Librarians are People and Professionals, Not Monsters and Bell-Ringers

Librarians are a pretty misunderstood bunch.

Never mind the stereotypical image of tightly scraped back hair buns, thick glasses, death glares, and the Shh motion. Never mind the idea that we’re simply too boring or too shrewish to snag a guy and get him to the altar. And we really don’t care too much about the idea that we have no family but books, no friends aside from books, and no lives apart from books.

No, what really rankles is the all-pervading misconception that librarians have nothing better to do with their time than sitting idly by their desks, flipping aimlessly through newspapers, primly sipping cups of coffee, and constantly ringing the much hated bell. Believe me, we didn’t sign up for four years of college, agonize over our Board Exams, and take the oath of our profession so we could spend the next five decades doling out death glares to rowdy students. We didn’t pay tuition fees so we could live out the reminder of our years allowing our brains to rot slowly and noiselessly while smiling vacantly at an ever-changing tide of students’ faces. And we really didn’t get a degree in Bachelor of Library and Information Science so we could hurt our fingers by banging away on a bell. Oh, and we swear we didn’t opt to earn our Master’s Degree so that we could develop advanced ways to say Shh!!! I mean, seriously, if that were truly the character of our professional lives, we would be better off as bums because then we would be free of headaches and we could choose to spend the whole day in front of our television sets and finally decide whether we were die-hard “Kapamilya” or “Kapuso” (and I would finally learn the difference between the two).

Contrary to most people’s expectations, librarians have other things to do beside babysit students. Our professional lives do not consist of shushing people or ringing bells or staring balefully at noisy groups. We have student assistants to supervise, sections to run, reports and articles and project proposals to write, reference questions to answer, checklists to extract, budgets to prepare, collections to develop, reservations to handle, resources to acquire, books to catalog, a ‘code’ to master and utilize, articles to index, exhibits to prepare, meetings to attend, programs to organize and services to deliver. Books don’t just miraculously appear on the shelves; they make their way there due to the professional training of the librarians. Reference questions are not answered at random and with mindless effort; they are answered because librarians have been trained to find information. Services are not offered out of thin air; they are delivered by librarians who have spent days prepping for them.

Granted, there are no perfect libraries, nor are there perfect librarians. We fall short of what libraries and librarians can be and should be (and are, in various locations around the world). But we’re trying. We scramble our brains and bust our hearts trying to find ways to make everyone’s library experience more satisfying. We ring our bells to remind carefree students to cut back on their chatter so that  research-minded students can have the silence that libraries should provide. We ignore the butterflies in our stomachs (which occasionally  feel more like bulls in a china shop) and get up in front of classes to orient them to the ins and outs of the library. And we try to  remember that when a mechanical engineering major asks us for a book on pistons he really means that spare part you find in cars, not the NBA team. So, yes, it might take us a while to get to where we want to go but we have a vision, and we have the determination to make that vision a reality.

So, why am I a librarian today when my childhood dreams included careers like world-renowned author, air force pilot, neurosurgeon, Broadway actress, archeologist, and Ariel’s best friend! Maybe because I feel that writing a book is beyond me at this point in my life, I’m terrified of heights, and I turn sick at the sight of blood. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have an amazing singing voice, dead people creep me out, and the Little Mermaid isn’t even a real person. Or maybe,  just maybe, I’ve come to realize that there is so much more to being a librarian than frowning at people or looking frumpy.

You want to know a secret? Some of the most fashion-forward people I’ve met are. Wait for it?. Librarians.

No kidding.