Brian Smith on Gorman, Steven Johnson, and Blog People
December 10th, 2005Maybe by linking to his post, I can get Brian Smith to blog like this more often. Breaking from his usual pattern of short blurbs, Brian (writing in the plural as usual) blogs:
“We’re not an ALA member, but that has nothing to do with Gorman. We don’t hold anything against him. We thought his “blog people” column was entertaining, and the reaction of some librarians to it (including those idiotic Blog Person website badges) pretty embarrassing. We thought his comment about not wanting research to be dumbed down to a “hip-hop level” (we think that’s the phrase he used, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education several months ago) rather clever, if not worded elegantly enough, in the context of a discussion of students using Google Books (well, whatever it was called then) to just sample paragraphs or pages out of books they ought to be reading in their entirety.”
Good on ya Brian. I’ve always loved his “shoot from the hip” style of work, but this mostly comes from conversations that I’ve had with him face to face (If you ever get a chance to meet him, you’ll be careful not to drink while he talks, because you’re certain to have some of the liquid come out of your nose at some point during the conversation) and not from his log posts.. It is my hope that Brian writes more of these types of posts in the future (his decision of course, I’m just trying to egg him on a bit) as they are very refreshing. Thanks Brian, from all of us at Library Stuff. 