Reacting responsibly
The Michael Gorman flap seems just about to have run its course—except for me, because I’m now firmly ensconced on the welcoming committee for his April 25 visit to SLIS.
(And what a month April will be. ACRL, a trip for a meeting the week after ACRL, and now this. I must say, this is the one semester in which I’ve not been able to get ahead on my work. I’m lucky just to stay current.)
So I’ve been rereading things and rethinking things, pondering the best riposte. A few comments here and there about the library blogsphere have pointed fingers at whoever it was that set Gorman off. Me, among others, if Seth Finkelstein is right and this Caveat Lector post is what was forwarded to Gorman by a friend of his.
Despite my well-known spaghetti backbone, I stand by that post. I do think Gorman anti-digital, and I thought so long before the editorial about Google hit print. Because, you see, I’ve read (sustainedly, even, if that’s a word) a few more texts by Mr. Gorman. Lengthy and relatively complex ones, even, though as others have pointed out, his short “meditations” tend to contain the pith of his anti-digital sentiments. I do also believe that Mr. Gorman can be as anti-digital as he likes without appreciably slowing the pace of digitization, both inside and outside libraries. Obviously I could be wrong about that; nonetheless, I’ve bet my livelihood on it.
However. Using Michael Gorman as a convenient proxy for all that is anti-digital in librarianship is a cheap rhetorical trick, and if he’s mad at that, he’s right to be. So I shan’t do it any more, and I’m sorry I did it at all.
Likewise, I’m a bit sick at heart at having let the side down, so to speak. I don’t like the idea that I might have tarnished blogging in general and library-blogging in particular in the eyes of someone with plenty of weight to throw around. Not a good thing to have done.
So what can I do during this visit with a view to reclaiming library-bloggers’ reputation?
This shirt, much as it tickles my funny bone, is not the way to go; putting the guy on the defensive will accomplish rather less than nothing. The message I’m after is “Hey, bloggers are good librarians and good people!” rather than anything Gorman-specific.
Nor do I especially care to hide my blogger-identity; I never have, and those who know me know that I get just especially ornery when told to keep quiet before authority for no reason other than its status as authority. (Politics I grok. I even practice them now and again. Naked kowtowing I don’t know that I’ll ever become overly proficient at.)
So, on the whole, this seems the best option; it makes the point without being in-Gorman’s-face about it. If half the events mentioned during yesterday’s meeting remain on the schedule, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to bear witness. My fellow proto-librarians and I, we’re doing good work this semester, work worth taking pride in. Should speak louder than a dozen (or a hundred) blog posts.
I’m going to buy five such buttons, as long as I’m bothering. Any of my fellow SLIS-bloggers who want one, just drop me a line, eh?