[WEB4LIB] Re: FW: LJ: ALA Prez-Elect Gorman on the "Blog People"

[Thomas Dowling]

John Creech 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."
> 
> 
> Via TiVo I just caught last night's Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart on Comedy 
> Central.  Peter Jennings was his guest.  Peter Jennings reads blogs.  So 
> does Jon Stewart.  So do I.  Gee, Gorman must be smarter than all three of 
> us.
> 

Gorman obviously has a lot to say.  If only there were some tool
available to him that would facilitate his putting it online, perhaps
with a way for those interested in it to receive a notification when
something new was available, and to respond with lively,
rough-and-tumble comments...


BTW, the Library Journal piece mentions, "...my sin lay in suggesting
that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but
would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the
substance of scholarly books."  (From the original L.A. Times piece,
it's clear the problem is really presenting snippets of books out of
context, or somehow getting the books in the wrong order: "The books in
great libraries are much more than the sum of their parts. They are
designed to be read sequentially and cumulatively, so that the reader
gains knowledge in the reading.")

Funny, I don't recall any vitriol being thrown about when Roy Tennant
wrote: "Google hype to the contrary...Large research libraries that
never weed their collections as a matter of policy end up with lots of
outdated, useless material. Join this with blind, wholesale
digitization, and it's clear we will soon find ourselves in a world
where incorrect, dated information trumps current, accurate information
through circumstance." <http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA502014>

Maybe it's all in how you say it.



-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu