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More Than Just Books: Librarians in Pop Culture
by Unknown User on 2017-11-14T12:00:00-05:00 | Comments
This month we continue with a series in which we profile librarian characters in pop culture! We've gathered librarians from television, movies, books, comics, and more. Some of them are librarian stereotypes and some of them defy convention. All of them are awesome in their own way. Stay tuned and subscribe to the blog if you want to get updates! Oh, and if you care about such things...mild spoiler warning!
Author Terry Pratchett provided librarians with one of their most iconic role models...
The Librarian (Discworld series)
The Librarian (seen left as depicted by artist Paul Kidby) is an orangutan throughout nearly all of the series, but before that he was a human wizard. He worked as the librarian at Unseen University, the Discworld's premier school of wizardry. In the bookThe Light Fantastic he is transformed into an orangutan, and while his fellow wizards all attempted to turn him back into a human being, the Librarian found that being an ape was preferable due to his newfound ability to climb the bookshelves with ease and shelve books with his handsand his feet. He was so taken with his new body, in fact, that he has since thwarted every attempt to turn him back into a human.
He is unable to communicate in anything other than Orangutan, which sounds like "ook!" and "eek!" to anyone who doesn't speak the language, but the Wizards seem to be able to understand him and anyone who doesn't can usually interpret his body language... particularly if he's angry (he has been known to beat anyone who calls him a "monkey" with their own arms).
The Librarian is a member of an organization of elite senior librarians called the Librarians of Time and Space, whose job it is to protect repositories of knowledge and to maintain L-Space, which is a dimension that connects all libraries. L-Space is generally formed in any place where there is a large amount of written knowledge concentrated in a small area (i.e., most libraries, therefore "library-space"). It's the embodiment of author Terry Pratchett's firm belief that the written word has power. The equation for L-Space is:
BOOKS = KNOWLEDGE = POWER = (FORCE X DISTANCE ÷ TIME)
Pratchett was a big fan of librarians and the work they do, and it shows in his portrayal of the Librarian, who is intelligent, kind, very dedicated to his job, has interests outside of the University, and is involved with his community. He does get a little overprotective of his books, but considering that most of his collection consists of magical books and grimoires that think for themselves, that's probably for the best. You don't want those getting into the wrong hands!
Sadly, Pratchett passed away in 2015, so the exploits of the Librarian are finished forever. However, there are 41 books in the Discworld series and the Librarian is featured in quite a few of them, so you can still enjoy the Librarian for a long time through reads and re-reads. There were also several full-length films of Discworld novels that you might want to watch.
More Than Just Books: Librarians in Pop Culture
by Unknown User on 2017-11-14T12:00:00-05:00 | Comments
This month we continue with a series in which we profile librarian characters in pop culture! We've gathered librarians from television, movies, books, comics, and more. Some of them are librarian stereotypes and some of them defy convention. All of them are awesome in their own way. Stay tuned and subscribe to the blog if you want to get updates! Oh, and if you care about such things...mild spoiler warning!
Author Terry Pratchett provided librarians with one of their most iconic role models...
The Librarian (seen left as depicted by artist Paul Kidby) is an orangutan throughout nearly all of the series, but before that he was a human wizard. He worked as the librarian at Unseen University, the Discworld's premier school of wizardry. In the bookThe Light Fantastic he is transformed into an orangutan, and while his fellow wizards all attempted to turn him back into a human being, the Librarian found that being an ape was preferable due to his newfound ability to climb the bookshelves with ease and shelve books with his handsand his feet. He was so taken with his new body, in fact, that he has since thwarted every attempt to turn him back into a human.
He is unable to communicate in anything other than Orangutan, which sounds like "ook!" and "eek!" to anyone who doesn't speak the language, but the Wizards seem to be able to understand him and anyone who doesn't can usually interpret his body language... particularly if he's angry (he has been known to beat anyone who calls him a "monkey" with their own arms).
The Librarian is a member of an organization of elite senior librarians called the Librarians of Time and Space, whose job it is to protect repositories of knowledge and to maintain L-Space, which is a dimension that connects all libraries. L-Space is generally formed in any place where there is a large amount of written knowledge concentrated in a small area (i.e., most libraries, therefore "library-space"). It's the embodiment of author Terry Pratchett's firm belief that the written word has power. The equation for L-Space is:
BOOKS = KNOWLEDGE = POWER = (FORCE X DISTANCE ÷ TIME)
Pratchett was a big fan of librarians and the work they do, and it shows in his portrayal of the Librarian, who is intelligent, kind, very dedicated to his job, has interests outside of the University, and is involved with his community. He does get a little overprotective of his books, but considering that most of his collection consists of magical books and grimoires that think for themselves, that's probably for the best. You don't want those getting into the wrong hands!
Sadly, Pratchett passed away in 2015, so the exploits of the Librarian are finished forever. However, there are 41 books in the Discworld series and the Librarian is featured in quite a few of them, so you can still enjoy the Librarian for a long time through reads and re-reads. There were also several full-length films of Discworld novels that you might want to watch.
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