Майкл Горман: Библиотекарь, традиционалист и критик цифровизации.

Anglo American librarian

Michael Gorman (born 6 March 1941 in Witney, Oxfordshire) is a British born librarian, library scholar and editor/writer on library issues noted for his traditional views. During his tenure as president of the American Library Association (ALA), he was vocal in his opinions on a range of subjects, notably technology and education. He currently lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Anne Reuland, an academic administrator at Loyola University. Gorman's principles of librarianship derive from core liberal, democratic and humanist values. A key influence is S. R. Ranganathan, whom he regarded as "the greatest figure of librarianship in the 20th century." He maintains that it is through focusing on core professional values that librarians will facilitate personal growth and enhance the success of their institutions.

Gorman bases his principles of librarianship on core liberal, democratic and humanistic values.

Gorman has expanded and added a more contemporary focus to Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science. The re working of the classic five laws is an attempt "to meet the challenges of fast paced social and cultural changes affecting library users and the rapid proliferation of technology in library operations". The article "Whither Library Education?" set out his views on the current state of LIS education. He concluded that LIS education had become technocentric, male dominated and out of touch with the needs of practitioners. This view was critiqued by Dillon and Norris, while both papers were critiqued by Pawley for their treatment of the issue of gender in librarianship. Library and Information Science academics also responded in the professional press, questioning whether there was a crisis to address. During his year in office, Gorman introduced an initiative intended to discuss the issue of education. Sessions were held with practitioners and academics. However, Gorman's traditional views may have led to younger librarians turning away from the idea and their views not being represented:
"Whatever the case, after all that effort we still don't know what current students and recent graduates really think about the educations upon which they spend so much money". Despite the initiative, accreditation and curricula remained unchanged at the end of Gorman's tenure.

In 2004 Google announced its plan to digitize the collections of five major research libraries. This would allow both Google and the libraries in question, The University of Michigan, Oxford, New York Public, Harvard and Stanford, to have access to digitized copies of millions of texts. Michael Gorman, then ALA president, responded to this announcement with an article in the Los Angeles Times 'Google and God's Mind' where he made clear his disapproval of the digitisation project. This disapproval was based on what he sees as a clear distinction between information and real knowledge. Gorman defines information as facts, data, images and quotations that can be used out of context, while real knowledge denotes literary and scholarly texts. This distinction informs Gorman's observations about online information retrieval which he characterises as being more focused on quick and easy access to facts. In his later article, Gorman argues that to "Google boosters", speed is of the greatest import: " just as it is to consumers of fast "food", but, as with fast food, rubbish is rubbish, no matter how speedily it is delivered". In 2006, during his term as head of the ALA, Gorman attended the Online Information Conference in London, where he criticised the library profession for being "too interested in technology". Gorman, however, is not opposed to digitising books per se, but feels that particular types of information, such as inter alia dictionaries, encyclopaedias and gazetteers are suitable candidates for digitisation, while other forms of real knowledge such as whole books (especially scholarly books) and large databases are not suitable for digitisation.

Despite holding such an influential position in the American Library Association, Gorman has made it clear that many of his criticisms are personal and not representative of the ALA. For example, on technology and the Google digitisation, Gorman says:
"The Google project has been enthusiastically embraced and I think that is a mistake. I am not speaking on behalf of the ALA. That has no position on the Google digitisation project. I, on the other hand, do". In regards to Wikipedia, Gorman once stated that "a professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything". Other commentators have also noted that irrespective of his protestations, the perception on the wider world and the media is that Gorman represents the profession and this can be detrimental to public perception of librarians. Gorman has spoken extensively on the problems facing library education, particularly in the USA. He proposes the need to restructure library education in the 21st century, focusing on changes in curricula, faculty, and diversity in library education. Gorman believes that students are too focused on learning without goals in mind and that educators are too inclined to change everything just because the internet and all its resources has arrived and that instead, it should be used as an accompaniment to existing educational methods.

Since his first book (with Walt Crawford), Gorman has stressed the importance of the book in the place of the library and Gorman has suggested that only books can bestow true knowledge on the reader. He emphasises the importance of the book throughout his works. He has expressed concern at the way research has become simply typing a few works in a search engine and says that serious research is impossible to carry out using this method without the additional reading of books.

Michael Gorman presented Our Enduring Values to the Association of Christian Libraries (ACL) and further reviews of his book have suggested that the eight proposed values which librarians should follow are more closely related to biblical theism than the humanistic beliefs Gorman believes. Further work by the ACL has developed ideas relating to the formulation of a Christian approach to library values.

In Gorman's publications, he focuses on the importance on the preserving of information and knowledge and the importance of the librarian in helping to achieve this. In Gorman's eight values, he stresses the importance of a librarian having strong values and an ethical stance because these will help the librarian in their job. Failure is bearable because the decisions that caused that failure are based on a person's own beliefs and a person secure in their values is more likely to have higher self esteem. The importance of librarians reflecting on their own decisions and responsibilities can be seen in Our Singular Strengths and Our Own Selves which feature meditations for librarians, which librarians can use to reaffirm their own profession.