When there is no discussion or no robust discussion of issues and
candid give and take, civility is very easy to achieve.
Note that civility is defined as "politeness, esp. of a merely formal
kind." So, law-lib has achieved "merely formal politeness"? That's
good?
So, if discussion if issues is curtailed by formalistic preemptive
pronouncements, then it is easy to achieve "merely formal
politeness". Whether curtailment of dissent and discussion by
preemptive conduct is polite in a larger sense, and is likely to lead
to positive civic results, should be the question.
The "citation fight" was robust, noisy, and perhaps not civil, but
the issues were fully discussed, and the hidden agendas and
associations of some were exposed. As a result of the robust
discussion, a formal position was taken that has and is having an
important impact, and interestingly the AALL leadership boasted in
writing and in the press about the discussion, that we now have
described as not civil.
So there was a lot of noise, and a lot of results.
Alan
<---- Begin Included Message ---->
Cc: law-lib@ucdavis.edu
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:47:20 -0400
From: "Patrick E. Kehoe" <pkehoe@american.edu>
Reply-To: pkehoe@american.edu
Sender: owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Re: The CB Radio of the New Millenium?
To: pkehoe@american.edu
Joe and others, I agree with Joe that there is less on law-lib than
before.
This may be because of the availability of new lists that are more
subject
focused or perhaps for reasons such as you (Joe) suggest. I find this
reduction in the the number of daily postings to be helpful in terms
of the
time needed to go through the list. It still takes a fair amount of
time to
read through the many e-mail messages that are still posted, however.
This
is why many of our colleagues who used to subscribe have told me that
they
dropped their subscriptions and why we intend to soon move official
information about AALL to a list portion of the expanded AALLNET. I
continue
for the moment to subscribe to law-lib so that I can know what
concerns are
being raised by AALL members. When I am no longer an elected leader
of AALL,
I will no longer subscribe but will have a member of our own library
staff
assigned to read it and forward messages that might be of interest to
me.
This is how I used to access law-lib before I was elected to an AALL
office.
As to civility, I am very pleased that this is mostly the norm now on
the
list. Pat Kehoe, AALL President.
Patrick E. Kehoe, Director, American University Law Library
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W. Washington, DC 20016-8182
Phone: voice 202 274 4374 fax 202 274 4365
<---- End Included Message ---->
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