The Librarian Stereotype... on the Big Screen and Beyond

I've been thinking a lot, as I often do, about the topics that Jen raised in her last post, on Librarians, Stereotypes, Professionalism, and Pop Culture.

Then earlier today, I came across a new piece on a feminist blog and magazine to which I subscribe:

From the Library: The Librarian Stereotype on the Big Screen

Here, librarian and blogger Ashley McAllister looks at librarian characters in a few famous films through the ages (with clips!), and concludes: "When we see librarians in the movies, they are usually fulfilling the role of a very narrow stereotype."

In my professional experience, the Real World Workplace of the large university library has not had a majority of female staff-members, but has been pretty evenly split. However, most popular stereotypes about librarians and library workers tend to portray them first and foremost as women.

As a well-read feminist, it is hard for me not to get deep into the long and complex history of why that may be the case, or of the general history of Women in Libraries, but I will say that I believe it is very important to debunk these kinds of stereotypes.

How to go about doing so?
That's a whole different story: the story at the heart of Jen's post.

However, where Jen mentions the argument made by some people that "librarians shouldn't complain 'about the deprofessionalization of librarianship... and then do things like this [funny video] and still expect to be taken seriously'", I can't help but point out that in our culture it is most often women who have trouble being taken seriously as professionals in general, and that most of the library professionals in that video also happen to be women.

For me, questions about library work, stereotypes, professionalism, and pop culture are always bound up in questions about gender and sexism. And of course this effects everybody, not just women!

I don't have any answers. Just more food for thought.