Librarians as sex objects 14 July 2009
Posted by Matthew in Marketing & Promotion, Stereotypes & Prejudice.add a comment
There are a wealth of images portraying librarians (at least female librarians) as inherently sexually attractive. This is usually not the first characteristic the public thinks of when conjuring up a mental picture of a librarian. The common stereotype is an older, stern, matronly woman with a bun and glasses who does nothing but work in the library and keep to herself otherwise. This is not a typical sexual image but take several of the key features: glasses, introverted but capable when motivated, focused on a narrow subject, and given a certain level of power in a specific environment, and place them in the body of a young attractive woman, and you’ve got the making of a rather common male fantasy.
I am certainly not qualified to discuss the reasons why such a fantasy exists although it is an interesting juxtaposition of stereotypes. On the one hand the profession of librarianship is seen as an anachronism or useful in only very practical and rare occasions. And on the other hand you have a very real visceral reaction to the interpretation of these characteristics: the introverted person becomes mysterious, the almost foolish rule-keeper becomes a dominant figure, the nerdy book-worm becomes an intelligent and creative charmer.
Although I’m not sure whether we could or would even want to, it would be valuable to consider how stereotypes like these could be used to convey messages that we want to communicate. Let’s face it, sex sells. And we have a service that we want, for the greater good, to stick in the public’s mind, at least for when they are in information-related situations; a service that is sometimes not thought of as ’sexy’ enough to compete with the likes of Google or even for-fee look-up services. Perhaps we can use our (again, not MY) perceived ’sexiness’ to our advantage. Just a thought. What’s yours?
Here are some related works on this topic:
- “Librarians are SEXY” by Holly Black.
- “Librarian fantasy promotes librarian bar” by Steve Hall at AdRants.com.
- “Loveless Frump as Hip and Sexy Party Girl: A Reevaluation of the Old-Maid Stereotype” by Katherine C. Adams at The Library Quarterly, July 2000, 70(3):287-301 (via JStor)
A great way to say “BE QUIET”. 14 September 2007
Posted by Matthew in Stereotypes & Prejudice.add a comment
Take a look at the humourous and effective noise flyer made by Rochelle Hartman (found via LibrarianInBlack.net.
The issue of noise in libraries has been around since the librarian at Alexandria told Archimedes to keep his water-pumping to a dull roar. LOL Recently however, there has been a realization that such strict admonitions to remain silent in the library has led to both a harmful stereotype of librarians and the discouraging of many potential users from using the facilities. There is a difficult balance to be struck between the concentration needs of the reading and researching users of the library and the interactive and casual (and very often youthful) users of the library.
This flyer is a great effort at serving both groups: to ensure a quiet environment without alienating and discouraging the users. It communicates the message, “keep your voice down” in a subtle and humourous way.
The Future of Library Science 1 August 2007
Posted by Matthew in Changing Roles.add a comment
Listen to an “Inside Higher Ed” interview with Loriene Roy, president of ALA, and read the article and comments entitled similarly to my entry here also from “Inside Higher Ed”.
Loriene Roy in her interview linked to above talks about what library school is, the trend towards “i-schools” (i.e. using the term “information” instead or in addition to “library”), very common “info” questions (e.g. judging sources, Wikipedia, paraprofessionals). Some interesting comments but not a lot of new ideas or concepts. She was also asked what her favourite library is. Not a typical question and she gives an interesting and very broad answer.
The article is very short (merely a news item about Loriene Roy’s new position) but there are a lot of very valuable and thought-provoking comments about the length of the librarian master’s degree, training versus teaching, and continuing education.
Are we cool yet? 25 July 2007
Posted by Matthew in Stereotypes & Prejudice.add a comment
Another “positive image” article in the Gothamist (and the New York Sun, Florida’s The Ledger, and the New York Times) for librarians. This one speaks of a group of librarians from Brooklyn with tattoos and style and passion and, heaven forbid, lives.
However, just as in my previous entry about articles like this, this article is both positive and negative. News writers seem incapable of writing anything about librarians without first mentioning the stereotypes. (Of course, they seem to be guilty of this with whoever they are talking about: politicians, lawyers, doctors, etc. They have to bring in some common concept that the public brings to the table, to, I don’t know, win their confidence or something? It doesn’t matter whether it relates to the article’s point or is even true…) This kind of publicity is good, don’t get me wrong. But ideally librarians should be written about in purely objective terms — here’s what they do, here’s what they’re like, here’s why they may be important to something you’re doing — without reference to spinsters or glasses or shushing (or hair in buns).
What would help is if more librarians were in the news of course. Perhaps the reason we’re only spoken of in the media in terms of stereotypes is that the readers/viewers/listeners must be reminded of who we are. So, all you librarians out there, start doing newsworthy things. (Not that I have any specific suggestions, of course. LOL)
Meredith Farkas talks about this article and topic along with plenty of comments about both in her blog Information Wants to be Free.
Some habits are hard to keep. 28 May 2007
Posted by Matthew in Changing Roles.add a comment
Read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about the “Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians”: Openness, Responsiveness, Collaboration, and Communication. Actually, now you don’t have to. We all know what those four words mean, and we can all probably figure out how they can be applied to librarianship, as well as why they are important.
I say, “Absolutely,” and “About time.” Ever since my friend convinced me to enter the “Library and Information Science” program with him, because it was the “wave of the future”, I’ve had words very much like this floating around in my head as defining characteristics of librarians. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve slowly realized that these aren’t descriptors of all librarians. Just the best and idealized ones. But I guess that’s true for a lot of professions. But I like reading these words published for all to see. Not only the public needs to see what librarians should and can be, but librarians themselves. I think too many of us forget about the way librarianship and information science should be and just try to make it through the day. There’s always too much work, not enough money, too little respect, another whining customer, another crashed computer, another belittling faculty member, etc.
But no. We all need to be open to new ideas and new perspectives. We need to remember that our user base needs our help and that we need to respond to their requests. We need to work together, not only with our fellow librarians but with teachers, faculty, researchers, administrators, etc. to make it all fit together. And above all, we need to communicate — the good and the bad, the mundane and the exciting, the new and the old — what else do you do with information?
It’s not about our changing roles, but rather remember the roles we were supposed to have all along.
Careers and crisis 12 May 2007
Posted by Matthew in Marketing & Promotion.add a comment
LibraryJournal.com had a short article entitled “In Toyko, Librarian Retirements Don’t Bring Replacements” on 28 Feb 2007 referring to an article in The Japan Times Online entitled “Tokyo librarians to vanish by attrition” on 21 Feb 2007. They speak of major budget cuts preventing the hiring of replacements for the large wave of retiring professional librarians soon to come.
Well, it’s good to read that this same problem is happening around the world, as it is here. When I graduated from library school in 2000, I had to move to the United States to find a job, in part due to the slow hiring rate here in Canada. I was lucky to find a public library system in the US that was hiring librarians regularly (although now I know that it was primarily due to a high turnover rate…) and was lucky a second time to find an academic library in Canada that had managed to begin hiring librarians to fill old empty positions as well as newly created positions. I was lucky. And now that I’ve got several years of experience under my belt, I’m an an okay position. But it still seems to be a rather difficult market for new graduates. There are simply not a lot of entry-level librarian positions being advertised.
And whether it’s an indirect cause or not, the other side of the equation seems to be wavering as well. There are simply not a lot of people entering library school these days. That may be good for the job market — less competition for the few positions out there — but it’s certainly not good for libraries or the people who need us.
The primary cause, I think, of both sides of this problem is perception of librarians and librarianship. Too few people recognize the value and necessity of the services libraries provide, too few understand or appreciate what librarians do for their customers, and too few look to the field as an interesting or fulfilling path to follow themselves. If this misunderstanding and oversight continues, the trend of fewer librarians will probably continue as well. As fewer officials recognize the need for these information professionals, the number of filled positions will dwindle, the students graduating from library schools will drop, and service will suffer and disappear.
Shining a good light on librarianship will not only make librarians feel better about themselves, allow them to do their jobs better, and result in more user satisfaction, it’s necessary to its survival.
Protecting our children and our knowledge 3 May 2007
Posted by Matthew in Spaces & Places, Stereotypes & Prejudice.add a comment
There seems to be an increased clash between our concern for the welfare of our children and ready and reasonable access to information for the public. (Here’s another of the recent efforts in the US to enforce filters on public Internet access. Thank you Shifted Librarian.) On the surface you’d think that there is no competition here: no amount of information is important enough to allow anyone, let alone children, to be harmed in some way. But that would be like saying that medical research is not important enough to allow harm to come to any living thing. If the research is important enough and the harm is small or incredibly unlikely then we make that trade-off all the time: clinical trials, lab testing, even funding and devotion to work involves “harm” that is acceptable for the value that the research has. It’s similar in the case of filtering.
Of course, there’s no reason to think that access to just any information for any cause would justify placing a child in harm’s way but is this really the case in libraries providing Internet access to the public. Are we saying that it’s worth creating major barriers to citizens becoming more knowledgeable about government to prevent Johnny from seeing a breast a month before he’s legally allowed to see one? Does it make sense to think that because Sally might read a “bad word” that she’s probably heard from TV, her friends or even her parents, we should make it more difficult for her grandmother to find out about important personal health issues? You might think, “What do these things have in common? Why would filtering sexual content prevent access to political information? How does censoring graphic language affect medical sites?”
- Filters aren’t perfect. Sometimes the most innocent sites are filtered out in the name of blocking sex, violence, swearing, etc. either because the systems used are biased, flawed, or misused or because of the inherent difficulty in getting a machine to understand language, images, and other forms of information. And of course, they let through lots of the very thing they are trying to block, which tends to make people make the filter block more, “just in case”.
- Information seeking is not a passion most people have. I am a librarian but I know most people don’t feel the same way I do about tracking down the answer to a question or delving deep into a database to see what I can learn about it. Any kind of system set up to ensure that only qualified adults are given free access to the computers and the Internet will require some sort of effort on the part of the adult. It’s hard enough to get people to realize that they need information, that it’s online, that they can find it themselves, or that the library can help with that need. Asking them to do just one more thing to get to that information means that some people (too often MANY people) will just not bother.
And connected to the idea of filtering is the unfortunate outcome of simple misrepresentation of the information environment. Filters don’t just block your view of certain things. They very often simply scoop the offensive bit right out of your universe, without you even knowing something is missing. If you don’t know something is missing, how can you know whether it was filtered appropriately or not? Because they make mistakes and because they create barriers to finding information, filters can be systematically removing things from your view that might otherwise be useful or interesting to you.
Why is this on this blog about perceptions of libraries and librarians? A couple reasons. This is fundamentally about the perception people have about information and information technology, which are both central to librarianship. More and more people are learning the value of knowledge, either for itself or for what it brings, but not everyone. Too many people either think they already “know” everything or feel that “learnin’s is fer brainiacs”. But also, I don’t think a lot of regular people (read “non-librarians” LOL) see how librarians and libraries work hard to protect not only the information in this world but everyone’s right to get to it. Librarianship is in the political sphere, whether you know it or not, trying to make sure that you and your children will be able to benefit from the knowledge and wisdom this world has to offer, that this central educational resource, information, is not harmed or destroyed by missteps of government.
Our image is changing and not changing. 24 April 2007
Posted by Matthew in Stereotypes & Prejudice.add a comment
In this increasingly information-dependent world we live in, occasionally the world’s oldest information specialists get some credit. In this short article by Marty Nemko on the Kiplinger.com web site, being a librarian is listed as being one of the 7 great careers for 2007.:
Librarian. Forget about the image of librarian as mousy bookworm. Today’s librarian is a high-tech information sleuth, a master of mining cool databases (well beyond Google) to unearth the desired nuggets. Plus you’ll probably have regular hours and good job security. See the American Library Association’s Web site or The Librarian’s Career Guidebook, by Priscilla Shontz, and Straight from the Stacks: A First-Hand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science, Laura Townsend Kane.
This kind of “coverage” is great for librarianship. Even if a million more people don’t come swarming the library schools, desperate for a piece of the action, is certainly will be “good for business” to be described as “high-tech information sleuth[s]“. It connects us with technology and detective work, two very favourable concepts in the popular sphere, and even goes so far as to point out that there is very often useful and wanted information out there that someone armed only with Google cannot find.
But it always begins with the “mousy bookworm”. Immediately images of horn-rimmed glasses, sweater sets, dusty bookshelves, and socially awkward (and therefore dateless) female staff with their hair in a bun, shushing and glaring at anyone who dares cough. Oh yes, he said forget about that image. Good luck. Try NOT thinking about a pink elephant. I just made you think of a pink elephant.
(And yes, I recognize the irony of pointing this out on a blog entitled “Buns & Shushings”. LOL)
Many thanks to The Shifted Librarian for posting this article.
The Origin of “Buns & Shushings” 4 April 2007
Posted by Matthew in About B&S.1 comment so far
Welcome to the first on-topic entry of this new blog, “Buns & Shushings”. (I’m going to leave the original “Hello World” entry to record the precise day I created this account/blog.)
“Buns & Shushings” will be a source of information and discussion concerning the perceptions the general public and society as a whole have about libraries, librarians, and the “Library and Information Science” field. I’ve always been interested and concerned about how non-librarians view our world, what the stereotypes are, what this means for our effectiveness (and existence), and what can be (or is being) done about it.
The title comes from a comment made on the Information Wants To Be Free blog by Dorothea Salo, in which she says, regarding an article about something library-related in Wired Magazine, that they “managed not to mess it up with lots of bun-and-shushing stuff”. (Here’s the link to the post.) I was inspired. Thank you, Dorothea.
My goal here is to post regularly (at least weekly) on news items, research, images, concepts, etc., that pertain to the various aspects of the reputation or LIS (I will probably be using this acronym a lot. It stands for “Library and Information Science”, and I use it to denote the field of librarianship, libraries, librarians, and maybe even archivists, and other information science specialists.)
Comments and suggestions (positive, neutral or negative) are welcomed and desired. Hopefully we can solve the world’s (or at least the library world’s) problems with this humble blog.
Thank you… Matthew J. Thomas, MLIS
Hello world! 2 April 2007
Posted by Matthew in About B&S.1 comment so far
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
