The Laughing Librarian: A History of American Library Humor

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McFarland, Jan 10, 2014 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 239 pages

Despite the stodgy stereotypes, libraries and librarians themselves can be quite funny. The spectrum of library humor from sources inside and outside the profession ranges from the subtle wit of the New Yorker to the satire of Mad. This examination of American library humor over the past 200 years covers a wide range of topics and spans the continuum between light and dark, from parodies to portrayals of libraries and their staffs as objects of fear. It illuminates different types of librarians--the collector, the organization person, the keeper, the change agent--and explores stereotypes like the shushing little old lady with a bun, the male scholar-librarian, the library superhero, and the anti-stereotype of the sexy librarian. Profiles of the most prominent library humorists round out this lively study.

 

Contents

Foreword by Will Manley
1
Foreword by Norman D Stevens
3
Preface
5
Introduction
7
1 Humors and Blunders
9
2 Batgirl Was a Librarian
21
3 Librarian Types and Stereotypes
33
4 Library Staff
46
9 Will Manley
106
10 Technology
117
11 Mad Magazine
129
12 The New Yorker
140
13 The Fear Factor
152
14 For SEX See the Librarian
165
15 Joyfully Subversive
176
Notes
191

5 Shhh The Unforgivable Sin
58
6 Parodies
69
7 Edmund Lester Pearson
81
8 Norman D Stevens and the Molesworth Institute
94
Selected Bibliography
219
Index
221
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

Jeanette C. Smith, a Fellow of the Molesworth Institute, received the first-ever Edmund Lester Pearson Library Humor Award for a cautionary essay on the hazards of reading and driving. She has been a librarian since 1973 and a collector of library humor for almost as long. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

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