So, Michael Rosenblum lives across from a hole and he likes it. He likes it, because that hole, formerly a library, will soon be a condominium. What does Rosenblum’s opinion piece, “What’s a Library?” published in the Huffington Post offer? Pageviews.
The piece was originally published on Rosenblum’s blog and generated a sparse response. Why? Perhaps, because librarians don’t read his blog and a lot of librarians and their friends read Huffington Post. Since there’s little of substance in Rosenblum’s blog post, it seems more like an attempt to anger librarians and supporters of libraries in order to engender pageviews.
What do you think? A cheap way to get pageviews from a site known for clicky headlines or a substantive part of dialogue concerning the future of libraries?
See “5 Reasons Libraries Will Fail – Published in 1864” for further ridiculousness.
It is hard to say if Rosenblum is really “baiting” for page views or if he’s simply spouting off on something about which he really isn’t qualified to comment. His line of work is the delivery of content, not content itself. Perhaps he has never asked a real video producer, say Ken Burns, about the value of libraries and archives or the wealth of good material that is neither freely available nor online. It is a shame that Huffington Post gives him the airtime for a piece that has the potential to harm institutions that are of real value to people.