A couple of months ago I started a daily blog entitled "Will Unwound." At first, I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that as a retired librarian I wanted to stay connected to librarians on a daily basis. Call me crazy, but I think librarians are the most interesting tribe of people on the planet.
The last seven years of my professional career I spent as a city manager with 1,900 full-time employees under my administrative control. I made it a point to learn every employee’s name, and I spent a great deal of time out of my office meeting with employees on their own turf in police cars, on fire trucks, inside sewers, on top of light rail tracks, on street sweepers, inside garbage trucks, and on top of bridges. There wasn’t a nook or cranny in that city organization that I did not visit.
I worked closely with a wide array of occupational types, including law enforcement professionals, civil engineers, rescue experts, urban planners, public administrators, social workers, arborists, architects, landscapers, computer engineers, accountants, electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, janitors, and graphic artists. I admired them all and respected their work. It was a fascinating job.
But it wasn’t until I had been in the city-manager job for several years that I realized how unique librarians are. At the risk of sounding a bit judgmental, I have to say that all the other occupational types I worked with were simply boring by comparison.
The librarian stereotype will always be a person in an 18th-century hairstyle who is hard-working, bookish, a bit ill-tempered, reserved, and boring. I have met thousands of colleagues on the speaking circuit; my overwhelming impression is of an individual who is bright, inquisitive, knowledgeable about many different subjects, brimming with enthusiasm, and unexpectedly excited about technologies that others think could render this profession obsolete.
However, the characteristic that most differentiates librarians from all the other occupational groups I worked with is a very weird and shockingly offbeat sense of humor. Librarians are very funny in some dark, devious, and totally unexpected ways—not a "gallows" humor so much as Far Side in comfortable shoes. And who wouldn’t wear comfortable shoes after being on your feet all day helping patrons?
I created my blog to give me an opportunity to stay in touch with librarians, and I love writing it because of the freedom it gives me to rant, rave, reflect, and ruminate. I’m my own man for the first time. That’s the beauty of retirement: There is no employer looking over my shoulder, and I’m beginning to appreciate what a beautiful concept intellectual freedom is.
That’s the other thing about librarians. They love to exercise their intellectual freedom. The blog has drawn up to 1,000 visitors on any given day, some of whom leave comments; 99% of them are funny or insightful. But the other 1% are disappointing: They are abusive, profane, or disgusting. I delete them, and lately I’ve been feeling guilty about that. Am I a censor or a selector? You tell me. Thanks.
Will Manley has furnished provocative commentary on librarianship for over 30 years and nine books on the lighter side of library science. He blogs at Will Unwound.
