Library Talk

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Come on, tell us how you REALLY feel

A little light reading from Michael Gorman:
The Sleep of Reason, Part I
The Sleep of Reason, Part II

This should provide for hours of discussion fun, and actually leads quite nicely into the subject-matter of a post I have brewing in my head.

Let the commenting begin!

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posted by jess at 11:07 AM

6 Comments:

  • Oooh that is too good to just leave a comment. I need to blog about this. I will post the link with highlights here.

    By Blogger Jeff Scott, at 12:45 PM  

  • It's almost a parody... except it's not!

    By Anonymous K.G. Schneider, at 12:51 PM  

  • Ok I posted.
    http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/2007/06/one-dimensional-society-library-talk.html

    Here are my highlights:
    True:
    The hive mind may not always be the best mind.

    Expertise is lost.

    You are not an expert, artist, whatever because you say you are.

    False:
    Our current society is not undergoing a sleep of reason from web 2.0 concepts.

    Wikipedia is inaccurate.

    In general, our society is a one-dimensional society.

    By Blogger Jeff Scott, at 1:16 PM  

  • It's difficult for me to take seriously someone who uses "fixity" in a blog post. Good word, perhaps, but someone should remind Mr. Gorman of Thomas Jefferson's great quote:

    " The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

    By Anonymous FvinSC, at 2:25 PM  

  • It's really hard for me to get too riled up over Gorman these days. I tend to ignore him. Maybe that's not the best strategy, but it keeps me sane.

    What does drive me batty about him is that he doesn't seem to realize that we all use different kinds of information depending on our needs. Sure, authority is important sometimes and that *can* be hard to judge on the free web. But if I read about a cool idea for a library program or resource on somebody's blog, I don't really care about authority so much.

    If I need authoritative information, there are criteria I can use to judge it. Just like I would with print information, by the way, Gorman!

    By Blogger Kaijsa, at 4:36 PM  

  • One of the things I find interesting about his posts is the underlying tone of, "These 2.0 people are trying to overthrow 'authority'!" Um, what's up with that? Did one of the big library 2.0 proponents say someplace that print is dead, authority is dead, Wikipedia is the be-all-and-end-all of reference sources? If so, I completely missed that.

    I consider myself a well-rounded, general-purpose (heh) reference librarian. And as such, I can judge the authority of print and digital sources alike, and I can choose when, and if, a "non-authoritative" source will do the trick.

    I don't know - the attitude that comes through sounds very much like the fear-based, tech-phobic attitudes I encounter everyday at work....

    By Blogger Jessica, at 7:20 PM  

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