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February 27, 2005
Yet another response to the Michael Gorman fiasco
Let me just say from the beginning, I am not disputing what Michael Gorman is saying about Google. I looked up the original Los Angeles Times article ("Google and God's Mind," December 17, 2004) to try to understand exactly what he was talking about in his retribution piece against the "Blog People", and honestly, as a technologist *and* a librarian, I agree with just about everything said about Google not being the uber-answer.
That said, the mentality displayed here by the ALA president-elect is, in my mind, yet another misunderstanding about blogs, blogging, and bloggers, but significantly more devastating coming from the the publicly-perceived leader of the library community. I've written and tossed draft after draft of reasoned responses to a universal perception weirdly gone wild about blogging, but I think Michael Gorman's words have helped me finally gel my thoughts on all this insanity into something cohesive. I'm purposely writing these comments up before reading anything else out there about this whole mess. I'll write a follow-up post with my reaction to other posts on this bochinche as I feel is necessary.
On Blogging: Clearing Things Up
- What is blogging, really? Let's get basic. A blog is a technology that allows people to publish to the web quickly and easily. Blogging is the act of publishing to a blog. While some hold blogging to be a philosophy, a way of life, a moral imperative, or a sacrosact freedom of speech mechanism, those bloggers belong to, as Mr. Gorman called it, a "subculture" of bloggers. It is *not* the majority, and yet, like Mr. Gorman, this is the growing perception of the world at large. A blogger is not, by absolute definition, a fanatic about technology and/or a (sometimes would-be, sometimes actual) journalist. Some people who publish blogs are just that, people who publish content on the web using the blog technology without heavily coding it in flat pages by hand, and would not consider themselves "bloggers," and there's nothing wrong with that. It seems that the term blogger is amassing the same level of stigmatism that the word feminist carries with it. It's getting to be a bit crazy, and it really needs to be corrected.
- I am a librarian with a blog, like Jessamyn West would say. I don't consider myself a journalist on my blog. I'm a librarian who shares thoughts about my profession, technology, and where the two collide, overlap, and melt together (thus my creative term "library techtonics"). I was an English major, I write well, I mind my grammar, I check my facts, I ask before I quote or paraphrase. That's just *my* English major, and librarian, method, and my standards stem from it. While my standards may hold some similarities with formal ethical codes, I do not hold myself to any journalistic code of ethics, and by no means do I think that all people with blogs should be held to formal ethical standards because a higher-profile subculture of people with blogs choose to subscribe to said code, journalistic, blogger, or othewise.
Setting the Poorest Example: On Mr. Gorman's LJ Piece
- Setting librarianship back. While Mr. Gorman thinks of his comments as satire, when you lead an organization, you and your words represent the organization. Mr. Gorman, in not understanding blogs, has represented librarians as professionals who don't understand blogs, despite the fact that so many libraries and librarians maintain blogs.
- Assumptions by a librarian based on insufficient information? I am truly curious to know what percentage of the responses Mr. Gorman received about his Google article were belligerent, and how many were not. Everyone who writes has their fair share of crazies, and the number of crazy responses vary depending on what you write about. Since his research seems to show only blogs composed of poorly written content, and crazy "Blog People," then perhaps he didn't do enough research to balance his perspective. As a representative of information professionals, I expect better from a leader in librarianship.
- Encouraging poor reactions from librarians. Karen Hyman spoke in a presentation at ALA Midwinter about how librarians are constantly trying to turn things off. New technology? Turn off the functionality in the public terminals. The reaction is often to keep patrons from doing what are, in most cases, cool and useful things, and Karen Hyman recognizes that this is bad for libraries in general. Mr. Gorman's comments give fuel to librarians who turn things off to do the very same with blogs. The tone of his piece also encourages librarians to react defensively, lashing out at extreme opposing views, and justifying the use of sweeping statements, instead of trying to reason through them diplomatically.
- Contradicting his peers. Clara Bohrer, president of the Public Libraries Association, posted her comments on how important blogs can be as a tool, and how she'd like to see the PLA Blog continue it's success. I'm not sure what the lead time is for LJ, but did Mr. Gorman know about this? I do fully acknowledge that colleagues may disagree, but Mr. Gorman's comments as the elected leader of the organization seem to be undermining an initiative elsewhere within that organization.
- Backtalk, indeed. Michael Gorman made several real mistakes with his Backtalk column. He's alienated many progressive, successful blogging libraries and librarians; he's made himself and librarians, bloggers or not, appear to be defensive luddites; he's encouraged resistant libraries to remain resistant; and he's shown that he has a good deal of work to do in becoming a leader that represents his community. While librarians who blog will respond to his column, many of them quite intelligently, his comments lead me to believe that he may not be capable of understanding. I certainly hope that's not true.
February 27, 2005 6:27 PM