I have been a little bemused by the many posts and comments on library-related blogs in the past week that mention NASIG. Great exposure, right? Right, except that most of them seem to have focused on one person’s informal writeup of one particular session that discussed the role of columnists in library journals in a world increasingly dominated by blogs. Anna Creech (Eclectic Librarian) provides a bit more perspective of what was said, which is good, especially since she was there. I mention bemusement because frankly a lot of what has been written seems to me to be a little too quick to judge and especially, a little too quick to assume an “us (bloggers, the good people) vs. them (those evil, skulking column people who are fearful of bloggers)” perspective. Behold, the power — and peril — of blogs.
Let me make it clear, first of all, that I wasn’t there for the presentation. I wish I had been. What I write here is simply the result of reading various posts about “the incident.” For those who don’t know to what I refer, “the incident” involved a presentation at this year’s NASIG conference that apparently had some negative (and perhaps unfair) comparisons to make between columns in print library literature and information derived from blogs.
Second, my general point here is, calm down folks and try to get some perspective! T. Scott Plutchak writes about this in his blog and combines this perspective with discussion of another controversial blog post by Michael Gorman. T. Scott’s tone is welcome. He also makes the following point:
“We are really still at the very beginnings of figuring out the best ways to engage in discourse using all of these new tools.”
I think this is true, but one could imply from that statement that what we are experiencing in the blogging world is radically different than what we have long experienced in other forms of discourse. (Also, T. Scott seems to question — and I think rightly so — the prevalence of written responses to Gorman’s post that attack him personally. This isn’t new; a few years ago the same thing happened in response to another Gorman statement, and it also happened in a discussion about Indiana’s library school dean.) I don’t think that the struggle to figure out “the best ways to engage in discourse” is something new to blogging. One only has to attend a few scholarly conferences to put the blogging discourse into perspective. It is not uncommon to see faculty presenting papers with opposing viewpoints devolve into very thinly veiled personal attacks as the papers are discussed. I saw a few such scholarly conference exchanges firsthand when at The University of Chicago. It was entertaining at times, but also disconcerting.
One thing that is a little different, though, is the speed and the ease with which such discourse can be articulated, disseminated, interpreted, and reacted to in the world of blogs. And then reworded, or re-articulated, or re-interpreted, or re-reacted to (bad English, I know), again and again until the discourse peters out.
Here is a list of the various blog postings I’ve read about “the incident” just for the record. And be sure to also look at comments for all of them:
Eat-Your-Vegetables librarianship alive and well (metaProjects)
Out of Context or Being a Hypocrite (A Wandering Eyre)
Authority, Formality, Reality, Hypocrisy (Walt at Random)
since when did this become a column? (Eclectic Librarian)
Still in the incunabula stage (T. Scott)
If I’ve missed any others, please add a comment to this post letting me know.
Just to clarify:
Though I did so in a flippant manner, what I was really responding to was the fact that the speaker seemed to take my words out of context and hold them up as an example of the types of things on a serious library blog. I have never claimed to write such a thing and almost any blog, serious, scholarly, or no, has moments of flippancy.
It is also telling to me that the speaker did not cite my blog or name as he gave the quote. I wonder if he was afraid that people would find out that he had used a post of out context and that the post was not an example of someone writing as a scholar. The only reason that I know the quote was used is because a close friend was in the audience.
Michelle, thanks for commenting and for clarifying. One thing I realized after I hit the “publish” button is, I wasn’t the one getting the criticism. Or being used as a supposedly bad example. I may have felt (and responded) differently if it had been me.
This isn’t a criticism at all but…I didn’t take your post response as being flippant. I thought you were serious. Call me clueless.
For the record, I am a vigorous proponent of blogs and blogging. Also for the record, I have been a column editor (as it so happens, for the same journal (Serials Review) as one of the NASIG presenters — but I don’t know that individual at all).
I am in agreement with what a few others have stated, that there is a role for columns and a role for blogs. Sometimes those roles overlap. But I’m not bothered by the co-existence.