are “reputable” and “quality” just synonyms [...]

    Pingback by Spurious Tuples » Blog Archive » What do faculty know about what students know? | December 5, 2008


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