I have seen the enemy, and she is me.

I was reading the latest in an endless parade of articles about the changing image of librarians, and I realized that I have a confession to make:

I am not a hip librarian.

I do not belly dance. I have only one small, tasteful tattoo, in a place that is always covered by clothing. I removed all of my piercings years ago when I realized that they were only serving as tooth-chipping and clothing-snagging hazards. I do not listen to ska (does anyone, anymore?). I do not live on the street. I do not support anarchy, either as a political philosophy or as a weekend diversion. I used to be a pretty snappy dresser, but that went out the window when I started shopping in the maternity aisle.

I am, in fact, your parents' librarian. I am the stereotype. I am... Marian.

I spend my free time knitting, baking, and reading nineteenth-century novels. I have long, naturally brown hair, which I wear in a bun at least once a week. My shoes are sensible. My cardigans are cozy. I am shy, and I rarely raise my voice. 

I believe that libraries should be sanctuaries of relative quiet, and I deploy the "shh" weapon accordingly. I feel a responsibility to hold onto certain classics, even if they haven't circulated since 1980. I believe that library books should be returned on time, and that patrons should have to pay for the ones they lose (or shelf read to work off the debt). I will gladly supply my patrons with the bestsellers they crave, but I also feel called to broaden their literary horizons by suggesting older or more esoteric titles.

I think the card catalog was, in some ways, a more useful tool than the online catalog (especially the  non-responsive ILS systems pushed on us by the monolithic vendors).

There is one area in which I seem to pass the hipness litmus test, though. I subscribe to ideas that are referred to, in the aforementioned articles, as radical. I am against censorship, in all its forms, and I am for equal access to materials and ideas. I order books that seem to make people uncomfortable. I try to stand up for the rights of patrons whose presence seems to make people uncomfortable. I guess I'm a revolutionary after all.

But wait. Are those actually radical ideas among librarians? Are they even new ideas? Well, the Library Bill of Rights, which spells out our professional commitment to them, was first ratified in 1948. To give you some perspective, that's thirteen years before Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was even available in this country. Librarians were publicly opposing censorship and supporting dirty books before dirty books were hip.

You see, we don't do these things because they're hip. We do these things because we love books, and we love hunting down information, and we hate to see anything stand between a book (or a website, or a zine) and its reader. That's just how librarians are - beneath our buns, or our mohawks, or our seven veils, we are all fierce-hearted fighters for intellectual freedom. And we always have been.

That's why I signed up for this gig. Please don't tell me I have to re-pierce something in order to keep it.

Comments

[Amanda]

You know, it sometimes felt like 90% of my graduating class in library school knitted. And most of them were my age (25) or thereabouts at least.

[Allison]

I crochet, instead of knitting. Aside from that, I'm a lot like you, Rachel. My lack of hipness doesn't even bother me anymore .

[Rachael]

Oh, mine doesn't bother me either! I'm just tired of reading articles that imply that if I were really dedicated to my job, I would do something outlandish to my personal appearance.

After a youth misspent as a goth in South Florida, dutifully braving 100 degree heat in eyeliner and black velvet, I'm no longer the least bit interested in dressing to impress. :P

[PaperMaven]

One of the other reasons we do what do (I've done it for >30 years) is because of our somewhat antiquated idea of service: "equal access to information;" the idea that public service is Good Thing; that there is a Commons; and that some things ought not to be privately owned. I'm so glad those values haven't been completely weeded from our profession, in spite of our transition to "an ownership society." (I recently suffered through 2 classes in the local "School of Communication and Information. Yoiks!) Technology is another tool to improve service, but it needn't change our underlying values.

Good blog, Rachel. You bring me back to my roots.

[Dan]

Wow, a reference to my page, which I have long since abandoned for real life.

As a now mid-40's, quite tattooed, formerly known as the Ska Librarian....well, I agree with you.

One thing I did quickly learn in library school is that there is a history to our profession and a lot of what we believed innovative as a 20-something had probably been done before.

Be who you are.

[Rachael]

Aww, hey ska-librarian-Dan! I didn't mean to pick on your former self. I used to rollerblade in a cape in my goth days.

[Eli]

Lift your head up high when you call yourself a "Marian" ... remember, she stocked Rabelais and Balzac in a 1912 Iowan public library and most of the town thought she was a fallen woman. How much more hip can one be in the age of spats and straw hats?

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I crochet, instead of knitting. Aside from that, I'm a lot like you, Rachel. My lack of hipness doesn't even bother me anymore .

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I am not a hip librarian.