Free Range Librarian

I’ve hinted at this before, but in watching the discussions unfold on the Britannica blog — discussions I have contributed to directly, in part because my blog post trackbacks don’t show up there — it struck me today, while reading Jane’s parody, that the only woman cited in the entire discussion is, as she puts [...]

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I love it when my predictions come true. Britannica is indeed using Gorman’s gorp to stir the pot (or hold a “forum,” as they think of it), as the following email that flew into my inbox this morning indicates.
So out of the tens, even hundreds of thousands of librarians Britannica could have selected, they pick [...]

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This is brief, because I didn’t learn about this until I had written over 2,000 words on nonprofit IT management for an article that I need to wrap up. But how can I resist?
Having alienated most of his core audience, Michael Gorman has published a two part vent on Brittannica.com that demonstrates how ably he [...]

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The problem with Michael Gorman “leading” on the issue of library education–however important that topic is to our profession–is that you have to gnaw off a leg to follow him. Witness his column in the May issue of American Libraries:
“If you believe, as I do, that there is a crisis in library education that [...]

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‘”I was mugged,” Gorman said afterward. “He did not deliver the speech he told us ten days earlier that he would deliver.”‘
So Gorman feels Andre Codrescu hijacked his keynote at Midwinter by switching topics midstream. Perhaps Gorman has some inkling at this point what it’s like to think you’re inviting someone to the table to [...]

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When Michael Gorman and I are in agreement, as we are today with his comments to Good Morning Silicon Valley. I could sigh that Gorman has now become the poster child for reactive statements, but on Wikipedia, I don’t think he’s wrong. Call me a fusty old Pleistocene fuddy-duddy with sleeve garters and a bustle–and [...]

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The LITA-L list has seen brisk traffic today regarding Michael Gorman’s continued statements about bloggers, Google, the distressing habit of not reading books from page A to Z, and his one-man campaign in support of the global eradication of snippet-reading.
I’d like to ignore Gorman, but he keeps popping up like a bad penny. The [...]

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Going over the November 1 WSJ article where Gorman was (again) quoted on Google’s ambitions to scan all known texts (let’s face it, that’s what it is), I thought it might be worth to look at the article in context. My conclusion is that the reporters tried hard to be balanced, but in terms of [...]

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Update: I was too hard on the WSJ reporters. Read my explanation. I won’t change this post, but I shouldn’t let my contempt for Gorman obscure my sense of fairness.
It’s All Good reports that Michael Gorman again went after Google (in re the project now called Google Book Search) in an article in the Wall [...]

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Sarah Houghton posts her good gloss on the Gorman talk on his home turf, but I felt a little frustrated because I wanted to know how the crowd responded. (Or do I?)
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