See my blog note on it:

http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/05/booknote-revolting-librarians-redux.h... ( )

A nice collection of essays, personal stories, journals, comics. I enjoyed the history of Sandy Berman and the day by day accounts of the life a librarian. I should dig up the original Revolting Librarians from back in '72 some time.(June 12, 2004) ( )

Inspiring collection of "alternative" viewpoints. Like the annoyed librarian but with a social conscious. It felt good to finish it on MLK Day. It took me a long time to finish only because it consisted of many small pieces so I just dipped into it from time to time. Essential reading for those wanting to go to library school. Some of the links are old, but discovering which ones are still alive is part of the joy.

Did I say it was inspiring? It is also depressing in that a lot of negative trends called out within these pages have continued unabated. Particularly,the de facto corporate censorship of library collections by the elimination of local collections, small presses, and minority viewpoints. This is doubly true since the advent of DRM'ed digital content from third party vendors that libraries have embraced. This is an dystopian nightmare the likes of which even the cynics in this book could not have predicted. Or perhaps they did. From the introduction: "Be cyber-skeptic, while art-directed. Reward analog, anomaly, and high concept, high touch, low-cost anything."

Still, this volume has renewed my commitment to libraries, community, free software, an open internet, the elimination of poverty, and workers' rights. It also reminded me of Rory Litwin's indelible contribution to our profession. Rory is still going strong at Library Juice (http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/). ( )

This was a totally random read for me - not a librarian, not all that up on librarianish issues. So the overall impression was of walking into the wrong professional conference by mistake. But still, there was some entertaining stuff in here. It's fairly uneven, and seems more like a "Who's Who" than a thesis-driven collection, but I did enjoy quite a few of the essays and anecdotes. ( )

This is a rather thought-provoking read, which really should be a must for anyone in (or considering) the library field. Even if you don't agree with everything the various authors present, which I didn't, it is still important and interesting to consider viewpoints outside of the establishment, especially in areas where you may or may not have a lot of previous knowledge. ( )