The New York Timesreports on a new trend: the rise of the hipster librarian. With the older librarians retiring in droves, this new breed of librarians is young, hip and really into library technology.
Librarians? Aren't they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons - the ultimate humorless shushers?
Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging - the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is "looking to put the 'hep cat' in cataloguing."
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....library organizations have been trying to recruit a more diverse group of students and to mentor younger members of the profession.
"I think we're getting more progressive and hipper," said Carrie Ansell, a 28-year-old law librarian in Washington.
In the last few years, articles have decried the graying of the profession, noting a large percentage of librarians that would soon be retiring and a seemingly insurmountable demand for replacements. But worries about a mass exodus appear to have been unfounded.
Michele Besant, the librarian at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Association of Library and Information Science statistics show a steady increase in library information science enrollments over the last 10 years. Further, at hers and other schools there is a trend for students to be entering masters programs at a younger age.
The myth prevails that librarians are becoming obsolete. "There's Google, no one needs us," Ms. Gentile said, mockingly, over a drink at Daddy's.
Still, these are high-tech times. Why are people getting into this profession when libraries seem as retro as the granny glasses so many of the members of the Desk Set wear?
"Because it's cool," said Ms. Gentile, who works at the Brooklyn Museum.
Ms. Murphy, 29, thinks so, too. An actress who had long considered library school, Ms. Murphy finally decided to sign up after meeting several librarians - in bars.
"People I, going in, would never have expected were from the library field," she said. "Smart, well-read, interesting, funny people, who seemed to be happy with their jobs."
