At the receiving end of condescension

I’m afraid this post leans towards the rant side of writing. Please feel free to skip it.

During and since relocating to Massachusetts, I’ve had quite a few chances of telling people what I do for a living. In library school I heard stories about stereotypical librarians and the reputation librarians have, but had trouble believing them. Not anymore. There have been instances where I’ve been treated with decidedly less enthusiasm after revealing that I’m a librarian. Fortunately these incidents are few. Still, the experience hasn’t been enjoyable.

While brainstorming what to do with outdated attitudes like that, I checked out the ALA advocacy Tools and Publications page. It’s a fantastic resource with an Action Kit, Quotable Facts, Powerpoint Presentations, and more. Informative advertising is only a part of the solution, though. I like how zeroed_in phrased it in a recent post to the librarians community at LiveJournal:

“A very desirable trait for librarians is friendliness. You have to have interpersonal skills to work with people, obviously, but it’s a public service job so if you’re nice and helpful, people will remember you and come back. You also have to have research skills (you learn a lot of those through experience and in grad school). People are coming to you as a librarian because you have skills they don’t.”

Or, as Free Range Librarian said in an older post:

“The key here is understanding that it’s not the freebie or the close attention to an interlibrary loan. It’s not about the policy or the workflow. It’s about the focus on making — and keeping — happy, even passionate, customers.”

So, first we need to gently remind people that we have very useful skills, and then we need to impress them so that they’ll keep us in mind. Every day.

Phew. Think we can do it?