Hello New York Times/Sun readers and other “hip shushers”

Posted on by jessamyn

The fashion section of the New York Times has an article titled A Hipper Crowd of Shushers which, despite the title is less annoying than the usual “librarians, they’re not as lame as you think!” articles that we see about the profession. I’m quoted in it, there’s a great picture of Peter Welsch DJing, a quote from Sarah Mercure and a bunch of other fun pictures and quips. The New York Sun has its own article on a very similar topic.

Jessamyn West, 38, an editor of “Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out” a book that promotes social responsibility in librarianship, and the librarian behind the Web site librarian.net (its tagline is “putting the rarin’ back in librarian since 1999”) agreed that many new librarians are attracted to what they call the “Library 2.0” phenomenon. “It’s become a techie profession,” she said. In a typical day, Ms. West might send instant and e-mail messages to patrons, many of who do their research online rather than in the library. She might also check Twitter, MySpace and other social networking sites, post to her various blogs and keep current through MetaFilter and RSS feeds. Some librarians also create Wikis or podcasts.

11 thoughts on “Hello New York Times/Sun readers and other “hip shushers””

  2. “A Hipper Crowd of Shushers which, despite the title is less annoying than the usual “librarians, they’re not as lame as you think!”

    It is weird how librarians automatically get that schoolmarm rap. The press seems mystified by the idea that academics know how to have fun. I get the same issue with my Web site–don’t these folks know that “hot librarian” is the world’s most exciting fetish? :-)

  3. between “guybrarian” and mentioning your age, the article irritated me. It’s a typical NYT piece that sees the world through Manhattan-colored glasses.

    By the way, I’m using Firefox on XP and this comment box sets the font very very very tiny, almost too hard to see. Otherwise I like your theme… pretty!

  4. Thanks for the tip on the font size KG, it’s decent on the Mac but I’ll bump it up some. That age thig just seems to be something that reporters do that I’ve had to get used to. I’m always curious who else besides the reporters care how old anyone is.

  7. My friend just sent me a link to the article, so I blogged about it and decided to drop you a line. I thought it was rather entertaining, and I find that the more positive press we get about librarianship the better, (even though it may seem like a big “duh” to those of us in the field.) I am STILL constantly fighting the “you don’t look like a librarian!” fight. We probably need a little more ammo like this here in the suburbs of Texas than in NYC, though! Love your blog, btw…

  8. Although I was pleasantly surprised to see you in my Sunday morning NYT, something about that article really set me off (and I would probably qualify as a “hipster librarian”, even). This blogger sums up my feelings nicely.

    Articles like this one reinforce my belief that a lot of library school students have no idea what it means to be a librarian. That worries me.

  9. Is there anybody else out there who is sick of this “new” phenomena of the hipster librarian? When I worked at the reference desk of a major midwestern land-grant university in 1986 and 1987, I had pink hair. On my first day of work, I was thrilled to meet a colleague with purple hair. Shame on the media for just figuring out that those uptight stereotypes are older than the Dewey Decimal system. And sorry, Gen X & Y librarians, you aren’t the first class of hip!

  10. Thanks for the shout out. I have to say that the article was more fluffy than I’d hoped it might be but better than it could have been.

    Oh well.

  11. Pingback: librarians, and hipsters, and cocktails, oh my! « m00se

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