And You Thought I Was Kidding About the Superhero Thing

Posted April 11, 2012 by Julie Steenson

Last week, in talking about career paths for librarians, I reminded everyone that Batgirl was, after all, a librarian.  The day after that post, I headed off to the University Of Rochester in New York, to join my daughter on a grad school visit.  The purpose of the visit was my daughter’s admission there this fall, but I had just read about the University of Rochester’s Undergraduate Research Project for my Evaluation class (LIS403). This qualitative study was a fascinating account of how this one academic library adapted both their physical space and information access to better meet the needs of the population they serve.  Naturally, I went off for a little library tour of my own to see the spaces I had just read about in the study.
You can imagine my surprise at turning a corner in the Reference Room and seeing an amazing display of the “League of Librarians: Research Superheroes at Your Service.”

These Reference librarians even have their own trading cards! A few examples are the Philosophy librarian as Batgirl (of course), the Manuscript librarian decked out as Sherlock Holmes (“No case too big, or too small.”), and the Modern Language librarian is sporting a colorful Doctor Who scarf with her Tardis in the background. (“Databases are like the Tardis.  They’re bigger on the inside.”)  Further superheroes include Flashback (world history specialist), Catwoman (Political science and law), and my personal favorites, The Indiana Jones of Information Retrieval (business) and Saturn Girl (computer science).

The back of each trading card includes ways to contact the superheroes, their individual subjects, superpowers, secret weapons, and in some cases, their secret lairs.
And you thought I was kidding.