"Librarian and the Univac" Downey

One thing that really disturbed me because of its reverberations in librarianship today was the relegation of the librarian in the exhibition space to the public relations person rather than a problem solver and someone with professional expertise. When I talk to people about how I want to become a librarian most respond in some way with the question, “Okay…What do librarians do? Don’t they just check out books to people?” That usually gets me upset, because the public today essentially sees librarians in the same way that whoever designed the Univac saw librarians-as nonessential and not worthy of real designing power or oversight capabilities. Also I think in reality librarians in their own libraries end up being maintenance people just like those in the exhibit at the fair just because they are the ones around and the public demands someone to help them with technology in the library. So overall this article was really great because it took a one-time exhibit at a fair and used it to identify larger and ongoing problems within the profession, even though a lot of things have changed since 1942. I was rather appalled that the librarians who were picked to represent the profession were picked to combat certain stereotypes of librarians and give off a different image to the public. One would expect that such a selection process would be rather inevitable because certain traits do not help a librarian accomplish their jobs like surliness or impatience. But physical features? It seems like the people picking the librarians wanted to give the public the impression that librarianship was changing without actually doing any substantive changes in librarianship. Overall, this article sort of burst whatever bubble I had left concerning librarianship. The reality is that the ALA as an organization and librarians as a group are just as susceptible to the foibles of the private sector like discrimination, self-promotion, and a whole lot of talk and show without substantive change. Coming to those kinds of conclusions through a snapshot kind of article shows how well this article was written and constructed.