Clip Art or Police Sketch??  

 We all know that they exist.  But did you ever wonder where they come from? 

             The librarian who when asked if you have a book on how to treat a snakebite and are holding your bleeding arm above your head, merely points to the non-fiction section on the first floor;  the librarian who, when you ask if the library has anything by Zane, sends you to the Zane Grey Westerns;  the librarian who, when you ask for a book that your seven year old might like to read, suggests Tom Sawyer or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

 The librarian who has never ordered a book that was NOT on the New York Times Bestseller list. 

The librarian who can’t begin to tell you the title of the book in which a little girl from Kansas is taken up in a tornado and set down in a land with witches.

 The Librarian who spends the entire day reading a thick book at the desk, unaware of any actual persons located in their vicinity. 

The Librarian whose Facebook pals number in the hundreds, but whose ability to search the catalog is limited to “keyword search.”

             Where do they come from? We're not sure, but there is a leak in the cataloging department.

            Why do we keep them?  Don’t blame Civil Service.  It’s too easy.  Many of these individuals have fine qualities and interesting hobbies, but you won’t ever discover that at the reference desk.  We have let them linger too long in training and forgotten the training.  We have decided that since they are quiet and unassuming we can inflict them on the public for years on end. 

           After all, library administrators are often those who are happy to have escaped working with the “public.”  Someone has to take the desk.

             graveyard of talent

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a library does not have Zane books because they are pornographic, that is due to “community standards” as enforced by the paranoid library director or churchified Library Board or those enforcers of taste, the cataloging assistants  who can hide anything for up to a year.  Zane Grey was a splendid writer whose works are sadly neglected.  You could learn something from Zane Grey novels!

Grey ↓                                                             Shocking ↓

           The librarian  whose awareness of children's books stopped sometime around the turn of the century--will die alone and neglected and be eaten by cats.   

          Somewhere in the cultural ediface there has to be a  children’s librarian.  Don't give up!!   If you end up finding them shelving books in the local history room, don't despair.  Just make your  list.  Otherwise you'll have to spend time shuddering at the crap in the children’s section at Barnes & Noble.

© Jared Lee

illustration from Librarian from the Black Lagoon

            The New York Times Bestseller List is considered such an august institution it spawned a Children's Booklist--back when Harry Potter and the Various Subtitles were shoving even Stephen King into obscurity.  One of the results is that you may not have heard of blockbusters like  The Book Thief or The Lightning Thief or the Last Apprentice or the Ranger’s Apprentice or Madeline and the Cats of Rome or Olivia goes to Venice.  

            Librarians sincerely hope that you would never take rave reviews for Mark Zusak's  The Book Thief   as an endorsement of stealing.  While this  Holocaust-era tale pits the joy of reading and thinking against restrictive societies and war, it is no justification for that kind of behavior.  

           Please stop and see the Circulation staff about your fines.

 Dewey's FaceBook page

 

             When you do find the librarian who looks up from her book, her catalog, her computer, or her stash of puppets for story hour, give her a smile.  Say, “Excuse me, but I think I need a little help” and go on to state your desire for the book about the little girl who gets swept up in a tornado.

           She'll be happy to help you.

              Unless you just dropped a house on her sister . . . .

 

T shirt from the Web

 

For all the bad bad days at libraries . . .