A non-librarian blogfriend IMed me over the weekend to ask whether I’d read the New York Times story everyone is weighing in on.
I haven’t. And I won’t. Not interested. Even slightly.
This may be a radical notion, and if so, so be it, but I mostly don’t give a hoot what librarians do on their time off, and how “hip” it supposedly is. I’m even less concerned with where their clothes come from, where they hang out, and what they eat and drink there.
What the bloody hell does all that have to do with librarianship?
I mean, imagine the article they’d have written about me. The fat dowdy hippie-hair geek who indulges in Babylon 5 DVDs, black cats, Thai and Mediterranean food (digression: King of Falafel. Go there. Get the m’hamara; trust me), walking to work, IMs with friends, and a journal game set in the Potterverse. I’d have hate mail pounding my inbox to pulp, can you imagine? Because that’s not an image librarianship wants.
Even though I’m a damn good librarian if I do say so myself.
This image stuff? Is fiddling while Rome burns, people. It doesn’t matter what particular image the media decides to paste on us on a given day. What matters is that all they notice is image. They haven’t got a frickin’ clue what we do or why it matters.
And there is the story they oughta be writing about me. I may well be a fat dowdy hippie-hair geek, but I’m changing the entire academic world one self-archived article at a time. There is the story! What I do, what I do as a librarian, is the story. And it’s got damn-all to do with my personal image or what I do on my personal time.
I refuse to be defensive about my appearance or my hobbies. They impact my ability to do my job not in the slightest. I wish the profession would similarly refuse to be defensive—which means not hopping up and down yelling “See? See? I am too cool, see?”
How do we fix this? We damned well say no, loud and clear, the next time some brainless style reporter shows up to play image games. We say no. We say “you write about what I do at work, or you don’t call me a librarian in your article.” We say no. We say “I’m sorry, how is this story you’re planning relevant to libraries and librarianship?” and if they don’t have a damn good answer, we say no.
“I’m going to revamp the buns-and-shushing image of librarianship!” is not a damn good answer. It’s a damn bad answer. In fact, it’s unacceptable. So what do we say to it? We say no.
Because, really, people, who’s perpetuating the damn stereotype? It’s not us. It’s these zombie-brained style reporters who keep reacting to it because they’re too stupid to think of anything else to write about us and what we do. If we cut off their air supply, the stereotype will wither and die on its own. (Well, except for morons like George Lucas. I’m not thrilled about the Rex Libris movie, either; I gave up on the comic after I read the teaser pages, not because the art or the writing was bad, but because the writer obviously knew nothing about librarianship and hadn’t bothered to, I don’t know, ask a librarian or something.)
Oh, and I owe a lot of people an apology for using the term “guybrarian.” One of those things where I thought it was merely descriptive, but it’s not; as used in the wider world, it’s pejorative and dismissive. Mea culpa, I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again.
Media: If you want to write and talk about librarianship, great! We need more people to do that. But talk about librarianship, please. Talk about what we do. It’s a scoop, believe me—no one else is.