In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I told the story of The Psychosocial Parameters of Internet Addiction, the bogus site I created ten years ago with a colleague to teach users to evaluate information found on the Web. I explained that the site has been used successfully as a teaching tool, but has also been misconstrued and presented as a legitimate source on the topic. The misconceptions continue to this day.

But here we are, in a 21st century library world that is beginning to coalesce around concepts of Library 2.0. One of these concepts is radical trust.

What is radical trust in the context of Library 2.0? I'd like to consider the question from the point of view of users, leaving aside our practice of trust among ourselves, though this is also important.

In essence, radical trust of users in a Library 2.0 world means that libraries open up their systems to users' input. Users can comment, recommend, tag, and rate library content. They can interact with records in the library's online catalog, creating a "social OPAC" such as the one found on Amazon. Library blogs encourage user comments. Library wikis seek users' original contributions and edits. Users can select a level of privacy comfortable to them, as they do on third-party social networking sites. The concept of radical trust can also include the (sometimes time-honored) practice of asking for user input when developing services and creating or redesigning online spaces. Librarians give up a measure of control, welcoming user collaboration as a concurrent, added dimension to their professional work. Hovering above all of this is the librarians' embrace of risk, experimentation, tolerance - and trust.

Now, let's consider my experience with the bogus Internet addiction site alongside the idea of opening up library systems to student input. If there are librarians, teaching faculty, professional writers and radio broadcasters who are unable to judge the bogus nature of a barebones Web site, what kind of input can we expect from students?

Radical trust is a fine concept as long as we acknowledge that student input - or any input - will not be uniformly valuable or credible. Some of this input will be wonderfully astute, informed, insightful, and helpful. On the other hand, students will also make obtuse remarks, misunderstand what is offered to them, and abuse the system. They'll make some of the same missteps that occur in the world beyond the campus. They'll test, and sometimes break, our trust.

To my mind, the point of radical trust is students' active engagement. The point is the added value when value is added. The point is creating open systems that give us opportunities to learn what students need, how they interpret and use information, and what they think of the information we provide and how we provide it. The point is an enriched library culture and a two-way street. Two-way streets are more complex and more risky than the one-way kind. But in the end, you know so much more about each side. With any luck, and with an open mind, you're both the better for it.

Radical trust doesn't mean that we wouldn't build safegards into our systems. It doesn't mean that academic librarians have lost their footing as guides, advisers, evaluators, seachers, selectors, catalogers or aggregators. And what about pedagogy? Radical trust and pedagogy can comfortably co-exist. In fact, I'd say that radical trust is a tool of pedagogy.

So, despite my negative experiences with The Psychosocial Parameters of Internet Addiction, I endorse radical trust in libraries. I do this with a certain set of expectations. It's not so much the wisdom of the community that I hope for - though there will be some of that - but the dynamics of the community. I'm also looking for the power of the individual voice. Neither of these is possible, to a useful extent, with the closed systems that prevail in libraries.