You may have heard about Michael Gorman's recent diatribe against weblogs and the people who write them (posted in Library Journal, Feb. 15, 2005). It's distinctly uncomplimentary.
A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.
Ouch.
Mr. Gorman bases his judgment and his comments on far too small a sample. He also considers only a very narrow section of possible weblogs and webloggers: specifically the ones he feels "attacked" his viewpoint in an earlier op-ed piece he wrote for the L.A. Times.
Judging all weblogs (and worse, all "blog people") by a handful of personally annoying postings is akin to judging all periodicals by a handful of less than savory articles or magazines. One should not attempt to classify Scientific American or Readers Digest (or even Library Journal) if one has only seen a few small-organization newsletters or a copy of Hustler.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gorman is not simply an annoyed writer posting a rebuttal in an online forum. He's also president-elect of the American Library Association and Dean of Library Services at Cal State, Fresno. Such a display of peeved ignorance as Mr. Gorman presents, issuing as it does from such a lofty and public position, reflects poorly on librarians everywhere. It is my hope that some of the more enlightened librarians will see fit to take Mr. Gorman aside and educate him privately.
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