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More than Just Books: Perceptions of Librarians as Tech Workers
Abstract
This chapter explores popular images of librarians. Such images provide librarians with insight into how the general public understands their work. But by focusing on how librarians themselves react to these images, deeper insight is gained into how librarians understand their professional identity. When librarians engage with popular representations of their profession, they bring different understandings and meaning to the image than the general public. This understanding is the product of the professional education and their experiences as a profession. As they interact with the representation, they express and make sense of their professional identities. This chapter focuses on three images of the profession: Bunny Watson from Desk Set, Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Vox NY-114 from The Time Machine. Librarians have generally reacted very positively to these images. Bunny is seen as stereotype-shattering, Giles is understood to portray librarians as heroes, and Vox is celebrated for being the compendium of all human knowledge. The popular stereotype of librarians rarely includes them interacting with technology, and the professional literature often focuses on how inaccurate this portrayal is. Librarians clearly understand themselves to have a closer relationship with technology than the stereotype allows.
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