The Librarian and the Bloggers

The Librarian and the Bloggers

Michael Gorman, President-Elect of that venerable body, the American Library Association, doesn’t think much of Bloggers. He explains why here. It all started because he dared to write something dismissive about the Google phenomenon — which he described as “a wonderfully modern manifestation of the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality.”

As a conoisseur of invective, I particularly like this passage:

“It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.”

I sympathise with Mr. Gorman, but it’s clear that he has led a sheltered life up to now. I doubt, for example, that he has ever seen a flame war in a News Group!
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