[WEB4LIB] RE: FW: LJ: ALA Prez-Elect Gorman on the

[Blake Carver]

A few thoughts from a blog person.

Blogs are indeed often unpalatable, and always untrammeled by editors.
While he meant this to be insulting (or was it satirical?), us bloggers
should be able to admit these are legitimate complaints. Though at the
same time these are some of our greatest strengths. There is nothing wrong
with people not seeing value in what we do, not everyone will.

Most blogs are not great works of literary history, most bloggers are not
great writers, but that's not the point. Many of us are simply using our
blogs as journals. We share small parts of our lives with our limited
number of readers, and that's all we set out to do. Others use our blogs
to bring people together and create communities. Much of what we are doing
will be lost at some point in the future, but blogs will provide a
wonderful window into this time period for historians in the future. Maybe
in 50 or 100 years some of the best blogs will be considered classics of
this time and medium.

Though he provides no reason why it's absurd to give us press credentials,
is it so hard for us to believe that someone would think this way?
Especially someone who says he believes a computer that is able to search
well over 8 billion documents in less than a second is "notoriously
inefficient." His response to Google is nothing more than typical
librarian thinking that leaves us shackled to vendors that provide us with
what WE want, and leave out users hanging in the cold. This line of
thinking continues to make us less relevant and expose the ugly
curmudgeonly underbelly of our profession that holds back projects that
could really help. That's not to say we should be rushing into every crazy
new idea out there. But not being able to see the value in what Google
does now, and what it'll be capable of in a few years is not just short
sighted, it's dangerous for our profession.

The funniest part of the entire article was just how much this article was
nothing more than a post I'd read on any day @LISNews or any other blog. A
post that would probably get moderated as flamebait.
Something tells me this did little to stem the tide of email and comments
that say "Michael Gorman is an idiot" Worse yet, this will work to
alienate more of us from the ALA at a time when they probably don't need
to push more people away. This coming from the president is simply
terrible PR at the very least, and I'd guess will lead to people calling
for him to resign.




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Blake Carver
LISNews.com
Librarian & Information Science News
http://lisnews.com