Spectrum PR Column
May 1998
What Would We Like People To Think When They Hear the Word "Librarian"?
Carol Bredemeyer, Salmon P. Chase College of Law Library, Northern Kentucky University (Highland Heights, KY).
AALL Spectrum, Volume 2 No. 8 May 1998, p. 19.
"Oh no, she’s going to write about image! I’m so tired of all the listserv messages and article about Lipstick Librarians, hairpins, and sensible shoes." Yes, I’m going to write about image - get over it!
Leaving hairpins aside, what reaction do you get when you tell someone you are a librarian? What about when you tell a non- librarian you’re going to a librarians’ conference? A remark about dullness? Well, I always have a comeback about how librarians work hard at these meetings, but we play hard too. At an AALL Business Meeting years ago, it was noted that our reputation in the hotel industry was that we were "big drinkers, big tippers, and we don’t wreck the rooms". That doesn’t sound too wimpy to me.
How did we get the reputation we so yearn to dispel? Perhaps at one time many librarians did wear their hair in buns. However, it was probably the style of the day and librarians weren’t the only women wearing that style. They may, however, have been some of the few working women at the time, thus easier to stereotype.
In years past, libraries have been rigid places. Many librarians took their role as guardians of knowledge literally. Closed stacks, limited access policies, and 2 cents/day fines may have led to an image of being rigid and inflexible. Also, unfortunately, many adults never visit a library after their formal schooling is over and don’t know that there have been lots of changes in libraries and librarians over the years. A library where service is the central mission of the staff is a fairly recent trend in libraries (I say recent when looking at the history of libraries and the profession as a whole, not just our lifetimes). Changing from a protector to a service role is a major change.
When problems occur in our libraries, we often develop a policy to prevent the problem from occurring again. Quite often, we develop a policy to curb the few offenders that restricts the many who follow the already existing policies. Being proactive in thinking about how our policies can help our users rather than reacting only when problems happen might go a long way towards how those users see us and our roles in the library.
The public gets some of its image of librarians from television and the movies. Maybe "Marian the Librarian" made a great rhyme in Music Man, but then Ex-lax used a librarian named Marian in a commercial that ran for a long time. Personally, if the public is going to get its vision of librarians from TV and movies, I’d rather it be a vision of Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set. She was a professional, proud to be a librarian, and probably would not have rated too low on the Lipstick Librarian scale either. Maybe we should ask the American Movie Classics network to run the movie during National Library Week every year.
Last Updated: January 28, 2003
©
2003, American Association of Law Libraries
AALLNET is hosted in cooperation with Washburn
University School of Law