Oh dear.
June 29, 2008
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Words fail me.
What you said.
I should add that I think libraries and librarians are awesome.
She/he COULD be a librarian without a degree (B.L.I.Sc) working in some really, really isolated place. Otherwise, that “librarian” needs to be de-barred immediately!
I’m always surprised and astonished when I hear that someone doesn’t know who Jane Austen is/was, but a librarian who doesn’t know…..? Ouch!
Either that, or a librarian who did not study humanities as an undergraduate. There are librarians who specialize in the sciences.
That’s completely terrible! For all our class! I’m doing my undergraduate degree in Librarianship and I cannot belive it! Where the hell lives that person? In what possible planet?
This is the end of civilization as we know it. Oh, dear! indeed.
Julie makes a good point. But the context of the quotation seems like someone asked a librarian, in a library, something about Jane Austen, in a context where the librarian might be expected to know the answer. But then maybe I’m reading too much into it.
And I thought it was bad when one of my librarians hadn’t heard of David Foster Wallace.
I had a librarian who had never heard of Pride and Prejudice, I was so astonished I didn’t even think of asking her if she had heard of Jane Austen!!!
There are indeed, all sorts of librarians. This one might be a medical,legal, or business specialist. Or someone whose primary clientele is children. Perhaps he or she is not a native speaker of English. Otherwise, there isn’t much excuse for it. A parallel example is my own lack of appreciation for the science fiction genre. But at least I’ve heard of Clarke and Asimov.
I think the term “librarian” is probably being used pretty loosely here. I worked in my junior high school library because I got kicked out of art class in 7th grade, and I couldn’t have told you who Jane Austen was then – I spent my time behind the counter reading the Illiad (very cool battle scenes) and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Well when I was in library school (many, many moons ago) I was taught not to put too much stock into anything that could not be verified. So, given the anonymous nature of the quote, as well as its absolute absurdity, I choose to simply discount it altogether
It is already proved that there are other dears of the kind:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/6906799.stm
As a result of his experiment, Mr. Lassman concluded:
“…. it seems poor old Jane wasn’t too popular”.
It can not be otherwise in a modern world where Jane Austen is totally mixed with numerous dime novels recognized as so called “chick lit” intended for escape from reality, pre-sleeping reading and improvement of one’s sexual life.
Oh–that old story. I blogged about it back when it came out. I said at the time that I suspect more of them recognized it than were willing to admit to it–they just sent their usual rejection letter (however kindly worded) and thought no more of it.
As a librarian I have to tell you that a lot of people do think we just sit around and read all day. I do find it odd that a librarian has never heard of Jane Austen. I’ve met some that haven’t read her books but I, myself, haven’t read all of the classics but I do have a working knowledge of most of them. Also like it was mentioned before the word librarian is probably used in the loosest sense. Just like the misnomer that all our job consists of is reading a lot of people think that every employee of a library is a librarian.
Blasphemy! LOL
Just like the misnomer that all our job consists of is reading a lot of people think that every employee of a library is a librarian.
So true. People think that the person at the front desk who stamps your books is a librarian.
I worked as a corporate librarian, and I can’t think of any former colleagues who’d never heard of Jane Austen. I’m sure that plenty of my former clients hadn’t heard of her though.
Oh dear,
I think that the Austen reader who, “multiple readings over multiple years”, is in distinct minority. The one more representative is “I have only saw the movie Pride and Prejudice ,Sense and Sensebility.”,as posted on a popular Austen site.
Of course, if it’s on the Internet it must be absolutely true. I’ve never read anything on the Internet that wasn’t.