Editorial: The Image Thing

“What’s the image of librarians out there?” Carla Hayden, director of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, asked during a dinner conversation at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in January. Ironically, we were at LJ’s Librarian of the Year dinner, which celebrates the best in the profession, so it was a little sad to say to her, “Not great.” Just the day before, in an article about fashion-savvy women in Congress, the New York Times had quoted an image consultant who had this advice for the female legislators running the country: “You don’t have to grow up to look like a librarian.... But you don’t have to look like a hooker, either.” “Librarian” or “hooker”? That’s an image consultant we can do without.

The old, stale image of librarians prevails in the face of reality: librarians mirror the rest of the country, and the work they do has huge breadth and impact. Hayden, who posed the image question, is an attractive, sharp woman who was mistress of ceremonies at the inauguration of both Baltimore mayors Martin O’Malley (now governor) in 2004 and Sheila Dixon this year. She was also LJ’s 1995 Librarian of the Year.

This year’s Librarian of the Year, Mary Baykan (LJ 1/07), doesn’t “look” like a librarian, either. She’s a stylish professional. She could just as easily be one of the women in Congress the Times article discussed. She won the Librarian of the Year Award not only for her achievements as director of Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, MD, but also for her success in persuading the Maryland legislature to push through the largest increase in library support the state has ever seen.

The night I met her she was wearing a stunning silk jacket, though it’s not just clothes that make the woman, as we all know (and as the Times piece acknowledges, too). Baykan’s credentials are impressive but so is her sense of purpose. “What we do makes people’s lives better,” she said in accepting the award.

Then there’s LJ reviewer Matthew Moyer, a reference librarian at Jacksonville PL, FL, who organized a concert film series there. He’s thirtysomething, couples three-piece mod suits from thriftshops with boots and earrings, writes about dissonant and experimental music and is the editor of the book section for Ink19 (an online pop culture magazine). Not at all the mold of the male librarian.

Nevertheless, the traditional librarian image persists. “It’s in the American psyche,” Joan Bernstein, director of Mt. Laurel Library, NJ, and president of the New Jersey Library Association (NJLA), said when we discussed “the image thing.” “I don’t think it’s ever going away.” At the New Jersey League of Municipalities Conference last fall, the NJLA booth was staffed by a twentysomething librarian wearing a short skirt and high black boots. “I don’t want to fall into the trap of having 'booth babes,’” Bernstein said, at the same time acknowledging the positive effect.

Every profession has its stereotypes, though women physicians, for instance, aren’t mocked for wearing low-heeled comfortable shoes or eyeglasses that hang on chains. So why does the image of librarians still rankle? After all, we’ve been told by iconic librarian Nancy Pearl, whom the shushing librarian action figure is modeled on, to lighten up. And plenty of librarians are posting videos on YouTube that poke fun at librarians.

At LJ, maybe it’s because we’re constantly meeting such a wide sweep of the profession: librarians who are both high achievers and booth babes; women of a certain age; hunks and geeks; gays and straights. Maybe we’re idealizing all librarians based on the ones we know. We assume the rest of the world sees librarians as we do, and we’re inevitably disappointed when that’s not so. Maybe there’ll never be a resolution to “the image thing.” Or, as Bernstein said, “Maybe the next generation will change it.” With librarians like Moyer and a younger crop coming along, we certainly hope so.