Librarians, Stereotypes, Professionalism, and Pop Culture

A little bird (one of the students working in ILL) recently sent me a link to a YouTube video featuring students and faculty at the University of Washington's Information School (teaching Library and information Science) doing their rendition of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face." Less than a week later, I saw the link to this video posted on one of our library's internal list servs (lib-all, I think).

In the video, the students and faculty librarians at UWash changed the lyrics to relate to libraries; the chorus lets the world know that they "can use my, can use my, you can use my catalog (don't forget the databases)."



The video is certainly entertaining and good for a laugh. What I found interesting were a couple of comments posted on New York Magazine's website in reaction to the video.

One comment says that librarians shouldn't complain "about the deprofessionalization of librarianship (i.e. people who don't have a library science degree doing 'professional' library jobs) and then do things like this and still expect to be taken seriously."

A self-identified library student then replied to this comment, stating that there's difference between professionalism and having a sense of humor.

In my library school classes, we talk a lot about the level of professionalism in the field of librarianship. There is a drive to publish scholarly articles and make the profession comparable to other professional occupations in law (lawyers), medicine (doctors), etc. I think, though, that the professionalism of librarianship need not confine itself to the standards set by other long-established professional occupations.

Librarians work with a whole host of people in the library, not just "professionals" with Master's degrees. It is the total group, consisting of library student assistants, staff, administrators, professionals and faculty, that projects whatever level of professionalism they wish for their library. We do so by helping patrons and giving them a sense of how we do business, how we treat them, and how we demonstrate to them that we have specialized knowledge that will help them use the library.

What do you think of this video? What do you think patrons at this library would think of this video? What would they think about their library after seeing this video?

Also, should we make a video?