Is it bad if my school librarian told me I was checking out to many books? (the graveyard book, fortunately the milk, and coraline) She is saying I need to 'branch out my authors' and 'im obssesed'. I was holding 2 books (stardust and good omens) by you and a book you introduced (Fahrenheit 451) as I checked the other 3 out. The same librarian didn't let my sister (10) to get coraline or the graveyard book as she was 'to little', she has read those books before but she wanted to read it again. Is this lady just a dick or like is it bad? (I'm 14, she also got mad I read books for 'baby's' 30 seconds after my little sister tries reads books for 'adults')
underwhelmedandoverstimulated:
underwhelmedandoverstimulated:
Sounds like she’s just not very good at her job. A librarian’s job isn’t to stop people reading things.
That’s like actually specifically breaking the rules of her job, isn’t it? Would reporting someone like this be too extreme a reaction?
Hard to say. In the US right now, a lot of employers and even a few state legislatures seem to think that riding herd on what children read IS a librarian’s job. (Historically, even within the profession there have been waves of this condescending puritan nonsense. We’ve beaten them back, but it’s always taken work and courage.)
They’re wrong. Unequivocally wrong. But it goes to show how poorly librarianship is understood outside, well, librarianship and a precious few knowledgeable and supportive people like @neil-gaiman and LeVar Burton.
So if this nitwit were reported to the school administrators, the most they’d likely do is shrug, not understanding the problem. As for librarianship itself, while we do have ethics codes and whatnot, they’re aspirational; there are no profession-specific enforcement mechanisms.
There’s an outside chance of a state-level agency (probably the Department of Education or equivalent) that would take an interest, but my hopes wouldn’t be high.
A theatre kid might consider taking the most visibly inoffensive of their checkouts to the principal’s office, crying their eyes out because the librarian was sooooo meeeeeeeeean and won’t let them take out more books and said bad things about the beeeeeeeest booooooook and BAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW.
I hate to say that’s the thing most likely to work… but it’s the thing most likely to work. Unfortunately.
Yea, the code of ethics being more aspirational is what I wasn’t sure about