Not to revive Gormangate but…

Just founf this bit on Neil Gaiman’s blog via Library Journal. Go Neil!

“You know, I love librarians. I really love librarians. I love librarians when they crusade not to be stereotyped as librarians. I love librarians when they’re just doing those magic things that librarians do. I love librarians when they’re the only person in a ghost town looking after thousands of books. I love the ALA and am proud to be on one of their posters.

“On the other hand, I feel the love diminishing a tad when I read an article by the president-elect of the ALA, and find myself unable to decide whether it’s mostly that a) he’s simply a very, very bad writer, or b) he lacks any skills of a diplomatic nature, or it’s just c) he really believes that statements like ‘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’ are somehow going to disabuse people who keep blogs, journals and such from believing or repeating the calumny that ‘Michael Gorman is an idiot’ (someone apparently said this on a blog, he tells us, expecting us to feel an outrage on his behalf I somehow wasn’t able to muster). (Surely, if you’re upset that someone called you an idiot, the wisest course of action would be not to write an odd screed that will itself convince many people who haven’t heard of you before reading it that this is in fact the case.)

“There are a great many wise and sensible librarians out there, lots of whom have been keeping blogs as long as there have been blogs around, and all of whom understand that the people who can and do read and write and comment on what they read and write are probably not the enemy. Can some of you take your president-elect aside and suggest to him that articles like http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA502009 don’t put him, or the profession, in the best possible light? And tell that there are some fine blogs out there, too.”

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