Inside Higher Ed :: Silence in the Stacks

Inside Higher Ed :: Silence in the Stacks: "As for librarians, they are usually regarded as professionals working in the service sector of the information economy, rather than as full-fledged participants in contemporary intellectual life. That is, arguably, an injustice. But the division of labor and the logic of hierarchical distinctions have changed a lot since the day when Gottfried Leibniz (philosopher, statesman, inventor of calculus and the computer, and overall polymathic genius) held down his day job running a library.

The most persistent aspect of the old configuration is probably the link between glamor and grammar — the lingering aura of bookish eroticism. At least that’s what the phenomenon of librarian porn would suggest. The topic deserves more scholarly attention, though an important start has been made by Daniel W. Lester, the network information coordinator for Boise State University in Idaho. His bibliography of pertinent livres lus avec une seule main ('books read with one hand') is not exhaustive, but the annotations are judicious. About one such tale of lust in the stacks, he writes: “Most of the library and librarian descriptions are reasonable, except for the number of books on a book cart.”

But the role librarians play at the present time brings them closer to the most pressing issues in American cultural life than any cheesy TV show (or letter to Penthouse, for that matter) could possibly convey."