Breaking Bad Librarians

A rambling post where I think I had a point about librarians taking ownership of their professionalism somewhere.


I've worked in libraries for 16 years. I've no clue about the first thing to being a drug dealer.

I mean, I guess the first thing would be to create a VistaPrint account and make business cards.

Beyond that, I feel my background in libraries is not something I am going to draw on. Or that's what I thought.

"information professionals are like drug dealers. We encourage info-addicts by being a source, and push our product to them"

Turns out, thanks to libraries, I have the skill base to be a drug dealer after all. I didn't get into libraries for a career progression to the drug scene, but here I am: pushing product to info-addicts.

Being a book cataloguer and classifier too, I'm at the processing end of things. My office with desktop PC, ruler and RDA ring binder is ostensibly a meth lab. I should really wear a dust mask or take off my trousers when cataloguing. [In the same vein of never drug dealing, I've never watched an episode of Breaking Bad]

But with all those do-gooders helping info-addicts into the 12-step plan and out of libraries, times are tough for us book pharmacists, man. I speak to other Skidaddys and Slim Shadys in the library business and traffic passing to get their OPAC hits is not exactly buzzin'. Some book fungus jugglers are thinking of diversifying and getting a piece of the Waterstones small arms-trade action.

I've probably taken that too far.

I am very grateful to @walkyouhome for commenting on how questionable this tweeted take on information professionalism is. If I saw it without comment, I admit I would have scrolled by another tired and desperate attempt at making librarianship appear hip. I would have seen the tweet as a church minister plugging in his brown electric guitar at the evening hymn singing group and moved on.

Yes, librarians talk of having "users" but Information Professionals are nothing like drug dealers. Further, the suggestion they are, even a little, has dubious connotations.

Drug dealers. Aside from the school playground edgy level comparison to place librarians as criminal chic, well, drug dealers are usually bad people.

And with info-addicts, it labels those who use the library as people information professionals believe have an illness.

As for product... what product? Access to information in itself is not a product. It is a service. And a vital one at that.

Not how an interlibrary loan operates

Ultimately, @brawbukes gave a great statement about the tweet: it is out of touch with the information sector and drug addiction alike and offensive to both.

OK. I'm perhaps not being fair. I realise the tweeter will say he feels he has made a throwaway, light remark. Something that he hoped would give a quick thrill with a buck of the library stereotypes.

"Hey! If you think about it, us librarians are the dangerous, other side of the tracks, smouldering bad-guys in black tees who can't be tamed."

I get it. Heck, I'm writing this blog and thinking I am so rock and roll under my hair curtains.

I'm listening to Ocean Colour Scene's 2nd album while writing this.

And with that we can dismiss the tweet entirely. Because drugs is the wrong criminal industry.

This should have been the tweet:

"Information professionals are like brothel madams and pimps. We offer material on loan for info-pervs and let them grubbily thumb through our wares. #ili2017" 

As for what information professionals in academia catering for bibliophiles and researchers are like? Best not go there, the mucky first edition fuckers.

A prostitution comparison is way more accurate than a drug scene one. So why not say that? Because it is unsavoury for a guy who, since he started the comparisons, looks like he is out of a seasonal film titled Santa Needs To Be A Taxman for Some Reason, to say. I don't think one simile is any more savoury or piece by piece ludicrous than the other comparison.

You see, @walkyouhome got me thinking. This is a microcosm shedding an important light on one of the issues I wrestle with about a failing the information profession has: apologising for being itself.

I'm not saying it's not good to have a bit fun about our varied roles. It can be empowering to think of yourself as a maverick or whatever when working away. It can get you through a tough day. But why do these analogies appear out of our professional conferences? Or tweeted apparently straight laced by us? I'm pretty sure this is not helpful to the perception of the profession. And lord knows non-librarians are quick enough to make terrible comparisons about libraries and librarians, without us helping them.

The information profession is one of a very few professional sectors that seem to cackle and cling onto reinventions (or worse, brandings) of what they do as something else. We aren't librarians - we are Knowledge Wizards. We aren't librarians - we are Information Superheroes. We are Answer Sleuths. I mean, these are all more positive descriptions than information drug dealers, but still.

Are we so lacking in confidence as a professionalism that we glamorise our work to such a stretch that we are happy comparing ourselves to things nothing like librarianship?

It's not as if other professional sectors feel the need to do it.

Fair enough. There was that one time a corporate lawyer told people he did "murders and executions" instead of mergers and acquisitions. But he was American and a psycho. Although his VistaPrint game was strong.

However, generally, I don't see accountants try to sex up their jobs as, I don't know - Somali pirates.

Is it because of the librarian stereotype? I know we all are keen to rid ourselves of that. And we are quite right to challenge it when it plays falsely. I believe something is not a stereotype if it is true. The truth doesn't need to be bucked or glamorised.

Information professionals tend to be introverted. They tend to avoid conflict and seek conciliation. They tend to want to help others. They tend to be imaginative. They tend to worry about copyright infringement. None of this is a bad thing.

More importantly...

Information professionals facilitate access to information. Information professionals do this in service led industries. They do this to benefit users, clients and, yes, customers in all sorts of interesting sectors that change lives: improve lives. They do this under pressures of budgets, being told their skills are out of date and threat of losing their employment to volunteers and junior office administration staff.

One of the reasons for this is the lack of understanding about the value of what an information professional does.

Crucially, information professionals tend to work under non-information professional management structures and provide an information service to non-information professionals. So we need to be clear about what we do and why we are key to the service.

If someone asks me to talk about what I do I'm not going with:
"I'm like Thesesus slaying the minotaur and mapping the goddamn labyrinth for you info-virgins"

I'm going to say:
"I'm inputting consistent fields of information to identify an item searchable and findable on the catalogue - it is a pivotal role which enables the library service to function for those who need it."

That's because actually I'm very happy providing accurate and consistent authorised access points and a logical system to find library books and online databases. This is what I do. I work hard at it. Study it. I'm good at it. And I'll hope it reflects how professional my sector is.

Getting to brass tacks, what I'm trying to say in all this is:

I've no idea how to go about starting up as a drug dealer.
I do know what it takes to be an excellent information professional.
I wouldn't know the street value of mary jane.
I do know how to provide an enquirer with the answer they will most value.

It would be quite nice to think us librarians can proudly tell people actually what we do without suggesting we belong where the other grass is greener.

I really hope we see the end of analogies suggesting librarianship is important and cool for reasons nothing to do with the work of librarians. But something tells me we will continue to find them floating to the top of the loch after the profession has not weighted the bodies down with enough stones. Because librarians are not like hitmen for info-hirers.



If you didn't like this blog, you might like these other blogs I've written about libraries instead:

• One where I talk about Google not being a replacement for a librarian
• One where I talk about libraries not being phone boxes
• One where I talk about library closures (Nick Poole endorsed) 

For life is short

Schopenhauer

Read good writing. Don't read bad writing. Live a better life. Life is short enough.

Because I promised my next blog post would be about Agent Scully.

I'm writing this on the 3rd January 2017 just to make sure 2016 is over. Because we all know the best horror characters have a first "death" before a final shock, knife wielding appearance. We saw the soles of it's shoes on 1st January, but has anyone checked 2016 is still lying out on the porch?

2016 eh? I know, right. A lot to take in. Who could have foreseen FHM Magazine ceasing in print? Who could have predicted the X-Files returning to our TV screens. These seemingly disparate events pretty much shaped 2016 for us all, I'm sure.

The X-Files was a huge part of my pop culture growing up in the 1990s. Reflecting now, The X-Files was my most beloved programme. I had the VHS tapes, the DVDs, the posters, the theme tune single... I literally had (and still have) the T-shirt, which was dubbed a "cool nerd shirt" when I met an American. Agent Scully was also, in not quite my first onscreen crush, then certainly my first and only pin-up. I had her photo pinned up above my bed.

The X-Files arrived on the BBC with what I remember to be a little fanfare. But enough that I made a point of insisting that we turn over to it in the living room to watch the first episode. And I was hooked from the start.

Watching it on the only TV in the house, with my parents, meant I had to put up with some typical what we'd now recognise as Gogglebox commentary: "It's always dark!" "Why don't they turn on a light?" "This is silly!" "Madness!" "Do you really like this?" "I can't follow it. Weird" "The news is on the other channel you know - proper information about the world!"

I did really like it. It really was my world. At the time, I was reading Weekly World News and 2000AD and now this TV programme was homing in on alien conspiracy, monsters and a post-modern age of technology with ideas on 1.44MB disks that simply had to be too knowing about the covert not to be actually knowing. I knew it was nonsense TV, but it was entertaining, hard sci-fi and it felt like it was trying to say something about our times.

It has famously been described as a cult show. And for me at school, that it was. I wasn't aware of any of my friends sticking with it beyond episode 2. And so the show's conspiracy confined hanger fed into my own sense of being an outsider, a believer, when watching it. I was part of the cult and it felt good.

If Mulder was living my fantasy life of being an FBI agent, left to investigate bizarre cold cases under the radar and finding wondrous and strange answers, then Scully was naturally my fantasy foil.

I've written about the X-Files before and the how that chemistry can go wrong once it's out of lab conditions. But this blog is more about my feelings for Scully.

As a partnership, Mulder and Scully were perfect. Attractive and slightly awkward with it, this was way down the list of their character traits that made the relationship work.

Mulder, dogged and driven just to the line of insanity to find the "truth" was the cool one, often leaping before looking. An Indiana Jones of the Clinton era: so a wool-mix overcoat instead of a fedora. He had an easy, sometimes whimsical manner which belayed his strong intentions to uncover and discover the layers he was convinced were in plain sight wherever they were. He made "spooky" OK to be. He made buying the Weekly World News acceptable. He made having an open mind a way to look at the world.

Scully was and is the heroic character. Intelligent and strong enough to give Mulder just enough slack to keep up with him before bringing him back to the grounding of reality of record. She had a tinder dry humour and fun to give confidence when the alien shit hit (and likely point out it is simply unrecorded shit and that doesn't verify nor discount it being alien shit). She was capable of rescuing Mulder from himself and actions. And of course it helped that she was hot. Who doesn't want a partner like that?

As a scientist, Scully found the rational in the irrational and accepted the irrational in the rational. As a pathologist, Scully found my heart. Scully was someone, as a teenager, to trust with my irrational truths and know she would take care of them.

It was only when Gillian Anderson modelled for FHM in 1996, did school friends start to become interested in the X-Files again.

I never bought a copy of FHM Magazine, but a friend subscribed. I remember I would sit in his room and flick through it (for the articles on how to buy a motorbike, or "hog"), almost like an alien artefact. This was expensively put together. A top of the range car of a magazine for me to be handed the keys to. Glossy, assuredly weighty, it even smelled great.

It was a "lad's mag", but I always felt it was a child of a time which spoke to the emerging internet, disposable income and bravado of the 16-25 year old machismo generation. Just like the X-files, it felt zeitgeist.

And then, one issue, there was Scully on the cover. Oh my.

It's the in depth investigation of a sinking ship that sold this issue

Now you may think that this blog might only be an excuse to put up a few pictures of Gillian Anderson. And you would be only a little correct.

FHM would regularly sell copy from their ability to take reasonably tasteful glamour cover photos of women TV presenters, actresses and professional models of the day in underwear.

A bit of me was (careful now) delighted that FHM had made my X-Files part of the culture that I had been in but not exactly part of.

See? See! This is what you've been missing!Only in less well lit scenes and more jump suits.

A larger bit of me (careful now) was sad that the X-Files was no longer the counter culture I had as mine at school. Suddenly the X-Files was mainstream. The secret of Scully was out.

Britpop culture and the X-Files would quickly dovetail from here, culminating in the Catatonia hit of the parade, Mulder and Scully.




But there is no doubt Scully took me through my difficult outsider years, telling me that rational is OK, no matter how irrational to others it appears, strange or alone it makes me. Gillian Anderson also took me through some of my developing adulthood too.





To be honest after the 4th series, I began to drift away from the X-Files. I caught it sometimes, but that was all. And when the movies came, I watched them, but they were not enjoyable. It's very hard to maintain hard sci-fi when you see the alien craft lift off.

No matter, when the X-files returned in 2016 for a 6-espisode series special, I was delighted. I know it got some stick, but I couldn't fault it. It had everything in microcosm. The monster of the week, the emo story arc that no one really invests in outside the writers, the meta-humour, the ability to put the Twilight Zone narrative on it's head, the final overblown reveal when they finally listened to my parents and turned on the lights.

All the while, older Mulder looked hangdog and jaded, while Scully, more professional and whip smart than ever and, thanks to Gillian Anderson being amazing, brought a warmth and captivation to proceedings. The chemistry was there in every scene.

Although Gillian Anderson has done a lot of photoshoots...

Oh and this one, I've put in just in case you still didn't get the idea, you understand:

So, ah, yes, what was I... Oh... as I was saying: Although there have been a lot of photoshoots, my pin-up of Agent Scully above my bed was this. She was my ego to my Mulder IDol:

So 2016 was the year FHM ceased and was the year the X-Files made a return in a unexplainable symbiotic relationship from 1996. So not quite disparate events after all. Co-incidence? I know what Agent Scully would tell me.