Yet another blog person interested in computers speaks out

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, has not given me much of a welcome into my new profession, denigrating the tribe of librarians, blogging ones, that I chose to join.

If Seth Finkelstein is right and a post from Dorothea's blog is part of what set Gorman off, the whole situation gets more laughable. Gorman argues that one should be reading complete texts, but he apparently made his judgements about blogs from things sent to him. Did it ever occur to him that snippets of blogs in email are not giving him the context that he needs to make a reasoned and informed judgement?

And what context we get from Caveat Lector: a William Morris pattern! Latin words! And, look, she reads books!

More important, and the reason I'm writing this post, is that Gorman missed an important textual context. A link in the "Gorman is anti-digital" post sends us all the way back to an amazing piece that Dorothea wrote during last year's ALA election in April.

One response I could have to Gorman's rant is "if this is who ALA chooses for president, than I don't want anything to do with it." A, perhaps, healthier response (and it has appeared on Web4Lib) is to say, "well, it looks like us techie librarians are going to have to get more involved."

Gorman framed all this as an US vs THEM battle. But it isn't and we don't have to make the same mistake. That's why I think Dorothea's April piece is so important to read again, now. Techie librarians can be the ombudsmen that value both the traditions of libraries and the possibilities of technology.

Did anyone else read Michael Stephens' Open Letter and think, "now there's someone who, in the next decade or so, might be a good president for the 21st century ALA"?     #

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