Dissipating the stereotype

When you think of librarians what thoughts come to mind?

Smiling, kindly old ladies similar to ‘Granny’ from the Tweety bird cartoons?

Or something nightmarish like the librarian ghost at the beginning of the Ghostbusters movie?

Hopefully nothing like the orang-utan librarian of Unseen University from the Discworld series!

Either way you go ALL are wrong, there is NO cookie-cutter for librarians, we vary in personality possibly (I dare to say) more so than other professions.

Why?

Well take a University library for example; we cater for all faculties within the University. Therefore there are librarians who specialise in commerce, arts, law, creative arts, science, education, engineering, health & behavioural science etc. we also have collection development staff, client services staff, web development staff, electronic resources staff and a myriad of other staff members who fall under various headings. There is no one personality that would cater for all of these areas.

So who are we?

We are somewhat like you (GASP) – are you shocked? We are as different from each other as you are from other people. Some like cats, some like dogs, some drink tea, others coffee (I drink both depending on my caffeine needs at that particular moment).

Do we all love books?

NO! Since the technological boom in recent years many librarians prefer e-resources. Many libraries have already or are now reviewing their collections policy and amending it to an e-preferred policy. With the recent announcement from Kindle regarding the fact they are developing Kindle library services to be released hopefully toward the end of the year where clients will be able to take their kindles into selected libraries and borrow e-books it seems that the idea of an e-preferred policy will continue to grow.

Confused?

So are we!

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