Gorman on Blogs

The arguments about blogging continue, but this time they are focused around something the President-elect of ALA, Michael Gorman, has written. Librarian.net has a nice round up of all the responses going on and an initial post on the beginnings of the arguments here. I respect Gorman and his vision for ALA, but I am irritated by this part of his statement:

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.

Excuse me? I am not claiming that my blog, tiny and inconsequential, is the best discourse out there, but I am not striving for a Jonathan Swift or Spectator level here. (See Mr. Gorman, I read old and complicated things, from beginning to end, and I understand them!) Steven Cohen is incensed, as are others, but I particularly liked his response to the above quote as well.

Steven said,”There you go, generalizing again. We’re all stupid and couldn’t parse a sentence if our Master’s degrees depended on it.” (emphasis in original text)

I am going to read some other responses to see what my fellow bloggers have said. Read for yourself and decide. I still respect Mr. Gorman, but I wish he would be a little more open minded about blogs and what they have done for the library community.

–Jane, is disappointed