So Blaise Cronin also makes short shift of weblogs and Wikipedia.
Who am I to argue with the respected British dean of an American library school?
I’ll leave it to others, possibly including Tame the web, from which I got the story, and which credits “Skagirlie.”
For now, at least.
Not that weblogs need my defense–or that Cronin’s completely wrong, once his remarks are shorn of [over]generalization.
Update: Since I don’t use emoticons and lots of readers skim over text pretty quickly, I suspect some people may misinterpret this post. Sure, Cronin’s right about some blogs (I don’t think there’s anything negative you could say about blogs and not be on the money for some of them)–but I take his overall comment just as seriously as I did Michael Gorman’s, except that I can’t be spurred to start a blog, since I’ve already done that.
I see the battle has begun here and there. Fun to watch, but I’ll let the MLS-holders comment on the SLIS dean’s silly article.
I really, truly can’t think of much to say. Except that I’m glad our SLIS director isn’t a raving ja — er, sorry.
Okay, I lied. I can think of something to say; it just takes a better rhetorician than I to say it correctly and back it up. There’s a valuing of certain sorts of text over certain other sorts of text here that tends to upset me. “Domestic” writing, “everyday” writing, casual or non-professional writing is consistently what’s getting slagged. I don’t even see much allowance for the relative competence of the writing. If it’s domestic, it’s bad.
I can’t find it in my heart to think it coincidence that much of the slagged writing is coded as women’s writing, even when men do it too. (The counterpoint to this argument, I admit, is that the other common coding is as young people’s writing.)
What are the Gormans and Cronins afraid of? That somebody might actually listen to a GIRL, instead of Their High Mightinesses? Heaven forfend.
Maybe it’s no coincidence that our SLIS director isn’t a raving you-know-what. She is, after all, a she.
Cronin is Coulter’s more lady-like twin and from her has learned that bluster and barbs get attention when one has nothing else to say. The former has laid out his misogyny quite clearly in Library Journal: “The Dean’s List- Amazons R Us,”by Blaise Cronin.Oct 15, 2001.
Respected? Not by the public librarians in his own state. He is considered to have pretty much destroyed library education at IU in favor of “informatics”. We all cheered when he resigned. We still can’t figure out why they hired him back.
Hm. One wonders if this was a clumsy bid for Michael Gorman’s favor, in that case?
I mean, as long as we’re spinning conspiracy theories…