So it seems that SAGE, together with the British Library, plans to (con)descend from on high to tell us librarian peons what role we will play in open access.

The Loon is thinking of many librarians all over the world—the ones who have been working toward open access for a decade or more, in the teeth of litigious and mendacious publisher obstructionists—when she expresses a sincere desire to knock SAGE tumbling off its high horse. Preferably into a nice muddy fen. Containing leeches.

The phrasing of the announcement epitomizes the kind of futuremongering the Loon keenly loathes, the kind that erases her, her likeminded colleagues, and all their works from history and from the present. The open insult aside, erasing one’s allies from the picture is stunningly poor strategy—assuming, of course, that SAGE’s goal in this is actually the furthering of OA, which is a considerable assumption; if SAGE is instead working to burn out and drive off open access’s librarian allies, well-played.

The Loon understands—none better—that library support for open access has been weak, equivocal, even two-faced. The way to fix this is not to erase what has been done, certainly not to erase the folk who did it despite (often) lukewarm support or even opposition from their library colleagues, administrators, and environment. All that accomplishes is to send yet more talented, hardworking, once-enthusiastic librarians fleeing. This may, of course, be SAGE’s goal, in which case, well-played.

Open-access movement. Will you kindly stop this style of futurist rhetoric? Please? Before it damages you further?

• ← Because someone asked
• As the new semester starts →