ALA President Not Fond of Bloggers 912
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.'"
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of your photo collection and music collection. It's just another extension of that (think DIARY).
It's about links between information (Score:5, Insightful)
In someways, blogs are a welcome relief from published literature which can be a bit too introspective or polished. I do agree with the librarian who is dismayed at the hype given blogs. Everything in computers gets overhyped. Individual blogs like mine [blogspot.com] really mean nothing. In aggregation, they provide an interesting topology of the concerns of our culture.
Re:It's about links between information (Score:3, Interesting)
Librarians (Score:4, Insightful)
A great example of this filtering can be seen at University Libraries. A researcher pointed out to me that my local universities had almost two full bookcases dedicated to studies of Marx, and not a full shelve concerned with Benjamin Franklin. The researcher thought this odd for a library in the United States. Librarians take their filtering responsibilities seriously. Blogs, forums, online bookstores and whatnot pose the threat of democratizing the great filters librarians put in place.
The librarian article seems concerned with blogs v. the press. I never had the illusion that blogs would lead to the elimination of main stream press. Hell, a good third of all the blog posts in this world reference published article. Very few mainstream press articles point to blogs. This assymetry will always favor the press.
Blogs pose no threat to the press. They do pose a great threat to the cultural filters put in place by librarians.
Re:Librarians (Score:5, Informative)
And to put things in context, Franklin was a great man, but Marx for good or bad was larger. Franklin affected the United States and made it what it is today. But Marx affected the entire world, as "The Commie Father". There is a bit of a difference. Whom would interest me? Franklin hands down, but I would not think that the librarians would want me to read about Marx instead of Franklin.
Frankly, I think librarians are not putting any filter in place, and only presenting ALL of the information, not what a select group considers good or bad.
Getting back to the article, I do tend to agree with the general idea that we are becoming a fast food people who just gobble information without thinking of where the information came from and what it represents.
Re:Librarians (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that we are becoming that kind of people....but rather that we already are. Look at the politicians we have in office, the decisions they make, and the laws they pass with little resistance or interest from the average American.
My dad was reading what he thought was a funny email to me, something about left-wingers wanting the guantanamo bay priosners charged with something or released, and a right-winger saying how bad those people were and would the liberals like to baby sit a gun-toting terrorist.
He stopped laughing when I asked how many cases he'd read about in the paper of those prisoners being charged and proven to be terrorists...when he realized he hadn't. He hadn't ever realized that the government that locked those people up is based around a constituiton that says *everyone* has rights to things like a fair trial.
And he's not the only one who has no idea what the fuck is happening in the world outside his pretty little town. And he's not the only one who probably doesn't really care that much.
Re:Librarians (Score:4, Insightful)
Having been married to a librarian and consequently having known a great many librarians, I can attest that this statement is almost entirely true. There are instances where librarians are allowed to put filters in place, but largely in only two ways: their "top picks" display(s) devoted to personal favorites - if the library even sports such a section or display, and also - as guessed at in an earlier post in this thread - in the promotion of favorite authors and genres/subjects via [usually] temporary and rotating displays/themes. Beyond that, the vast majority of librarians I've encountered are extremely fanatical (yes - fanatical) about unbiased presentation of all available information to users. If you doubt this, I invite you to walk into a library and ask the librarians themselves and the people who frequently use their services.
This equal dissemination of information is what librarians live for. Ask them just how far they, the library, and library system are willing to go to find you the book/subject you want - regardless of how obscure or unpopular the author, book, or subject matter.
Re:Librarians (Score:4, Insightful)
Odd, perhaps, but this can't be blamed on librarians. The complete works of Ben Franklin fills 25 volumes. Those of Marx run 50 volumes. But that's just their own work in their original languages -- the fact is, Marx's works have been translated, republished, and commented on and discussed by other writers much more frequently in history than Ben Franklin's. And the fact is, entire nations and people's have embraced Marx's work as the guiding principle of their political culture (for better or worse). While one can say the same of some of Franklin's ideas, there are no revolutions or mass movements in history built on "Franklinism." Even in the U.S., the country most directly touched by Franklin's ideas, very few people actually read him and far fewer write books about him. Many more read and write about Marx.
If you feel there are too few books on Franklin at libraries, don't blame the librarians. They can only choose from what's available. You're right that part of a librarian's job is to filter information but they don't do it with such a blatant political ideology as you accuse them of here.
Re:Librarians (Score:3, Insightful)
This has changed. I talk to older people. Franklin was widely read and admired up to the great social revolutions of 60s. I should have mentioned that the researcher I referred to had a different problem round about fifty years ago when he couldn't find books on Hegel or Marx and had to go to the library board to request to purchase such books. There was a comple
Re:Librarians (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying there are no political factors at work when libraries decide what books to buy, but the conspiracy to undermine American revolutionary thought that you see at work here is just your own self-serving paranoia.
Also, you're flat-out wrong about it being hard to find books on Hegel or Marx fifty years ago. Your friend's local public library may not have carried them, and I'm not denying that the McCarthy witch hunt era had a significant effect on universities and their libraries, the fact is that serious scholars read and commented on these works throughout the twentieth century, the 1950s included.
Not to mention that any anticommunist crusade in libraries would not have targeted Hegel, who was in fact read (and written about) by many conservative thinkers, including Allan Bloom and of course Leo Strauss, the father of today's neoconservatism.
Re:Librarians (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a librarian. I've said it before here and I imagine that I'll say it again: Librarians are - in many respects - editors of whole collections. Just as an editor for a single work can make it more lucid, readable or relevant for a particular purpose, a librarian can make an entire collection more lucid, readable or relevant for a particular purpose.
I think there are three issues at play here.
First, you are correct that blogs are outside of the "filters" librarians are involved with - at this point. Ho
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
The complaint isn't that blogs are not great works of literature, but that they're such poor specimens. Surely there's something between the average blog and "great literary works" to strive for?
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I'm not exactly sure who this ALA president is really talking about. I don't "blog", and I'm not a "blogger" (unless you're one of those people who consider slashdot a blog), so I'm not exactly familiar with a wide variety of blogs/bloggers. But my feeling was always there's nothing really special and/or stereotypical ab
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Each person chooses a way to live; people do as they please. To claim that one lifestyle is superior is hypocritical, egotistical, and superficial.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
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 n
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
No, since his whole argument was against blog entries in English (I doubt he read any blogs criticizing him in other languages than English) it is clearly associated with one's proficiency in the English language. This in turn has much to do with the culture said person originates from. The fact that a Swede who happens to blog in English produces blog entries of questionable spelling or grammar gives us no insight in his abilities to read and understand complex texts. There is more than one language out there, and not everyone can be expected to have the same level of proficiency in any one such language than the people who natively speak it. After all, I wouldn't expect you to be a more eloquent French speaker than some great French author or poet.
Other than that, I have to agree with you that Mr. Gorman's thoughts on this whole matter are quite unintelligently worded; he probably wrote this in some fit of rage, which isn't the best time to start defending yourself in public against critique. What I found particularly ironic was how he argued that bloggers are unintelligent and inferior in the "grokking complex text" department because their skills in the English Language department are lacking, then goes on a couple of paragraphs later to state that the money invested in this new Google program would be better spent in buying new books for libraries, for example in library-starved California. Yes... It would be nice if more Californians had access to the superior option of local libraries. However, even though Google's new program may not be as elegant a solution as a humble library building stacked with books, it's a resource everyone from around the world (China and similarly censored countries not withstanding) can access.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
To claim that one lifestyle is superior is hypocritical, egotistical, and superficial.
That is a nonsensical statement, and exemplary of the sort of moral relativism that is prevalent among many people today. Of course some lifestyles are superior to others: how could you possibly claim that the "lifestyle" of someone like Mother Teresa was not superior that of Hermann Goering? It doesn't make a bit of sense, unless you're willing to assert that morality is irrelevant to quality, which makes this argument even more silly.
If we apply the generalization to the librarian's statements, it begins to make more sense, however. Apart from that, he makes it seem as though they're "inferior" for not having read "complex texts". Inferior in education, perhaps, but in the grand scheme of things education is a good indicator of a person's worth as a librarian, physicist, or dinner guest, but not a great indicator of a person's intrinsic qualities. This Librarian is behaving as many academics do when faced with "competition from the great unwashed:" with disdain and snobbery.
That being said, I think that the blogosphere is a good and vital part of the datasphere as a whole, and I'm glad it's there, if for no other reason than it serves as an audit for the fourth estate: if enough people cry "bullshit!" simultaneously, they'll eventually be heard.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Funny)
I think it's fair to say that Michael Gorman is a snobby blowhard that discredits and smears the name of intelectuals everywhere. I think it's also fair to say that it is not egotistical nor hypocritical to say that my lifestyle of not being a complete judgemental prick mired in mini-ego battles is superior to his.
That being said, I suddenly realised that I was
Re:Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
I have nothing against digitizing works; however, a dead tree remains an incredibly good way to enjoy static printed matter. Ebooks and the like are fine in concept, but the execution still seems lacking to me, in terms of convenience, portability, and durability. Ever dropped an ebook reader in the bath and gotten it working again? I've dropped books that came out with no damage worse than an irritating waviness to the paper when they dried, and a tendency for the
A False Dichotomy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A False Dichotomy (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everyone has the time or inclination to read, for example, Joyce or Tolstoy - but there's an difference between not reading the classics and not reading at all. Those that aren't really into such books can still be voracious readers (me, for example).
I think the worst kind of reading habit is to read nothing but celebrity m
Re:A False Dichotomy (Score:3, Insightful)
The only part of this statement that could be construed as being true is that those who don't read classical literature are less educated *in classic literature*. Can you really claim to be as well educated in all aspects of knowledge, simply because you have read some old fiction? If not, then how can you claim to be better e
He needs to get out more (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:4, Insightful)
> rejection slip in his wastebasket.
he's the president elect of the ALA. he's not really going to be getting any rejection slips. as someone who keeps an online journal, and as the son of a librarian, i have to agree with him. that's why robots.txt has an exclude rule for my 'blog'. i don't want to pollute the contents of the internet[s]. maybe my friends enjoy what i write, and that's fine- i just think it's more responsible to keep it out of the search engines. people often go to search engines for information on a certain subject, and weblogs are all they find in the first few pages. these are mostly sources they do not know, and thus (hopefully) will not trust.
and what he said about the quality of writing in blogs... that's quite hard to argue against. the vast majority of blogs are written by youths for youths- basically public diaries. they are wholly uninteresting as anything but what is considered 'outsider art' by hipsters, who ironically enough compose the upper echelon of the 'blogosphere'. i don't like radiohead, i don't think strongbad is funny, but i do keep a weblog. it's a way to vent, and i don't think it should be considered serious work by anyone. some bloggers are seeking journalistic integrity, and that's great. some people write novels in the form of post-by-chapter blogs. that's cool- but blogs are for the most part internet pollution, redundant, inane, ego-stroking, and self-serving.
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:4, Insightful)
90% of everything is crap. Blogs are no exception. It's just a medium, which, I'll admit, doesn't yet have its Anne Frank.
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:3, Funny)
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:4, Insightful)
We'd be much better off if instead of yammering on, some of these people became librarians and editors instead.
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is the removal of the "premises". At one time, your information on which things to consume in terms of information was maintained by gatekeepers, and becoming a gatekeeper was expensive. You had to be a bookshop, and put a book in the window, or be a newspaper owner with premises, expensive presses and a distribution network.
Bloggi
Re:He needs to get out more (Score:3, Insightful)
But the head of the ALA is not a publisher. He is a librarian. This means that his job is not to evaluate works for publication, his job is to sift through the mess after the publishers are done and try to make some sense of it all. From the perspective of a librarian, publishing is inevitable, whether it's done by
Re:Blogs are useless as an informative tool. (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I'm pretty happy that blogs exist, since the whole CMS thing lowers the threshold of Web publishing enough to allow people who can't be arsed with HTML to write stuff like that up. It takes a bored kind of person to bother designing a web page entirely around a five minute cure to a software problem, whereas a person with a blog will often just cut and paste a few lines. Untidy, ok, but sometimes handy.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
I think blogs will be treated similarly to diaries by history. 20 years from now, we may see collections of important bloggings as eBooks, or however "real literature" is published at that time. But the vast majority of blogs will have vanished into the
Blogs Are Like School Yard Brawls (Score:3, Interesting)
Irony: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irony: (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, with the following qualification: the article reads like a bad blog entry. Its author seems to be terminally obsessed with his own fancied cleverness.
Re:Irony: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hardly. Not one use of the words "cool" or "mash-up"; not peppered with links to other sites with complimentary views; proper grammar; coherent thoughts expresed in complete sentences.
It's an op-ed piece, largely on-target in its critique of bloggers, though he misunderstands the value of Google.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The real problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
And a note on the word "blog"... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:And a note on the word "blog"... (Score:3, Funny)
"The cat awaited the mouse with baited breath".
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
ok, apart from the wierd metaphore quite a good post methinks.
Apparently not.
Hammer, meet nail, location head (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Challenge: What books are you reading, Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
"Ritterburg und Fürstenschloss" - Excavation-report from the Oberveste Passau (mainly 15th up to some some 18th century). It's a bit dry, but it has a lot of nice pictures
"The Medieval Horse" - Excavations from London. Same style as above, hundreds of pictures and descriptions of finds.
And then of course, "Ensel und Kretel" from Walter Moers. A Fairy Tale.
HA! (Score:5, Funny)
Couldn't be more true (Score:4, Insightful)
Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press, and that they'll take the place of the New York Times and Washinton Post, and Newscorp will crumble at their feet.
Not with the half-assed misinformation and melodrama on the vast majority of the political and "news" blogs I've seen (to say nothing of the wild spitting and sputtering in the comments).
Not as long as they have no problem with their complete and utter lack of accountability of any type, and the vicious, one-sided partisan nature designed solely to incite vitriol in their groupthink audiences.
Not while they do nothing more than constantly pat each other on their virtual backs and reinforce their own worldviews and twisted near-conspiracy theories, ignoring any and all other sides of the story while simultaneously thinking of themselves as "open minded" and the only revealers of "the truth".
Blogs have a place in the world of information. And, like all sources of information, I'll concede that some can, in general, build a reputation for trust and accuracy. But many, particularly political blogs, have no regard for anything but the furtherance of their own agendas, taking things wildly out of context, and going on vindictive missions to build a one-sided case to paint the target of their ire in the worst possible light, without any consideration for any other motivations or other sides of the stories.
And they think they're the future of the media?
No fucking thanks.
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:2, Interesting)
Lack of accountability is not necessarily a bad thing in th
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:5, Insightful)
All-too-often, some blogger will post an entry regarding a very interesting and thought-provoking idea, but mostly it's a few sentences and a hyperlink. The blog entry is just an arrow, a finger pointing at the moon. Why should the blogger get credit? Not only is the idea not theirs, they also didn't even offer an in-depth analysis of it (or more often: any analysis). Quite commonly, blogs are devoid of real content. When I look at a lot of the blogs--even professional ones--and they are essentially just posting summaries and references, I question the validity of blogs as a writing medium. Which is to say, it might be one for reference or information, biased or not, but not one of substance.
The really funny thing to me is sometimes it becomes circular, or even recursive. This blog posts about a concept via another blog which posted something they found over here which was just a little blurb about Apple buying out TiVo. Again, the idea proves very interesting--the short degrees of separation and locus of interest allow for quick news online--but it is not very weighty.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Plenty of bloggers, especially those with a political bent can get long-winded. And, furthermore, this is not to discredit the weblog as a medium. I think its pretty great and has quite a bit of potential. But I use blogs (or more specifically, their rss feeds) as information harvesters, not as sources of well reasoned, well written articles.
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:2)
I find the best of both worlds for news to be Fark or Slashdot -- the posts are mostly links to legitimate journalistic endeavours employing real journalists, but people can still ham it up on the comments -- de facto fora on Slashdot, streams of consciousness on Fark. Perhaps a bit
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:2, Insightful)
Political Agenda is what that 24 hour POS news station is all about. Political partisan nature is what most news stations are all about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fox News' problem is NOT Bias. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's actually rather easy to spot the difference between Fox News and the rest of the networks.
The reason I find Fox News offensive is not simply because of any leanings in political spectrum (although I do think it is a right-leaning group); the reason I find Fox News so abhorrent is because it reduces complex issues into single-phrase arguments pundits can shout at each other on TV. I agree that CNN and oth
Shouters? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again, I don't have TV, and I hear about these things second-hand through blogs.
--grendel drago
What liberal media? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "liberal media" is a nice meme that helps right-wing politicians get their way and keeps their supportoers from experiencing too much cognitive dissonance. its also completely and utterly false. Bias for all commercial media outlets can be traced to the ownership of that media outlet, profitability, nationalism, and fads.
The Tory Party Joke (Score:3, Interesting)
In the US they have the Republicans, which are just like our Tories, and they also have the Democrats, which are just like our Tories. For those outside the UK, the Tories are our right wing party.
Re:The Tory Party Joke (Score:3, Funny)
To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like just about everyone. The 'Confirmation Bias' is a characteristic of human psychology.
That said, my problem w/Fox "news" isn't that I disagree with the politics, it's the cheap pandering to the masses.
Example: Just before the invasion of Iraq, most news channels were, reasonably enough (given that most americans at the time, when polled, were against an invasion) discussing the 'should we/shouldn't we' issue. I flipped over to fox news and every commercial break ended with a big animated flag / F-16 / eagle montage and big shiny "Freedom on the March!" banner. C'mon guys... let's try for a semblance of restaint.
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:3, Insightful)
The Enlightenment is over, the Renaissance is forgotten and millions of people live day to day in the darkness of oblivion. Oblivious to the great works and thoughts of millions of humans before them. Goethe would have cursed the
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that history is (and certainly was, anyway) written by the academics and the educated; the kind of intellectual stimulation you're describing through the ideas of the Englightenment and Renaissance probably only applied to a tiny veneer of high society, while for the va
Re:Couldn't be more true (Score:3, Insightful)
The mainstream media has shown itself repeatedly just as biased with its own political agenda*; as Hugh Hewitt wrote in his recent book BLOG, he likens it very much to the Gutenberg revolution: you had a very CONTROLLED media business, where very tight-knit group of people with their own biases were controlling everything about the public discussion, for all intents and purposes.
* note to
"Blog people" (Score:5, Funny)
Random Facts (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure what
a random
paragraph is. The temperature here is 33 degrees
fahrenheit. I took a walk today. My HP
doesn't like talking to CUPS.
There are 3,472 green M&M's in the
jar.
Re:Random Facts (Score:2, Funny)
This guy has no right (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This guy has no right (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This guy has no right (Score:5, Funny)
The irony
Complext Texts? (Score:5, Funny)
Read complex texts? Ha! /.ers can't even be bothered to RTFA.
ALA People (Score:5, Funny)
heretics (Score:4, Funny)
share that is.
Slashdot ad? (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of like slashdot readers?
Same fate, different era (Score:3, Funny)
Work harder at uncovering the good ones (Score:5, Informative)
Yo is sure to get schooled from my mad skillz. Oh by the way, this 3l33t haxor had oatmeal for breakfast this morning. Oh and here's a picture of my cat.
It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
On one level, blogs are intended for brief communications or thoughts that often revolve around a central theme, but not always. Often they are intended as a means for maintaining communication with family and friends or as a creative outlet. However, this guy has obviously not been very informed or is lazy about finding informative/interesting blogs out there like:
Kevin Sites [kevinsites.net] whose reporting pioneered the use of the blog in combat reporting.
Dan Gillmor [typepad.com] whose new efforts are targeted at grassroots journalism from sources exactly like blogs.
Or Chris Anderson's blog The Long Tail [thelongtail.com] which discusses businesses, economic, cultural and political models whose goals are to take advantage of the significant portion of those populations underlying the distal distributions of a curve.
And many others whose careful investigation, research, thought and reporting go into the content on their blogs.
Oh, and then there are the blogs like mine [utah.edu]........
Unpossible! (Score:2)
thats patantley fols.
He should be ashamed of himself (Score:2)
Librarians are bitter (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know that he is an antidigitalist... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he is opposed to "inefficient search" then the Dewey Decimal system must infuriate him. Google is great for getting a rough idea of what is out there, occasionally it may lead you to something really worthwhile - but most of the time it only cuts down on the early legwork, something very worth doing.
Re:I don't know that he is an antidigitalist... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
For a high-ranking librarian... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope he realizes that while most blogs aren't worth the bytes they are printed on in terms of content, there are enough gems that one can't write the entire concept off as a bad idea. In any case, judging bloggers by the quality of their writing largely misses the point--blogs aren't supposed to be a regulated, edited, meticulously researched medium of writing--they are a means of sharing thoughts with the world without having to jump through hoops. Whether the world listens, complains, enjoys the blog, takes offense to it, or feels that the author should have gingerly lucubrated every detail as if each entry were a Nobel Prize acceptance speech is beside the point entirely.
Ignorance breeds arrogance Wisdom breeds restraint (Score:5, Insightful)
Our current U.S. political climate bears this out.
There are plenty of articulate and educated bloggers, certainly. But there are many many more who aren't. We should slow down and think more about the quality of our information, not just the quantity.
Re:Ignorance breeds arrogance Wisdom breeds restra (Score:3, Insightful)
<3
Can't replace a good book (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, who thinks blogs are where great literatire is to be found anyway? The best blogs-with-a-purpose seem to be the ones that report news stories the mainstream media won't cover. The blurring of the Tinfoil Hat as it were. Anyway, when I want good literature I usually turn to a book. For example in the wake of last weekend's suicide by one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, I decided to finally crack open a copy of Hey Rube given to me last year which I had not gotten around to reading. I found this in the Author's Note at the very beginning:
You don't need to wear a Tinfoil Hat these days to see that the plutocracy now in power in the U.S. controls the message and the media. Bloggers who attempt the lost art of Journalism can become a powerful force for truth and justice, keeping the old-guard media whores honest (if that's even possible anymore). But I don't think the ALA has to worry about dumbing down Americans' interest in literature. For 90% of the masses television finished that off decades ago.
this guy is hurting his cause (Score:5, Insightful)
What I got out of it is that the president of the ALA is afraid that his way of life and his preferred methods af acquiring information are becoming less relevant, and rather than changing the way he and his association do business, he figures he'll stand up and mock the people who are changing things in hope that others wil listen. Nice try, man.
this guy is not hurting his cause. (Score:3, Insightful)
It won me over. At least, upon reading it I found that my personal view of blogs and bloggers was much closer to that of the ALA president than that held by many bloggers themselves, and that the ALA president had expressed his view in a way that both indicated he understood the situation and was in itself well stated.
So it comes down to what, exactly, the goal of this piece was. If the point was to express something, it was a
"Blog" (Score:4, Informative)
The word "blog" has existed for years now and has become so ubiquitous that most news channels, TV shows, magazines, and newspapers don't even feel the need to define it, let alone pick apart a word that practically everyone already knows the root of by now. This is like a radio DJ ranting about MTV in the '80s and starting his speech off by defining the term "television".
If you're just now learning what the word "blog" means and believe that the people around you have no clue what it could mean or where it comes from, you're at least a couple of years behind the times, and are far less qualified than the average American to speak about the subject. If Tom Brokaw could regularly use it during the news coverage the presidential election a few months ago without even bothering to define it, it's pretty damn mainstream.
Mr. Gorman misses the whole point of Google (Score:4, Insightful)
I have on several occasions tried to find a book that covers some particular detail of something, and failed, only to later find it by accident in a different book that I wouldn't have expected to cover it. Mr. Gorman must never have had this experience, or he would welcome new tools to help him find relevant books.
I suspect that this is what the bloggers understand and have not been successful in conveying to him. But since I don't know specifically which blogs and bloggers he's referring to, it's hard to say.
Context (Score:5, Informative)
Bloggers who focus primarily on
-- putting together collections of obscure references
-- often don't have formal training in their areas
objected to the classical approach to research that Gorman advocated.
I see this article as written response the blogs which attacked Gorman. As a society we could wonders on the library front for a fraction of the cost of projects like Google's; this is a point that no one questions. The real issue is what is the relative value of libraries as contrasted with digital information repositories.
Blogging proposes a very democratic model of information evaluation that any intelligent person given access to the information will be able to derive the correct conclusions quickly and easily. The classic approach argues that a guided program of study is highly advisable prior deviling into raw sources of information. In feeds in which you are an expert which approach do you think is more correct?
Did anyone else notice ... (Score:5, Funny)
Did Mr. Gorman just troll Slashdot??
My Take On Blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
It will not replace modern journalisim because modern journalisim will replace itself. At best it could make editorial pages less read.
noise issue (Score:5, Insightful)
In the sense of traditional information theory, noise is information (to simplify a bit). Without noise there is homogenization of signal equating to a lack of movement toward chaos or entropy. Information therefore is created by breaking down communication channels, altering the signal (in this case news) between source and destination. The creation of noise hence creates a dynamic system of information in which all elements are going toward a state of complexity.
Complexity = good.
When extrapolated toward blog vs. popular press, blogs present a situation in which subjective filtering and emergence from it creates the content, rather than content coming from one source.
It is a distributed publishing model which puts the onus of interpretation, use and distillation upon the reader rather than the propagator of said content.
So taking information theory and applying it to blogs, blogs create more dynamic states from which useful information can be gleaned, but it changes the practice of information dispersal to the extent that the hierarchy which typified the dissemination of information pre-Internet has been flattened and in some sense elimnated. No longer is there a differentiation between the reductive properties of grass-roots press and large press.
The issue I see with this guy is not that he is a Luddite, but that he is threatened by the breakdown of the hegemony imposed previously be the hiearchy created by movable type and the publishing industry.
What the hell is he talking about? (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst offender on my friends list is in fact an English student in her third year of college. She works in a library and takes every advantage of her unlimited access to it. The serious writing she does is very good and she gets high marks for it in class.
But the fact of the matter is that a livejournal is just a diary you share with your friends. Historically, diary entries have been kept short in no small part because to do otherwise is very time consuming. The fact that you are keeping a diary at all is an indication that you are embarking on some kind of adventure and actually going about living your life. As such, you don't have a lot of time at the end of the day to write much, unless your living is made as a writer.
I encourage Mr. Gorman to read the diaries of others and stop passing judgement on those who write them. He might stumble upon the plain fact that diaries usually aren't written by professional writers, but have their own worth anyway.
Who should be allowed to write? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is probably true if you look at average numbers. Well, apart from newspaper letter columns, which I find slightly below Usenet posts in quality. And we don't really know about the private media, we tend only to see written diaries and letters from famous people.
However, they also mean that a lot more people are writting than ever used the old media. Honestly, how many in here would ever consider writting to a newspaper letter column? And would you write long, carefully formulated letters to friends and family if you could not use SMS, IM or email? And how many of the bloggers among you would write a diary instead?
What the professional writters are really complaing about is that they no longer have a virtual monopoly on writting. It is now for everyone. And of course, we are getting better at it. Much of the communication (like here) is done in public, and we can see which formulations get the point across and which doesn't. So while the writting may not become beautiful, it slowly becomes effective. At least for those who have anything at all to contribute.
The other part of it is that we become less impressed by the written word, now that it has become a daily tool of our own. We are much less likely to believe in something because it is written (in a a paper or book) than our parents were. Since we know no special skills are required to write and publish, we intuitively know that the written word is no more trsutworthy than the spoken word.
This also annoyes the professional writters, even if they don't know it.
Remember, if you're not part of the solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ifla.org] 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.
What a hypocrite (Score:3, Insightful)
Some answers Mr. Gorman (Score:3, Interesting)
And perhaps you have a better idea to search thousands of books in a matter of seconds other than digitising it and using the best search algorithm in this world! May be he wants us to search the catalogue and browse through thousands of books to find that one paragraph about something I wish to know for my paper. Talk about wastage of time. Even ancient manuscripts in India are being digitised with optical scanners by NIC [www.nic.in] so that it becomes accessible to scholars in the quickest manner possible. Also these pieces of history can be preserved for longer periods if kept away from the hassle of observation every other day. I believe the same goes with books too.
"If a fraction of the latter were devoted to buying books and providing librarians for the library-starved children of California, the effort would be of far more use to humanity and society."
Same might have been done in case of Iraq and Afghanistan too. But considering that the threats were true, if the wars were not waged, then another building would have collapsed or a nuclear bomb would have hit LA. My point is if we want to preserve our books and history and learn in the quickest manner possible, we have to bring technology into consideration. The only thing static in any field is change.
By Their Works Shall Ye Know Them (Score:5, Informative)
If the President of the ALA has such a low opinion of bloggers, perhaps his organization should stop giving so many major awards to them.
I think what he actually meant to say was something along the lines of:
Blogs and Books (Score:3, Insightful)
Gorman is responding to a select group of bloggers who chose to attack him because he doesn't think Google should be nominated for sainthood. I think he underestimates the power of searching and random access...
But the real sadness here for those of us who love libraries (I do, and I support them by using them and contributing financially) is that he unfortunately represents a very real and powerful part of the administrative apparatus of most libraries. These people don't understand that the roles of libraries, repositories, and librarians are radically changing. I don't mind the whining of the fossils-- I even appreciate a bit of the productive tension between the white-gloved, shhhh-ing blue-hairs and the stinking rabble of the Internet-- but I feel for the younger set getting their relatively useless Library Science education at institutions run by the traditionalists. They might as well get a degree in phrenology or alchemy...
What's More Is, He's Write (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's step into the wayback machine . . . (Score:3, Funny)
How wrong that sounds today.
Oh come off it Mahatma (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing the "blogging phenomena" to the Indian independence movement is a fine way to illustrate your massive sense of self-importance, though.
Oh, no, not the Gandhi quote again! (Score:5, Insightful)
They're both true, of course, but it's silly to forget either one in a debate.
Re:Oh, no, not the Gandhi quote again! (Score:3, Insightful)
I, too, go positively batshit crazy whenever somebody trots out some dusty quote from somebody really fantastic in order to prop up their otherwise indefensible position. The Gandhi one is popular; the Franklin one about liberty and security is even more so. And, of course, anything from Orwell is right on the money.
What these people need to understand is that they're not actually saying anything here. They're trying to imply that they are equivalent to Gandhi or Franklin or whomever,