Don’t be a hater

February 28th, 2006 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

Yesterday’s Talk of the Nation focused on the future of libraries, and one caller near the end didn’t seem to like us much at all. Scott from Denver said:

So the libraries of the old days, with librarians and the politics behind any library holding on to certain books here, and not those books there, and certain information here — well, they acted as filters, the custodians of those old libraries. Well, the new “librarians” are going to be technicians that are well versed in using filters and the computer. So that’s my issue. (Time index 30:15 if you want to skip the rest of it; not one of TOTN’s better pieces, really.)

Yes, Scott has issues. From both his words and his tone, he was pretty clear in his desire to see us mean ol’ librarians pushed aside so we can stop being all political and so that he can finally use computers and filters to get to the information he needs. Fine. Whatever.

Here’s my question: What did we ever do to these people? You know, the ones who just hate us? Did a gang of librarians beat Scott up and steal his bicycle back in third grade? Did an elderly librarian run over Scott’s dog with her Nash Metropolitan? Did an eight-foot tall library beast man snatch Scott’s favorite book away and hold it teasingly over his head, making nyah-nyah sounds?

I get that some people don’t like lawyers, politicians, doctors, what have you. But librarians? C’mon, man, we’re harmless. We love answering questions, teaching users to find information, organizing and classifying materials, and generally helping people however we can.

So don’t mess with us or you’ll be sorry.