Feature #49: Librarians in children’s fiction

Our next #uklibchat on Monday 5th March is on: Fictional Librarians and Stereotypes (our chat agenda is available). This month your March host Gaby K revisits her 2004 MA Dissertation to inspire you with your own thoughts.

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The Image and Portrayal of Librarians in Children’s Fiction

Back in the dim and distant past, like many of us, I had to find a topic for my MA dissertation for my MA in Library and Information Studies. My abstract states that “It was felt that librarians should be aware of the pre-conceptions their younger clients will acquire once they open a book and may well carry into adult life.” Dear reader, this was not strictly true, I needed a topic that I could survive studying long enough to put out a reasonable piece of work and something that at least initially I would find interesting and engaging. I also had a brilliant excuse to read a range of children’s books.  Rest assured I won’t regurgitate the whole thing for you but I thought you might be interested in some of the trends I found in my small study.

I looked at 55 different titles going from picture books to graphic novels. Titles included Little Bo Peep’s Library Book by Cressida Cowell,  Carrie’s War, by Nina Bawden, Terry Prachett Discworld novels and lots more.

On the whole librarians in children’s books wear glasses, and are friendly approachable types who want to help, but are also sometimes irritable.

And what do they do in a library? What are their skills? Mostly we are seen helping people find books – with seemingly amazing recall of the exact location of where books are in libraries. The process of searching and enquiry is rarely gone into in any length. Librarians just know where a book is – they don’t have to scan a shelf, let alone search an OPAC or (historically) a card catalogue or ask questions to tease out exactly what the person is looking for. Hairy B in The roundhill by Dick King Smith just points automatically to the “fourth bookcase, third shelf, under C” (page 78).

Perhaps authors want us to look magical. And it is true in real life that sometimes librarians do know how to find things more quickly through familiarity. As a children’s librarian I could recite key Dewey numbers in non fiction after a very short space of time. I’m not sure I could do this now.

After that, librarians lend and return books and issue fines a lot,  and they remind people of the rules return dates, damaged books, opening times. membership requirements.

Oddly, at least not in the selection I studied at the time, librarians and library workers rarely seemed to shelve a book. I found some references to Lucien and Mervyn shelving books in the Sandman series (Sandman 4 Season of Mists pp 40-41 and Sandman 7 Brief Lives Chapter 9, page 17), and Professor Branestawm apparently shelved multiple copies of “The Life and Likings of  Lobster” under lots of different categories (Norman Hunter, The incredible adventures of Professor Branestawm). They also only occasionally tidy the shelves. Wonderfully out of 55 titles, only one librarian says “Shh!” (In The legend of Spud  Murphy by Eoin Colfer) and only a few more seem to expect quiet.

A whole range of librarian and library work tasks are mentioned, but none of them as frequently as enquiries and observing rules and very little description is made of librarians receiving or having training. We appear fully formed in the library with our magic recall brains. Some do seem to have traces of lives outside the library but others seem to live there all the time.

But then again, perhaps this is not special to librarians. How much of any job is shown and shown accurately in children’s books? And are we really looking at stereotypes or rather caricatures with a specific plot function?

Bring along your favourite and least favourite examples from all kinds of fiction to our next #uklibchat on Monday 5th March Fictional Librarians and stereotypes!

About gabyklib

Gaby worked in public libraries from 2002 till May 2021. She has worked on a wide range of projects, from summer reading challenge, to autism awareness week, teenage reading groups, black history month, dementia awareness and many more. She's been involved in social media, websites and other promotion work in libraries. She continues to work for the council, but has now moved into being a web editor and video maker. Pronouns she/her

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