The Librarian as “Professional” (Not “On Subject,” but Unquestionably a Mere Comment)

[Although my writing is supposed to appear on this site at least once a week, lately, it hasn’t. My excuse is that as I grow older I am less inclined to speak until I have something to say, thus, I hope, relieving the world of at least a small measure of the verbal superfluity in which it already swims. This morning, however, I found myself suffering from the need to disgorge the following thoughts about the library world in which I spend quite a bit of my time, so beg the reader’s indulgence for what follows.]
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Is a librarian a “professional?” I suppose that depends on whom you are asking, when. If you consult the literature of the trade the answer is certainly Yes, for librarians, although they are generally expected to possess a Master’s degree that is an unnecessary qualification for the kind of work they do (a college major would more than suffice--that is why they can, and are, being replaced by less expensive paraprofessionals), librarians like to think of themselves that way, and, when they are not operating as clerks, baby sitters, or security guards, are found at least somewhere on professionalism’s fringe, particularly when they are bona fide subject specialists.

If you ask their employers during contract negotiation time, “library employees” would seem to be the preferred designation, while at the annual evaluation “professionalism of the highest order” is called for from the same quarters. If you ask the contrarian patron the librarian must “deal with” because he is in the library to do his own thing, however obtrusive he may be to others, the answer is “not if I can help it,” while those for whom the librarian ferrets out a bit of obscure but desperately needed information will have an altogether different take on the matter.

It is in the interest of library management--and as Dilbert would tell us, is the province of every manager--however, to demand that the librarian operate at the highest level of responsibility, subject expertise, and social competence, while at the same time keeping him low, docile, and paying him as little as possible.

One way to help several of these goals along is to decree, as was recently attempted in my library, that he wear a name tag that displays only his first name. Numerous studies, we were told, indicate that patrons behold reference librarians, who supposed to be there to help them in a friendly way, in an unapproachable nimbus of awe. We, after all, sit behind desks, surrounded by the accoutrement of knowledge’s authority, and generally look as though we are about some very serious business. (In fact, we are probably gravely informing someone that Curious George is checked out and that they must put him on reserve.) To interrupt would be an imposition upon the time of a busy and important person. In short, they are viewing us as professionals, and thus giving us the same sort of natural deference one might give to a teacher, an attorney, or a physician, whose time is worth money, and whom one does not consult without a good reason.

Therefore, managerial logic has it, the librarians need to get up and walk around, be very, very friendly, and wear those eminently gemuetlich name tags. Who, after all, is more effectively able to deliver the reference goods, some glowering demigod behind a desk, or Ormuntrude the Jolly Stack-Wanderer?

This way of ordering things serves several valuable functions. The most presentable reasons are that it makes the library a friendlier place and serves its high mission of information service. Just as valuable to the managerial mindset, but not explicit, is that it serves the perennial goal of reducing the perceived status of the librarian from “professional” to, well, something less, while taking advantage of every professional quality for which we are given, as my boss says, the “big bucks,” and for which we are, of course, condignly grateful.

While one who goes to the physician must wait one’s turn, while the lawyer does not (well, most of them don’t) prowl the aisles of Wal-Mart drumming up business, and while the teacher is generally addressed by title unless they explicitly invite one to do otherwise, the New Reference Librarian, half clown and half sage, is sent discalced out into the world on his apostolic mission of information service, inviting the public at large, including the child, the adolescent, the kook, the hostile, and the badly-brought-up (who will do it anyway because it is both friendly and egalitarian) to call him by his first name with never a by-your-leave.

The principal problem this new necessity points to, though, is not with librarians in general, the place in which they must sit to be found by those who are looking for them, and where they must do most of their accustomed work (now at a computer terminal), but a dereliction on the part of those who supervise them. The answer to the problem of the perceived distance of reference librarians from the public they serve is not to remove from them either the vague appearance of professional status and responsibility they occasionally enjoy, or the social distance--the relative height--they need as leverage for the duty they are customarily given to manage patron activity on the floor of the library. What is required is that the managers do their duty in managing the librarians who make reasonable patrons feel uncomfortable approaching them for help.

Most librarians I have met are friendly, competent, reasonable, sensitive, and welcoming--and many are paragons of all these traits. This cannot, however, make up for the behavior of those who are not, for “most,” leaves many who for one reason or another make seeing a reference librarian a less than happy experience--ranging from the relative innocence of using a stentorian voice to say, “Let me make sure I understand you clearly: You want a book on impotence? Would you like something on Viagra, too?” to the far more subtle cruelty of the offhand look and slightly ironic tone that suggest only a stupid person would ask a question like that. Making these reform, or toe the line, or get therapy, or leave, is the responsibility of their superiors. This is perhaps one of the hardest and most unpleasant--and therefore most avoided-- supervisory responsibilities, but if one will pardon me for saying it, it is one of the things for which managers are paid the big bucks. It is far easier to issue what I call avoidance edicts, like the despicable teacher (supported by the even more despicable principal) who, lamely citing the deterrences of peer-pressure, makes the entire class stay in from recess because little Johnny, a budding sociopath who doesn’t give a damn for peer pressure, or whose peer group thinks him cool for managing the coup, won’t behave.

The librarian who uses his job as a field for the exercise of obnoxious personal traits which normal people find off-putting, and which lodge in their memories, sometime with very great force, as reasons to fear the reference desk, is perhaps one out of ten at most--which is to say, such librarians, while not by any means the norm, are also not by any means uncommon. The answer to the problem is not to strip the other librarians of the reasonable and necessary prerogatives of their work with one of the all-too-common administrative fiats which issue from ill-considered and self-serving interpretations of statistics, but doing the supervisory work for which one receives the unquestioned status and the salary of a professional.