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By Staff -- Library Journal, 4/1/2005

Bloggers vs. Gorman

We were inundated with responses to Michael Gorman's "Revenge of the Blog People!" (BackTalk, LJ 2/15/05, p. 44). We have room only for representative excerpts. For more on the blogging brouhaha, see News, p. 18.

Good grief! The snarky, sarcastic, and oh-so-self-important Gorman really needs to crawl into the 21st century. Only recently aware of blogs and bloggers, he has no problem generalizing and stereotyping. He comes across as an out-of-touch elitist snob desperately and futilely trying to hold back the winds of change and progress. If this were the early 20th century, he'd be penning screeds about the superiority of the horse and buggy to those "newfangled automobile machines."
—Anthony Roberts, Leland, IA

Gorman gave me a good chuckle over breakfast…. While the activity is similar, I don't feel the urge to cringe when someone stirs up bloggers the way I do when a child sticks his hand in an ant hill. Gorman's comment about using the money Google wastes on its projects to build public libraries was particularly entertaining. I approve completely. I'm the product of a small, rural library that was home away from home to a lot of us when I was growing up. The shopping mall isn't an adequate substitute, but it's often all a child is given today.
—Fred Ross, Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville

Michael Gorman demonstrates his ignorance of the cyberscape…. Bloggers and blogs are similar to the muckrakers and broadsheets of the time before our news media consolidated…. They don't have editors or news directors…. This is a good thing. Blog readers are more likely to question what they read. Bloggers must establish their own reputations, rather than rely on the reputations of a larger institution. The honesty and investigative verve in the blogs I've read have convinced me they're usually worth my time.
—Gabriel Farrell, Columbia Univ., New York

Gorman's piece is one of the most acerbic, defensive, and unpleasant bits of commentary I have read this century. The Blog People, as he dubs the millions who now publish their thoughts online without the benefit of editors, have a name for people who post comments as needlessly combative as his: Troll…. Blogs are indeed full of mindless nattering, but there is plenty of worthwhile content there as well. If Gorman considers the points raised in blogs worthy of any response, they should be worthy of being addressed civilly.
—Ert Dredge, Somerville, MA

The very term Blog People…is needlessly condescending and alarmingly prejudiced. It's obvious from Gorman's stylistically tortured definition of a blog…that he doesn't hold blogging in high esteem. It's inappropriate, at best, and counterproductive, at worst, for the president-elect of the American Library Association to dismiss the resurgence of publishing as an activity for the common man with such ill-informed opinions so biliously expressed…. Were [Gorman] my librarian, I'd never set foot in the place again.
—Kieran Michael C. Brown, Yonkers, NY

Shame on Gorman for quoting Blog People without citing his sources…bloggers are not a monolithic entity with a single set of beliefs. The beauty of blogs is that they allow a staggering variety of opinions…. Many…are at least as well written as popular newspapers and magazines, with ideas one would never hear in those mainstream publications…even some ideas that disagree with the president of the American Library Association.
—Samantha Musher, Somerville, MA—Blog Person, librarian, and reader of complex texts

Gorman's…castigation of bloggers includes many people who go to libraries and read modern and classic nonfiction literature…. Gorman lambastes Google, which is merely a tool to mine the Internet…. Due to the current Digital Millennium Copyright Act and laws surrounding public domain (or the lack of a public domain now), no texts are searchable. I blame myself, other Americans, and even Gorman for taking that lying down. Gorman's rant should have been aimed at the current copyright laws and the new IP enforcers who claim to be keeping capitalism alive.
—James Cabe, Network Engineer, Houston, TX

I don't agree…that "nonscholarly" writing, whether in blogs or wherever, is inherently of lesser value than scholarly writing…. Having said that, I don't agree that criticizing blogs and bloggers makes you a reactionary Luddite. I find the world of library-related blogs too insular…so I don't read them much. I fail to see how that opinion should have any effect on my reputation as a progressive librarian type….
—K.R. Roberto, Head, Monographs Original Cataloging, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens