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)