A Misanthropic Profession?

If you spend any time in library circles, you will come across discussions about how librarians get a bad rap. The traditional librarian stereotype is often described with words such as stern, severe, mean, harsh, unfriendly, bossy, and the like. Librarians have even given a name to the image of the older lady with her hair in a bun, glasses on the end of her nose, and her finger ready to shush: Marian the Librarian. I’ve never felt that the image represents much about myself and you will find me and plenty of others in the profession lamenting the fact that we can’t seem to change a stereotype that’s been around forever no matter what we do. Which makes me wonder, is it really based solely on impressions from the past or are there still librarians today continuing the legacy of Marian?

It’s a question I generally don’t worry about, figuring I can only affect the people I encounter and can’t do much about the profession as a whole. Yet my adventures in blogging have confronted me with the issue once again. I’ve been meaning for a while to add some fun library links to this blog and finally got around to it last week. In my searches to find sites I wanted to link to, though, most of what I found fell into one of two categories: professional and earnest (and thus not “fun” enough for this, which I consider a recreational pursuit); or mocking and rather mean-spirited. True, the popular writers in this second category have sharp tongues, a lot of wit, and are generally good for a laugh, but they have me contemplating what they say about the profession.

I know every job comes with its gripes and complaints and it’s a relief to find a forum where you can vent, can say the things you have to hold in while remaining professional and doing the job. It’s especially nice to share your frustrations with a sympathetic ear, and a good bitch session every so often can actually be productive. But the tone of what I’m encountering in the library world seems a bit different to me. The best comparison I can make is to the education world. My parents are both teachers and I was a school librarian for a number of years, so I’ve heard (and contributed) plenty of teacher negativity about students, parents, administrators, colleagues, etc. But it seemed like the grumbling was almost always due to frustration that the desire to do good and help students was in some way being thwarted. Underlying the hatred for that nemesis student remained a wish to still see him/her grow into a mature, capable adult.

I’m not sure I get that sense in many of the librarian rants I encounter, though. I know a majority of librarians are all about customer service and what I’m seeing is only a percentage, and librarians are early technology adapters so they are more likely to have blogs than others, but it still seems like a relatively high proportion of the profession feels actual disdain toward patrons. There’s an air of superiority to the mocking, a particular pleasure in expounding on the idiocy of the general public. So I’m wondering if I’m just lacking a sense of humor these days and missing the subtle nuances of sophisticated sarcasm or if I’m seeing Marian still rearing her ugly head.