What's Michael Gorman's problem? Gorman, the president-elect of the American Library Association, recently attempted to respond to some criticism of an article he wrote for the LA Times ("Google and God's Mind," December 17, 2004) by submitting some commentary to library Journal in an article titled, "Revenge of the Blog People". Here's a choice quote:

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 makes me worry that this is the president of ALA. I find him quite clueless and thought his "Google and God's Mind" article missed the point. Sure, I agree with his distinction between information and knowledge. But, he makes these crazy arguments that digitizing full text isn't valuable because no scholar would read a book on a computer screen. Or some malarchy like that. One thing really has nothing to do with the other.

Then he vents in LJ, alienating a population of people based on a writing format or technology they use. He apparently believes that writing in any forum other than a peer reviewed journal is not to be taken seriously.

Boy. Wouldn't it be nice if the ALA president spent more energy on important issues rather than wasting time stereotyping people and pointing fingers at technologies that aren't as perfect as he?