No Longer Wearing Cardigans

When thinking about a librarian, your first mental image is likely very close to what I've chosen as the cover image. A woman, usually on the older side, with large glasses and an outfit that can best be described as 'something a grandmother would wear.' And it doesn't matter the age of the person wearing it either. This is the image of The Librarian. And we're all guilty of expecting it. Often, the idea of The Librarian is in movies, TV shows, cartoons, and picture books. The image of The Librarian is almost as prevalent as the expectations of what a librarian does and is.

Today I want to take you to look at what a librarian is now and what it is we, the public, think they are. How, often, that idea doesn't match with the facts.

Primarily, I'll be drawing from the paper: "Librarian, Faculty, and Student Perceptions of Academic Librarians: Study Introduction and Literature Review" by Jody Condit Fagan, Hillary Ostermiller, Elizabeth Price & Lara Sapp. It has been a very useful resource for this particular blog post, even if the name may look a bit long for the average person. But come along with me. We're going to enter a library.

Picture your childhood library. It's likely in a school, if I were to make a guess. The shelves are all at heights that smaller statures can reach easily and, for you, you likely only have one librarian in the school. You see her a lot. And it's very likely a 'her.' Upon my first job in a library, I read through all the policies there and the thing that stuck out to me was their DEI policy. It's a thing that a lot of people don't realize. DEI is for everyone. Librarians are primarily a female dominated profession. So the DEI policy reflects this and seeks to hire more males, as long as their criteria is suitable. So, my assumption will be that, in your memories, your librarian in your childhood library is a woman.

Mine was. My childhood library was a large, four story structure in a building from the 90s. The children's section was one of the biggest I'd seen, because it was the main public library for miles around. There was a high turn around rate of children's librarians, but for the 12 years I lived in that town, out of about 15 librarians, there was only ever one man. The image of 'librarian' in my head is a straight haired woman, often with a button covered lanyard, and well-worn jeans. She's always about mid-twenties to thirties. So my image of librarians is based on the librarians I grew up with, but it does differ a bit from what you might remember.

Many libraries have aging library staff, who have worked there for years. So your medium age expectations have a high chance of being older than mine. And how you see librarians might effect how you approach them: "Research analysed for this review reveals that the perceived approachability of librarians can be swayed by affective behaviours, clothing, and race/ethnicity" (page 68). It's an amazing thing - libraries, I mean - but like many places, they're still slow to grow and change. Hopefully, if you're younger, you're growing up with a more diverse mix of librarians. I remember some of my childhood librarians were Hispanic - but I also lived in California, so that does shift who was likely to be in the hiring pool from the average state-for-state make-up. But, on average, it is almost 'expected' that women should be in library positions. Usually white woman. Admittedly, I am one to talk, as a white perceived-woman.

But what about what librarians do?

"The role of the academic librarian is dynamic and broad; they are deeply involved in instruction, outreach, scholarly communications, data management, etc.; however, faculty and students still have a limited view of the profession" (page 67).

This is admittedly a paper about academic librarians, but the sentiment still stands across library job fields. They do a lot more than meets the eye. Often, there's grant writing, event planning, talking with far away libraries in the hopes they may pretty-please let you have one of their rare books for a user several states away. It's not all stuff that's visible from the patron's side of the desk.

"Participants perceived the library as friendly and described peer-to-peer reference personnel as being more ‘in tune’ with them while adult personnel ‘were perceived to have more expertise’" (page 67).

So why is there a disconnect between how librarians look and act in our heads rather than how they actually look and act in real life?

Usually, it's a delay. The idea of The Librarian is from years gone by. But also never actually existed. Librarians have always done jobs that aren't always clearly seen by the average user of a library. Just as any job looks on the outside simple and straightforward, once you work in it, you'll quickly find that it is a lot more complex than that.

As the shifting idea of The Librarian continues, I hope that the image, at least becomes a little more diverse. A little more true to the amazing people who work in the field.