Online = hip hop? (RE: Google Print in Chronicle of Higher Education)

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

I wish I could say that I was disappointed by Michael Gorman's comments in
this piece (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i39/39a02501.htm), but he's
set the bar for critical thought on this topic so low in his previous
writings that disappointment is really no longer possible. However, I was
a bit shocked by this comment: "Go to any campus, and the library is
likely to be the most technologically advanced unit on campus. ... That
does not mean that everything can be dumbed down to some kind of hip-hop
or bells-and-whistles kind of stuff."

Leaving aside, for the moment, what seems like more than a whiff of racism
inherent in the casual equation of "dumbing down" and "hip hop," I really
have to wonder why it is that some librarians see books as "smart" when
they're provided in unwieldy, environmentally wasteful, inconvenient,
unsearchable formats, but as "dumbed-down" when they're provided in
useful, searchable, portable ones.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu