Michael Gorman has some bad points and some good points in this Chronicle of Higher Education interview about Google. Good points: serious scholarship is about deep knowledge which is harder to get through Google in its current incarnation, than through print. Bad points: most library users are not scholars, really inappropriate hip-hop metaphor, inability to see the future usefulness of short scannable interlinked bits of knowledge for many day-to-day applications. Gorman is, in some ways, a librarian’s librarian, but he sure doesn’t come across as the public’s librarian. Some discussion on LISNews. This is my favorite excerpt from there.
I’m reminded of a quote in The Name of the Rose, something like “Brother Salvatore is guilty…. of confusing the love of poverty with the hatred of wealth.” I’m becoming more and more convinced that Gorman is confusing the love of accurate searching with the hatred of digital forms of information.