Shhh - don’t disturb the librarian, you’ll only annoy him

Filed under ‘reactionary old farts’:

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.

That’s the president-elect of the American Library Association, reacting to some criticism of his article in the Los Angeles Times which suggested that Google digitizing texts and making them available for search might not be such a good idea.

Which actually illustrates rather neatly the intersection of two rather 20th century viewpoints - on the one hand, you’ve got Mr Gorman who seems to view bloggers in much the same light as he no doubt views people who chew gum in his library. Information, it seems, isn’t for everyone - instead it’s to be handed down piece by carefully-selected piece to the great unwashed masses by those who have made it their lives’ work to mediate, filter and carefully shelve it.

And on the other, you’ve got the Los Angeles Times, who have locked the original article away behind their paywall, neatly removing it - and them - from any relevance as far as the web is concerned. I could have linked to them, sending a few visitors their way perhaps, or used my fair use rights and quoted a line or two.

The irony given the subject of Mr Gorman’s rant is that rather than hand over $5 or so to the LA Times, his article was available for free after a few minute’s Googling…