Congratulations to Maggie McAlister Smyth from the King's Hospital Day and Boarding School, whose blog post has been awarded 1st place in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.
The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.
“They’re like a biker gang. Only instead of shotguns and crystal meth, they use political savvy and shushing.” (Parks and Recreation, S2 Ep8: “Ron and Tammy”)
The scene: New York Public Library. Nineteen eighty-something. Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis are creeping through the stacks with one plan: “Get her!” Now, those who know me know I love anything to do with ghosts and the paranormal. During Covid, I got an online certificate degree in cryptozoology. I read horror and listen to spooky podcasts like it’s going out of style. But when I watched this for the first time as a young teenager, and that ghost librarian’s head peeled back as she exploded into a spray of ectoplasmic goop all over, I was terrified. And that librarian? Combined with the two librarians Murray and co. speak with just before this scene – one fainted from fright, another cagey and disapproving? Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the field.
Years before this, my first TV librarian was Paige Turner of the Elwood City Public Library. She was a rabbit on Arthur with big-framed glasses, a cardigan and a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour. She always had a pencil in her hair.
Now a librarian in my thirties, I too wear big-framed glasses and cardigans, attempt to keep up a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour, and often am found with a writing utensil stuck through my ponytail. (I’ve also been known to come home from work with a binder clip used instead of a hair-tie). Up until very recently, my glasses of choice were red cat-eye style. My students approved vehemently of these as being appropriate for my position.
A comment I have received more than once is – glasses aside – students and new staff are surprised to meet me. They assume that a librarian will be dowdy, advanced in years, and a bit grumpy. At the very least, overly stern. Librarians are traditionally portrayed so thoroughly in media (particularly pre-Y2K media) as being spinsters and enforcers that some feel trepidation in even darkening the doors of their local library branch, a tragedy indeed. A few bad apple librarians in film and television may seem to be no big deal, but “misconceptions about librarianship can significantly influence how society perceives, values, and supports the profession” (Owoeye et al., 2025).
The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.
“They’re like a biker gang. Only instead of shotguns and crystal meth, they use political savvy and shushing.” (Parks and Recreation, S2 Ep8: “Ron and Tammy”)
The scene: New York Public Library. Nineteen eighty-something. Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis are creeping through the stacks with one plan: “Get her!” Now, those who know me know I love anything to do with ghosts and the paranormal. During Covid, I got an online certificate degree in cryptozoology. I read horror and listen to spooky podcasts like it’s going out of style. But when I watched this for the first time as a young teenager, and that ghost librarian’s head peeled back as she exploded into a spray of ectoplasmic goop all over, I was terrified. And that librarian? Combined with the two librarians Murray and co. speak with just before this scene – one fainted from fright, another cagey and disapproving? Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the field.
Years before this, my first TV librarian was Paige Turner of the Elwood City Public Library. She was a rabbit on Arthur with big-framed glasses, a cardigan and a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour. She always had a pencil in her hair.
Now a librarian in my thirties, I too wear big-framed glasses and cardigans, attempt to keep up a friendly but no-nonsense demeanour, and often am found with a writing utensil stuck through my ponytail. (I’ve also been known to come home from work with a binder clip used instead of a hair-tie). Up until very recently, my glasses of choice were red cat-eye style. My students approved vehemently of these as being appropriate for my position.
A comment I have received more than once is – glasses aside – students and new staff are surprised to meet me. They assume that a librarian will be dowdy, advanced in years, and a bit grumpy. At the very least, overly stern. Librarians are traditionally portrayed so thoroughly in media (particularly pre-Y2K media) as being spinsters and enforcers that some feel trepidation in even darkening the doors of their local library branch, a tragedy indeed. A few bad apple librarians in film and television may seem to be no big deal, but “misconceptions about librarianship can significantly influence how society perceives, values, and supports the profession” (Owoeye et al., 2025).
Further, “perceptions of librarians” act as a deterrent for some potential library users (Black, 2016). McAfee’s (2018) research on library anxiety further reflects this – a deep fear of being judged for having less knowledge or understanding than the librarian you are speaking to is a great deterrent from help-seeking. And if the librarians you grew up on are cranky, grumpy, and don’t take kindly to being asked questions, well …
This portrayal is outdated though, if it ever was true. Librarians, and our pop culture counterparts have changed drastically since Mary was relegated to the life of a spinster librarian by George Bailey’s wish to never be born (Capra, 1946). As Thiruppathi (2024) puts it, “the digital age has propelled librarianship into a new era characterized by evolving roles, challenges, and opportunities" (p. 7).
In 2019, LitHub published a list of “50 Fictional Librarians, Ranked” (Temple, 2019). Among the names on this list are librarians who are as far from frail and timid as one could imagine – the adventurous if somewhat accident-prone Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) in The Mummy; the wise and snarky Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) of Sunnydale High; Pawnee’s hypersexual “punk-ass book jockey” Tammy II (Megan Mullally) in Parks and Recreation.
Based on this quick audit of recent character depictions, I hope that younger people are under the impression that librarians shouldn’t be feared because we will glare down our noses at you, but rather because we will tell you what you need to know, whether you want the truth or not. I hope that the predominant media consumed about librarians is the documentary The Librarians (2025), an incredibly powerful film about the ways that librarians in the United States (particularly in my own home state of Texas) are facing violent threats, harassment, and loss of employment in the wake of the Krause List.
In the 80s and 90s, moms across America would guilt their children into eating their meatloaf by saying “kids in [insert name of country exploited by Western colonialism here] don’t have food”. Now, I find myself saying to students “kids in my hometown don’t have that book”. But that is another conversation for another day.
I decided to do a little gumshoe work myself on the topic and hounded a handful of teachers at my school for their opinions. Funny enough, my first respondent, a science teacher, said that as a kid he thought of librarians as the ghost from Ghostbusters – though he admits “from my experience I didn’t get much from the media about [librarians]”. One RE teacher wanted to include he believes that “the reclusive, nondescript glasses wearing librarian with her (always her) hair tied up in a neat bun does not help” getting young people to interact with the library but rather drives potential readers away for fear of their being perceived by peers as uncool by association. A younger member of staff added that her understanding of librarians growing up was reinforced by “this grumpy old woman at the Blanch library. If you had the cheek to walk in, you were an inconvenience”. My personal favorite response was that the media typically portrays librarians as “spinsters with no craic about them at all, which is not really the experience I have had with the librarians in my place of work” (personal communications, 2026).
I would love to say that I have never encountered this stereotypical librarian, but we all have bad days. There are days when a student has cried on my shoulder after her friend decided they didn’t want to be friends anymore, but there are also days when I have snapped at a student too harshly. I hope that my good days far outweigh my bad.
References
Black, S. (2016). Psychosocial reasons why patrons avoid seeking help from librarians: A literature review. The Reference Librarian, 57(1), 35-56. doi:10.1080/02763877.2015.1096227
Black, S. (2016). Psychosocial reasons why patrons avoid seeking help from librarians: A literature review. The Reference Librarian, 57(1), 35-56. doi:10.1080/02763877.2015.1096227
Capra, F. (1946) It’s a Wonderful Life. RKO Radio Pictures.
Daniels, G. & Schur, M. (Executive Producers). (2009-2015). Parks and recreation [TV series]. Deedle-
Dee Productions; Universal Media Studios.
McAfee, E. L. (2018). Shame: The emotional basis of library anxiety. College & Research Libraries, 79(2), 237. doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.2.237
Owoeye, S. O. et al., (2025, June). Not just a book lady: Shifting perceptions of librarians’ role in the 21st Century. Journal of Library Services and Technologies, 7(2), 232-243. doi.org/10.47524/jlst.v6i2
Temple, E. (2019, Oct. 16). 50 fictional librarians, ranked. LitHub. https://lithub.com/50-fictional-librarians-ranked/?single=true
Thiruppathi, K. (2024). Librarian’s role in the digital age: Reimagining the profession in the era of information abundance. Information Journal of Library and Information Studies, 13(1), 1-9.
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