[DDN] LIBRARY: LIBRARIANS: A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

[David P. Dillard]

LIBRARY: LIBRARIANS:
A Hipper Crowd of Shushers


A Hipper Crowd of Shushers
By KARA JESELLA
Published: July 8, 2007
New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08librarian.html>


Librarians? Arent they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of
classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons  the
ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a
focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available
in books, a new type of librarian is emerging  the kind that, according to
the Web site Librarian Avengers, is looking to put the hep cat in
cataloguing.

When the cult film Party Girl appeared in 1995, with Parker Posey as a
night life impresario who finds happiness in the stacks, the idea that a
librarian could be cool was a joke.

Now, there is a public librarian who writes dispatches for McSweeneys
Internet Tendency, a favored magazine of the young literati. Unshelved, a
comic about librarians  yes, there is a comic about librarians  features a
hipster librarian character. And, in real life, there are an increasing
number of librarians who are notable not just for their pink-streaked hair
but also for their passion for pop culture, activism and technology.

Were not the typical librarians anymore, said Rick Block, an adjunct
professor at the Long Island University Palmer School and at the Pratt
Institute School of Information and Library Science, both graduate schools
for librarians, in New York City.

When I was in library school in the early 80s, the students werent as
interesting, Mr. Block said.

Since then, however, library organizations have been trying to recruit a
more diverse group of students and to mentor younger members of the
profession.


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The complete article may be read at the URL above.



Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne at temple.edu
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