[Publib] Darien Re-write

[Backwage at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/12/2009 5:41:19 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
kgschneider at gmail.com writes:

I sorta  get the feeling you are most bugged that it came from elsewhere 
and has had a  lot of attention. Don't begrudge others their 
achievements--it's unseemly.  
Not really, and I'm surprised that you might think that.  It is simply  
badly written in the original.  Very bad; these are professionals.   I'm 
defending the institution here--I don't want people to believe that we're a  
collection of shabby workers.  Let us assume for the moment that this is a  very 
preliminary draft of a document that would shine like the sun in completed  
form.  Well, make it shine, and don't cringe at criticism or  corrections.
 
Criticism hasn't begun yet.  Criticism would begin with:  what  has this 
document on the Library Bill of Rights or similar past writings?   I expect to 
hear that this was simply a fun sort of "show in the barn" project  
undertaken by a few people, enthusiastic and optimistic. Well, that shows.  
 
The thing that shocked me back in library school was the very bad writing,  
poor scholarship and inability to represent the profession among most (and 
it  remains a stiff majority) of practitioners.  If you believe this to be  
wrong, flip through the pages of any library journal from the 
nineteen-fifties  or before, and compare to the columns and articles found today.  I have 
the  right to oppose that.  I have the responsibility to mention it.  
 
Now that I think of it, I was asked once to review the submissions for an  
ALA study of a particular subject.  The authors were all librarians, most  
of them considered scholars or at least prominent in the field.  A number  of 
them were actually my friends.  Out of about twenty research proposals,  I 
found two that were even reasonably sound.  The rest were simply  awful.  
These were library school professors.  I was supposed to pick  the three best. 
 It was a grim undertaking.  
 
[I will take the liberty here of writing that I have praised Karen's work  
highly.  I am also a personal admirer of hers, but it doesn't mean that I  
have to agree with her all the time.  KG is a critical writer, and also a  
nice person.  I would expect that she may feel that I'm crunching down on  
these guys for little or no reason.  I am crunching down on them.  For  a 
reason.  They represent me, or want to.]
 
My day-to-day work consists of writing for a group of plumbers, pipefitters 
 and their contractors, folks who might easily be perceived as weakly 
literate at  best.  On the other hand, they might be excused that shortcoming.  
Not  librarians.  For them to write weak stuff is like an accountant fumbling 
 his sums.  
 
Bugged.  Yes I am.  Indeedy.
 
M. M.
 
 
 
 
 
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