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ALA President Not Fond of Bloggers
Phil Shapiro writes "American Library Association president Michael Gorman is not too fond of bloggers and blogging. '[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... 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.'"
Apart from that, he makes it seem as though they're "inferior" for not having read "complex texts". Each person chooses a way to live; people do as they please.
My, my. What a ready defense.
Although his tone is condescending, was he not speaking about the quality of writing and discourse prevalent in blogs? Is this not clearly associated with one's facility with complex texts?
If one wishes to write for the public, one should expect to be appraised on one's literary ability, or lack of it.
I have met normal, middle-class high school seniors who were unable to calculate the correct change for $14 out of $20 (they eventually figured it out after nearly 5 minutes of intense collaboration). Would you defend as a "life choice" this basic ineptitude, as you do the inability to read and write a complex argument?
Though it is rather fitting, I must say, that Mr. Gorman's thoughts on Google are as unintelligent and ill-informed as he accuses "the Blog People" of being.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
What amuses and annoys me about Michael Gorman's comments (and yes, I did read them and understand them) is how arrogant they are. Gorman, as President-Elect of the American Library Association, is not just proud enough to say how much smarter he is than other commentators about managing information. No, he's proud enough to dream of telling Google how to manage their money. He's proud enough to characterize a whole class of people intelligent enough to operate a computer as mouth-breathing idiots.
Best of all, he's very proud of how the Universal Bibliographic Control scheme he endorses will solve the world's information access problems. Now please understand: UBC doesn't actually give anyone access to source materials. In point of fact, it seems to be a scheme for trying to assemble a meta-bibliography---in other words, a list of what printed materials you could read if you could get your hands on them. This is unlike Google, an organization crass enough to actually digitize the text of books, to put you one click away from the primary source of the information it indexes, and to maintain backup copies of that information against the loss of the primary source. It is unlike Project Gutenberg, an organization that has already published a huge number of digitized texts that are now available to anyone with Internet access. It is unlike even the bloggers, who at least make their own work fully available online. Gorman apparently has the more limited goal of indexing materials without providing access to them, while mocking the efforts of these other organizations to provide access.
On the offhand chance that Michael Gorman is reading this, let me make my position as clear as possible. I am a scientific research and (if I do say so myself) a fairly literate writer. I use Google, Wikipedia, Citeseer, Project Gutenberg, and other online information resources on a daily basis, because I've found them to be quite effective for me. I read about five fiction novels a month. The last time I used a library card catalog was about 6 months ago. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the comprehensiveness of my University library's bibliography, and everything to do with the paucity of its actual content.
I support our American public libraries, because I think they're an important bulwark in our fight for free speech. In terms of effectiveness in serving my needs and the needs of my family and friends, they are so bad that I fear for their future. Mr. Gorman, please keep in mind that when public library funding comes up for public discussion, your comments, especially given your position, are extraordinarily unhelpful. So, in the jargon of the "blog people" you so despise, please STFU.
I think it's pretty clear that this guy doesn't understand how to use search engines properly and doesn't have the patience to learn.
I think you've never used a good search engine. So far, by their nature, they are mostly limited to specific niches. But he is absolutely right when he says that google is inefficient. Scaling the functionality of the niche search tools to something as broad as the entire net or even just the "blogosphere" is damn hard, but librarians are on the cutting edge of that research. Google may be the best tool at what it does today, but that doesn't mean it is even close to the best possible tool.
Comparing google to a tool like lexis/nexis is like comparing a bicycle a formula 1 race car. The bicycle can go pretty much anywhere but it is going to take a heck of a long time and you'll be pretty sore by the time you get there. The formula 1 car isn't much good off the track, but on track it's orders of magnitude more powerful than any bicycle.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't know about being a waste of resources but you're right that these blogs are poisoning search engines.
My blog, has a tiny mention of Bifidus Digestivum (a new miracle incredient) and a commentry on an amusing Danone advert. Now, most of the traffic I get is from people searching for
Bifidus digestivum
danone actress
danone advert mother daughter
A lot of people are coming to my blog and really, just finding crap. Try it yourself, do a google for Bifidus digestivum and you'll see a site called 'buffoons'.
I heard that there was to be a separate index for blogs in Google. personally I think this would be excellent.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I dunno; at least on TV, the right seems to have the edge (*cough* Bill "Shut Up" O'Reilly *cough*) on angry shouters. You can certainly find yammering harridans on both sides of the fence, but I don't remember any major CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN figures screaming at their guests to shut up.
Then again, I don't have TV, and I hear about these things second-hand through blogs.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not true. Most modern librarians are DB experts with a sweeping understanding of complex data structures and data mining. I should know, I'm married to one. Card catalogs went out of fashion in the 1980s
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While his tone is dripping with condescension, not everyone who writes a blog is worthy to have their thoughts read. I write my blog for the sake of friends and relatives, and some people find my words either interesting or infuriating. I wouldn't deign to assume that I am at the vanguard of a new type of media content distribution paradigm as some people do. Over at K5 there's a hack piece on the blogosphere just about every week, and they all have the same conceited notion that blogs will revolutionize the world. I think that often we, the technorati, get so wrapped up in the splendor of what technology can do, that we tend to overestimate what it will do. Todays predictions of a new media format through wikis and blogs are analagous to the flying cars and domed cities of the 50's.
The trouble is, no one I know who does or ever did run such a site has ever done this. I did it whenever I posted a link to something I wrote on USENET, and people I knew (hardcore geeks, most of em) thought I was a little weird for doing it (and some of them thought that about me posting to USENET too).
Nowadays you can't do that with most blogs, which are hosted on servers not owned by the "blogger". And "blog" has become so broadly applied that people now call any page written in a first-person singular tone that allows feedback a "blog". Sorry, your LiveJournal page is NOT A BLOG. It's not anything particularly special or worthy of a special name, unless maybe you're Linus Torvalds or John Carmack or somebody else whose every word people hang on with bated* breath.
It's time to face the facts. The term "weblog" was nonsensically conceived to begin with, even more nonsensical in later application, and is now so diluted as to be essentially meaning-free anyway. It denotes no useful categorization. The only thing in its favor is that it was the first term to come into existence to denote what was, at the time, a usefully-demarcated subset of online content. Simple inertia should not rule the day and I for one move that we begin the hunt for a new, more-appropriate term.
* Not a typo. "Baited breath" is incorrect and in fact nonsensical usage.
-- Old Man Kensey