I love a Friday with someone new to hate

It is people like Michael Gorman that make me question my decision to become a librarian. Trapped in a bygone era and desperately clinging to the idea that they are not becoming obsolete. Surely if information is important, it must take you a long time to find it and will require the help of someone with special letters after their name. Right?

The man actually suggests that it is better to read a book in book form than in digitized format. And belittles bloggers who disagree with him. It is certainly my preference to read words off the printed page, but please do not suggest that the quality of information is somehow better just because trees had to die to get it into your mind.

The fact that he admits that he didn't really know about blogs until 2004 says about all that needs to be said. As an information professional, it really is your responsibility to know about new media. You don't have to like it, but you certainly can't revel in your ignorance and expect the respect of intelligent people.

"It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. 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. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable."

I ain't never read none of them there complicated texts. Them books sure do gots lots of words. Thank the lord for the Drudge Report or I don't know how I'd get my news. It's hard for me to read the newspaper 'cos all the drool dropping from my mouth smudges the ink.

And clearly he is judging the 'blog people' by what they have written, rather than by what he thinks, which accounts for the fact that he has not just lumped an entire group of people into the category of idiots because he happens to not like the format in which they choose to share information. Because that would be the reaction of a mindless idiot!!

This is the mentality of the president of the American Library Association. He also thinks that Google should put the money they have been using to digitize and make searchable some of the contents of the world's great libraries -- to make them accessible to all of mankind -- into providing libraries for the poor children of California. Well, Mr. Gorman, if you're that concerned about those children rent a van, get some books and drive through the streets of East L.A. Do not presume to tell Google how to spend it's money. And I'm not sure who it is that insisted that the quality of your writing was such that it deserved to be in print. But perhaps you should get a second opinion.

It is fair to say that I hate this man and everything that he and his Castro loving organisation stand for. And somehow I doubt that next time someone asks me for information I will respond "let me just Universal Bibliographic Control that for you."

I am posting this to the internet now, without an editor or a censorship board (sorry Fidel).

via Instapundit