We all know the importance of radical trust as a component of Library 2.0. Most of the discussion I've seen about this concept relates to the radical trust of library users. I've discussed this, myself. But what about radical trust of ourselves - of the people we work with on a daily basis?

The more I think about this, the more challenging I find this concept to be. I can easily think up a number of controls my library puts on its staff that, consciously or not, reveals that we don't trust each other. I'm not seeing anything particularly diabolical about this. It's more a matter of habit. Some of these things we do as a matter of course, because this is the way it's always been done. Also, our concerns may be theoretical. We just haven't reconsidered our practices in the light of different options.

In my library, for example, here are a few of the controls that have impacted my work:

• We assign folder permissions on our Web site on an individual basis so that contributing librarians can write only to their relevant workspace.
• We maintain the same types of permissions on our staff site.
• We review all Web pages before they are published to our public site.
• We require that staff get their supervisor's permission to start a blog.

These are a few of the activities that I've had a hand in over the years. I've believed in them. But I'm beginning to reconsider. I wrote in my earlier posting on this topic that "Radical trust is a fine concept as long as we acknowledge that student input - or any input - will not be uniformly valuable or credible." I can extend this thought to an understanding that doing away with certain staff controls will, in some cases, be a disappointment.

But how much of a disappointment? This is the question we need to ask. If librarians don't review their own Web pages before publishing them, and visible problems get sent into production, then these libarians will hear about it and will take responsibility for fixing the problems. They're professionals. And I honestly can't see one librarian tampering with the Web pages of another. We have plenty of group permissions in place that give staff access to other people's files, and this has never happened. Not once in a decade. As for needing permission to start a blog - well, you can imagine how I feel about that.

If a colleague seriously, and intentionally, fails our experiment in radical trust, most likely there are other problems that need to be dealt with.

I'm trying to envision our current staff controls existing alongside ideas about opening up our Web spaces to user input - to resource recommendations, peer advice, comments, tags. One doesn't jibe very well with the other.

Obviously I'm not advocating that we open up our servers and systems files to one and all. There is certain information, such as human resources data, that is private. Of course these types of things need to be kept secure. I'm referring to more commonsensical controls that we might loosen up. It would be a useful exercise in trusting ourselves. But I'm not sure how many others would agree.

So I can't help thinking: If it's so difficult to take measures to trust ourselves, how can we open ourselves to trusting users? This may be similar to the old adage that you can't love anyone unless you first love yourself. I'll amend this and say that you can't trust anyone unless you first trust yourself and, in our case, the colleagues closest to us.