Humans of New York Library SNAFU

April 16, 2014

Yesterday Humans of New York posted two photos of a librarian and a library student and asked them both “What’s the sexiest part about being a librarian?”

At first this may not seem like that big of a deal. It’s National Library Week and maybe he wanted to highlight some young librarians. But the question. There are so many good questions you could ask about librarianship. I think HONY often asks very good and insightful questions, so I’m confused by this.

Librarians constantly have to deal with the sexualization of the profession and it’s, frankly, ridiculous. Librarians as individuals are sexy. Knowledge is sexy. Books are sexy. But the sexy librarian trope doesn’t help anyone and emphasizing that when you have such a great opportunity to help people understand the greater importance of libraries in our changing society is absurd.

The young woman answered HONY’s question with poise and dignity and it’s just disappointing that she didn’t get to answer a better one.

I’m still going to follow the HONY. This one hiccup isn’t enough to make me abandon such a great page, but I will be paying more attention to the kinds of questions that he asks his subjects and I hope that he listens to the feedback he is undoubtedly getting from the library community about these posts.

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One Response to “Humans of New York Library SNAFU”

  1. aprilfooled said

    Reblogged this on To the Unprivileged.

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