The Library

Shush

One of the many things I love about the TV show Parks and Recreation are the primary antagonists to the plucky Parks Department: The Library. They are portrayed as manipulative, violent, and sexually voracious. They are the Hare Psychopathy Checklist made lurid flesh and codex. Their reign of terror accentuated by their being “extremely well read”.

I am a librarian by training. I am not a psychopath (although who knows where that DarkTriad course may take me). As librarians are often portrayed as being well meaning and ineffectual, it is wonderful that we get to be the villains for once.

Let me share a few observations about the librarian community.

It is supposed that librarians love reading books. In fact, when applying to masters courses in librarianship, I was explicitly coached not to say that. You are supposed to enjoy organizing books, not reading them. However all librarians do secretly love reading books. It is a love that dare not speak its name - or write itself on an application form.

It is supposed to be a female-dominated profession, like teaching and nursing. And it is. While it is less obviously nurturing than the other two, it does have a strong ethic of service attached to it. Although this gets refracted through two major subgroups - front-of-house and back-of-house. The front-of-house crew generally have customer service roles. They like people. They like helping people. They are skilled at asking questions to find out not just what their patrons want but what they really need. Once while working at a university library I was able to work out from the request “I need the history book with the black and white cover” that the student was looking for Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes. That is a feat that I may never better.

On the dark other side are back-of-house. These people enjoy cataloguing and classifying materials. Give them a book about quantum mechanics and Russian cookery and ask them where it should be shelved. Although such challenges are not what they were with the replacement of physical books with electronic files. It must always be remembered that the limited human contact associated with these roles is a feature, not a bug for the professionals that take them.

The public library is something of an anachronism that predates the neo-liberal order. It is a state-funded place where anyone may access information, entertainment or learning. No wonder free market zealots tend to loathe libraries. This is just communism with cardigans for them.

Which is why I think libraries are worth defending and the profession should hold its head up high. And perhaps be a bit more manipulative and ruthless. The Pawnee Library Department has much to teach us.