"New sucker in the multi-level-marketing scheme for attention, err, I mean blogger Karen Coyle has an extensive post analyzing the contract for Google's University of California library digitizing (gatekeepering: Walt Crawford)."

Two things wrong there--and since you're not in the library field, there's no way you'd know the first:

1. Karen Coyle doesn't need to scheme for attention. She has an established track record as a public intellectual (her term) in the library field, and a record of accomplishment to back it up. I would suggest that, where it counts, she has a bigger name than I do. What she didn't do until now was blog. (She's a LOT more active in some library lists at the moment than she is on her blog.)

2. Thus, I wasn't gatekeepering (nasty neologism, that). In any case, I'm not much of a gatekeeper: The Library A-listers (or at least some of them) tend to avoid linking to me, and I tend to avoid link love in general. As with Karen, I have my audience (the two do overlap, and I should note that I've been acquainted with Karen for, oh, a couple of decades), but that audience isn't primarily within or because of liblogs.

Otherwise...well, following up one of the links (to Joho) reminded me of why I steer clear of the Real A-List. Man, compared to some of those folks, the most overheated egos in liblogging are shrinking violets...

As for invitational conferences: Mixed feelings. There are quite a few such events in almost every field (I suspect). My only real problem with such events is when they're regarded or regard themselves as policymakers or the like: When "the results" of an invitational are touted as meaningful to librarianship as a whole. (Easy for me to say: I've never been invited to that sort of invitational. I have been invited to one or two, including one next week, but it's rare.)

Walt,

RE: 1 (and 2), I believe that would be sarcasm on Seth's part, as opposed to a pointed attack.

::: Looking to sidelines :::

Judgement...?

Ouch, yes, though "facetious" rather than "sarcastic". That is, I wasn't saying the opposite of what I meant, but it was intended to have a humorous tone. The point was NOT an attack on Karen, NO! It was a twist on "Welcome To The Bogosphere" - as in "New Chump Coming Into The Game".

I added some commas to the sentence to hopefully have it parse better.

By "gatekeepered", I meant "I would not have seen this post but for the mention by the widely-read in the library field Walt Crawford", which is a nod to all the discussion of how writers get their posts heard - by attracting the notice of the few people with large audiences in the topic (i.e. *topic* A-listers). Note this doesn't mean you are the *only* one, or even the most important one - rather, the system is such that there's few people with a very large ability to direct attention on the topic.

Actually, I didn't think of it as an attack. If I had, I would not have commented: I've learned that silence is usually the best way to deal with attacks. I was clarifying...or, in Karen's case, providing info: She's a name, just not a blog-name.

I qualify as a dormouse gatekeeper, with an audience in the high hundreds or very low thousands. Better than nothing, I guess. [Audience: a few hundred subscriptions, around 1200 visits/day at the moment.]

Regarding the Wikipedia legal situation, I'd like to alert your readers to comments published today from Brad Patrick, Wikipedia's interim executive director and general counsel. They are at http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1157557741507

He misrepresents the true state of affairs at Wikipedia. I'm still looking for that notice on every page that editors are responsible for their own edits.