LIBRARY SCHOOL DROPOUT

So most people think that any pendejo with a parole certificate and/or GED certificate can be a librarian. Por su puesto putos, if we think of a librarian as a page or gopher of materials. But at the its core, a librarian is an enabler of the worst kind. Librarians are enablers of smart-asses and malcontents and the future mad scientists of America! The fact of the matter is that librarians are reviled because people just don't know what the fuck it is they do all day. And, no, it doesn't involve musing over the Dewey Decimal, although I often think of Dewey roaming the halls of Amherst college , playing cowboys and indians with the statue of Jeffrey Amherst and reading Dickinson on the lawn of that hoochies homestead.

Librarians are professionals for a smattering of reasons but mostly for the reasons that any discipline becomes a profession. Number one, librarians embody a philosophy which has been articulated in written and oral form. There are technical precepts as well as practical arts that accompany what librarians do; for example, we have a way of doing things as well as the experience of doing things. In other words, there is a technical side and an aesthetic that accompanies the mechanical, ordered, logical tenets of our ReligioBiblio.

Another reason librarians are professional has to do with the body of knowledge that librarianship has amassed. From the Pinakes of Callimachus to the Five Laws of Ranganathan to the taxonomy outlined by Dewey, we have had the most limber intellectuals engaged in the problem of how to organize knowledge and learning. And these intellects have passed to be leaders and philosophers within the field and proven their worth through service and experience. In fact, you could trace Dewey's ideas in the sand-dune halls of Callimachus and him dividing the Library of Alexandria into ten great halls each adding to the knowledge of the world. Yes, we have leaders in spades.

More importantly, librarians have a code. Granted, it is not as cool as a crooks nor does it involve any handshakes or salutes. In fact, our ethics, our sense of right and wrong are so championed, so billboarded that several parties have seen the need to establish and publicize their Ethics. However, there are overarching maxims, like people have the right to information, just like they have certain inalienable rights or rights established by their existence. These Ethics dictate the behaviors that we hope to internalize; Ethics represent how we want to act when people aren't looking. For example, we never want to turn someone away from asking what may seem to us an impertinent question, like why isn't Pluto a planet anymore? or how many dimples are there on a golf ball? etc.

We have accredited centers of knowledge some more hallowed than others. Queens College happens to be semi-hallowed because they try to balance a budget and are pretty good with doing with very little, although they have amazing resources and satellites like the Loius Armstrong collection, etc. In fact, the matter of giving degrees in Library Science were enough to depose Dewey as Dean of the Library School because he wanted women to be able to attend at Columbia.

And we love meetings! Librarians love meetings because they can read and because there are always donuts and danishes around at meetings or at least a stem of green grapes and some honeydew. Which only means that we love professional development, and having to train because then we can go to conferences and learn that thing a different way every year for 20 years. And because we have books that publish the things we talk about at meetings and professional developments, we create our own necessity and enforce a standard quilt of propriety and professionalism.

And we get awesome tweed jackets. And we get free reading glasses, and don't have to contact Selective Services once we turn eighteen. And we can always find parking, even when alternate side rules are in effect.