Librarians make it in the movies

Ann Seidl’s The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians through Film is a new documentary looking at librarians working in America today. The film takes the form of interviews with real librarians, interspersed with film clips from movies showing some of the more stereotyped and humorous views of librarians, libraries and library work. The clips comment on library settings, the public, books, the value of reading and younger patrons of libraries. The documentary part of the film portrays the wide variety of work done by librarians in their jobs, mainly through interviews with different types of librarians working in different kinds of libraries.

The second half of the film is taken over by the documentary side. The script focuses on aspects of the political milieu in which American librarians work. The Patriot Act, and its freedom-threatening laws, is criticised and put into perspective of history’s witch hunts of the past – the American government feared communists in the 1950’s, free radicals in the 1970’s and now terrorists in the 21st Century. Attention then turns to the plight of the libraries in Salinas, John Steinbeck’s home town, which were threatened with closure due to Council budget cuts.

We thought there were really two movies/documentaries here – one on portrayals of librarians in Hollywood versus the reality, and one on the real working conditions of librarians and libraries in the US. I went expecting to see some of the movie librarians I remembered from my own movie-watching experience, but only a handful of movies were clipped. The wealth of suitable material out there must be huge and it seems a lost opportunity not to have explored this idea in more depth. Also, the situation of American librarians working under the Patriot Act, as shown in the movie, yields a lot of interesting dilemmas that are linked to American society as a whole, and the nation’s view of itself as a land of freedom and opportunity. The inclusion of a San Quentin literacy group that campaigned on behalf of the Salinas libraries was interesting. The inmates recognised the value of a decent education and of having somewhere to go that encourages kids to learn. Their campaign pointed out that “if you take away the libraries and recreation centres, the only place kids have to end up is a place like this”. Coupled with the statistic that the yearly library budget for the US is about the same amount as is spent each day on the war in Iraq, clearly there’s a lot more to be explored re America’s view of libraries and their role in society.

I saw the movie last night thanks to Sue Hill. Most of the audience were librarians, or at least they appeared to be. I laughed in the same places they did. Librarians and archivists suffer from the same (sometimes true, sometimes laughable) stereotypes. I did however feel somewhat marginalised when Ann Seidl referred to the looting of the “Iraq National Library and Museum”, getting the name of the institution wrong and thereby cutting us out of the picture.

And now I have to go feed my cat.