Information professionals have long endured the stereotype of the shushing librarian. In fact, even Library Journal identified this trope in 2012: “My stereotype librarian is a pleasantly plump, middle aged white woman who really likes to help people and can’t understand why more people don’t want her help. Is there someone like that on your staff, or is it just the librarians I’ve known over the years?”
Um, really?!?
What’s so sad (and angering) about this stereotype’s persistence is that librarians are a diverse group of people with a diverse range of skills and interests. Yet American culture, at the very least, continues to ignore that librarianship, with all its own issues, is opening up to more and more people of color, men, and queer-identified people. And the libraries in our communities also mirror that diversity, in programming and outreach efforts especially.
Just today, the Huffington Post published an article on diversity in libraries and targeted programming to “bridge” the cultural divide.
How do we as information professionals continue to break the stereotype of the middle-aged white female librarian and replace it with a more culturally accurate representation?
This is a challenge, for sure. As I mentioned in my last blog, the librarian trope has been moving away from librarianship as a “helping” profession and more towards the trendy, “hipster” image we’ve seen, especially in the librarian blogosphere. While it’s definitely important to acknowledge and celebrate the new generation of librarians and information professionals, it is still troubling to see so many young, white people (with tattoos and piercings and dyed hair and all of that) representing the profession in the culture. (Disclaimer: I probably fall into this category, although I’m not as young as many coming out of library school.) Where are the rural librarians? What about inner city librarians who get their degree and go on to help in their own communities? What about international librarians, who leave the relative comfort of their own country to work in other places? What about librarian-activists who work around these issues and get shut down by various LIS administrators?
Basically, as I see it, lip service to the goals of diversity does nothing. Only action will change the stereotype and widen the field for LIS professionals everywhere. For example, ALA’s decision to hold its annual conference in Orlando, FL in 2016 is a decision that affects African American librarians; the Black Caucus of ALA has decried ALA’s decision based on the grounds that Florida has appallingly racist pro-gun laws and was the place that George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering a black teenager. This is a very concrete example of how organizations deliberately ignore the needs and desires of the very professionals they claim to want to draw into librarianship.
All this to say… we can do better. For ourselves, for each other, and for our customers. Diversity shouldn’t be a buzz word in the literature or corporatized beyond all meaning; it should be a commitment to inclusion and a natural part of our work.
Global Perspectives on Librarian Approachability 