Branding Librarians

No, I'm not talking about a scene out of City Slickers 3: Cataloging on the Range, I'm talking about the image of the librarian. Andrea Mercado posted on the PLA blog about this very issue. She poins us toward a survey from the Emerging Leaders Initiative member Brendan Gallagher. The survey lead me to this LONG comment on the PLA Blog:

As strange as it may sound, I really enjoyed taking the survey. It reminded of the reasons why I changed careers from computer programming to librarianship back in 2004. It gave my batteries a nice recharge to think about the questions--and my answers--in the survey.

I never worked in a library until 2005 (at the young age of 34), so of course my ideas of what should happen in a library are very different from many of the people that I work with. I'm always thinking of things in a more business-oriented way, and I think that's beneficial to the current state of affairs in libraries.

I think that at one point libraries were at the forefront of people's consciousness when it came to information, but we've fallen WAY behind the rest of the world in the past decade or two.

I know a lot of people don't like to think about marketing (or don't think we need marketing) but there are so many things going on at the library that public don't know about. They have other things consuming their attention.

It's even gotten to the point when I would tell people that we could get them a book we didn't have in the catalog that they were amazed. Isn't this the most basic thing we do as librarians? Provide books for people? And they were amazed that I would do this 'just for them.'

It's not good that people are unaware of our most basic functionality. It only drives home the idea that the public will even less of a clue that we offer MP3 audio books, online databases, book club in a bag, movies, live music, cafes, etc.

I think there are three areas every librarian can improve on no matter how good they already are:

Marketing
Customer Service
Passion for the field

At the same time, there is a lot I'm learning from people who have been in the field as long as I've been alive. These people know so much about the community they're in, the field they're in, the specific area they work in, it's something for me to aspire to. I look forward to the day when I can be an expert, a role model, for a new librarian.

We need to get the public to see us the way we see us.

What about the rest of you? Are you tired of librarians ranting about this issue? Or are you tired of librarians claiming that things are just fine?