Literary Librarians

Posted August 19, 2014 by Gemma Doyle

It’s August and summer classes have finally ended, which means I have another two weeks of relative freedom before fall classes start in September.  I’ve been spending a lot of time catching up on television (I know people told me Orphan Black was good, but it is so good, you guys) and the lengthy list of books I’ve wanted to read.  People who choose to study the library sciences do tend to be big readers, and the size of my To Read pile definitely means I’m no exception. 

Because I’m graduating in less than six months (!!!), most of my focus is on job hunting and my future career, and I’ve been spending my time reading about fictional librarians and their work for inspiration.  The problem with fictional librarians is that a lot of the time they seem to be the stereotypical shhhing librarians who hate fun – even the librarian action figure has sensible shoes and “amazing shushing action.”  Luckily, there are a load of awesome literary librarians to help balance the picture of the profession.  My top three are all from SF/fantasy:

• Issac Vainio, from Jim C. Hines’ Libriomancer and Codex Born.  I just love the idea of a librarian who can pull objects from the pages of books, even if his life is ridiculously complicated. 

• Lucien from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics.  Lucien’s library contains every book that ever has, or might, exist.  Enough said.

• The Librarian from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Besides being turned into an orangutan, the Librarian (real name unknown) can also move through L-space.

 A note to the universe: I will happily accept any superpower that comes with my degree, although I would prefer invisibility or flight.