Revenge of the Blog People?

February 24th, 2005

Conversation breeds education. Conversation breeds education. Everybody now. Conversation breeds education.

I had to take a long, deep breath, walk around my dining room table (where I am sitting this evening), and think of taking a shot of Tequilla after reading Revenge of the Blog People!, by Michael Gorman, the ALA president-elect. If you haven’t read it yet, you might think of doing the same. In it, he groups all librarian bloggers into one category: Stupid (my word not his). Consider his statements:

“It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief.”

The “Blog People” (how very condecending of you Mr. Gorman) are not “fanatical.” We are a forward thinking bunch who thrive on reading and commenting on librarianship. We do what we do because we have a passion for our profession, not unlike yourself. Passion is a far cry from being a fanatic. We do great things for this profession. Don’t isolate yourself with misinformed generalizations. Another quote:

“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.”

There you go, generalizing again. We’re all stupid and couldn’t parse a sentence if our Master’s degrees depended on it. Mr. Gorman, not only are we able to read complex texts, but we are also capable of writing them (Take a look at the Fall 2003 ALA Editions brochure). A lot of us have written books, scholarly papers, and have columns (or had) in magazines that are published by ALA and its divisions. Last, you probably haven’t seen it, but take a look at the PLA Blog and learn how blogging can work for your organization.

Mr. Gorman: I take offense to your overgeneralizations and prejudices against me and my blogging colleagues. I hope that one day you will understand that there is a place for all of us in this fantastic profession.

One last note. One of the main reasons why I completed my library school degree (I took a class, but wasn’t sure if I truly wanted to be a librarian) was the assignment of your book, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness, and Reality, which was co-written by Walt Crawford (someone who I am proud to call my mentor). I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for writing that book. It has had a vast impact on my work as a librarian. Walt knows this already - I spoke to him about it at ALA Midwinter. I take this quote from the description of the book on the ALA site:

“In place of futuristic dreaming and madness, they show how libraries can embrace advanced technologies while retaining their role as service-oriented repositories of all formats of organized information and knowledge—a role that compliments the values that community library buildings and user-friendly librarians deliver best.”

Embrace blogs and bloggers Mr. Gorman. You will not be sorry that you did.

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