I simultaneously revere and pity precious few intellectual pillars quite as I do librarians.
When popular culture isn’t snapping to the stuffy, fuddy-duddy characterization of Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s librarian Rupert Giles, they’re marginalized into repressed (but inwardly slutty) sexpots always one down-low tingle away from letting down that tightly-bun’d hair, flinging aside those bookish Lisa Loeb horn-rimmed glasses, and busting a perfectly good blouse’s buttons.
(Wow, you’d think I’d pondered that last image a few times. Consider especially that I initially typed “bustons,” then wonder where my mind really drifted …)
But I digress; I know at least one librarian very personally myself. What she endures, I wish upon nobody. She shoos wily preteen boys from scoping out porn using library computers, and on at least a few occasions, has sent homeless folk scuttling from bathrooms. All the while, she probably wonders fairly regularly: “Are any of you people actually here for the damn books?!”
She once showed me a comic strip that might appeal at least as much to cynical bookworms as to the librarians who service their collective book-learning jones: Unshelved. The comic strip by librarian Gene Ambaum and cartoonist Bill Barnes first ran on February 16, 2002, and chronicles the misadventures of Mallville Library’s staff, their misfit ape-mascot Buddy and various assorted and odd patrons. The humor can be as dry as a Nevada summer heat, but if you’ve ever felt like the one-eyed king in the land of the intellectually blind, it will strike a chord.
Thousands of strips like these are collected in eight volumes available for prices ranging from $11.95 to $36.95 each. For a small extra charge, the creators will even sign your copy. In fact, splurge for the autograph and give it randomly to a librarian. Say “thank you” in a way he or she will appreciate. And pay your damn fines, while you’re at it!
(By the way, the website also posts fresh strips Monday through Friday, making it well worth “bookmarking.” And yes, that is amongst the last library puns I will ever attempt. I apologize. Truly.)
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