Shhhhh! The librarian has something to say.

In some way or another, we are all a running joke. If you are tall, you hear jokes about being tall. If you are a lawyer, you hear jokes about being a lawyer. If you have five kids, you hear jokes about having five kids. If you live in Utah, you hear jokes about polygamy.

The running joke in my life is being a librarian.

First class in library school, Shushing 101. 

It's no one's fault. We are all weened on the media that treats librarians like dumpy, disgruntled cat ladies with glasses, a tight bun, and sensible shoes. It's the usual one-dimensional, easily digestible caricature that the media is famous for (Obama is a socialist! Lawyers are snakes!), but, of course, this is my caricature so it is the one I am most capable of dispelling. 

Not a crazy cat lady

In reality, there are all kinds of librarians. Some of my library friends are edgy and have tattoos:

My awesome colleague at the University of Utah

Some of my library friends are boys:

Dan Phipps, who kept me laughing through two years of library school

Some of my library friends are stunningly beautiful:

My friend Jen who dominated library school and now works for Adobe

Contrary to popular belief, librarians come in all shades of cool. But what almost all librarians have in common is that they are smart, well-read, socially conscious, and inveterately curious. You will not find a better group of people than librarians.

Moreover, librarians don't even do -- most of the time -- what people think we do. At the heart of our profession is organizing, describing, and making accessible large amounts of information. Yes, sometimes information lives in books. But there are also librarians who organize sound effects for movie studios, wine for vintners, datasets for scientists, and website pages for large corporations. I once knew a librarian who curated African-American porn. Bottom line: despite the origin of the name (libro = book), not all librarians deal with books and we certainly don't get to read to children for a living (except for a lucky few).

I'm not 100% sure where these stereotypes come from, but I have heard that the feminization of librarianship is in part because Melvil Dewey, the father of modern librarianship, was kind of sleazy and would only train women to work in libraries. In general, traditional women's occupations = less money, less respect.

On a side note, Dewey was later banned from active participation in the American Library Association (ALA), which he helped found, because of his inability to control himself around women.  Oh, sweet irony.

I still love the Dewey Decimal rap though

Another contributing factor to library misconceptions is that the vast majority of our work is done behind closed doors. That person helping you in the library? She might not be a librarian. She is just as likely to be a part-time worker or volunteer. When I worked in the public library as a clerk, well-intentioned moms would always say to their kids, "Ask the librarian where to find XYZ." No one walks up to the receptionist in a doctor's office and says, "Tell the doctor your symptoms so she knows how to help you." There is a clear distinction between the professional and the support staff. Of course, librarians don't have large egos so we haven't set up mechanisms to differentiate nor do we really care to do so. We're egalitarian that way.

There is another librarian stereotype of course, one that I'm sure you are all intimately familiar with. The sexy librarian.

This stereotype is totally ridiculous and, unlike the more general librarian stereotype, I don't think most people actually think it's true. But it does undercut the profession in a different way, making librarians and the work we do seem silly and inconsequential.

I care about dispelling these stereotypes because I care deeply about the profession of librarianship. To quote Neil Gaiman, "I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally."

I could go on and on about the the importance of supporting libraries but blogs are supposed to be short and this has probably gone on too long already. The full Neil Gaiman article where I pulled the quote above does a wonderful job explaining why libraries (and librarians) matter.

I do have a funny anecdote about the fluidity of stereotypes though. A while back I was watching Jeopardy with Aidan, and one woman was absolutely dominating. I told Aidan (because he missed the introductions), "That lady is a librarian." to which he replied, "She can't be. She's too old." In my son's mind, librarians are young and cool. That's his stereotype based on his own experiences, not just of me, but all the librarians in his life.

How refreshing.