Isn't it Romantic?

Jen Wolf has created a fun webpage honoring the sub-sub-subgenre of Library Career Romance novels, a subset of the Career Girl novel of the 1950's, itself a subset of Women's Novels, which is in turn a subset of Pulp Fiction in my own peculiar taxonomy. Who knew that working in libraries was such a whirl of glamour and romance?

Be sure to check out the cover images and excerpts supplied. For example:

"Sue sighed. She was still disappointed that she hadn’t gotten the job at the Main Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. She had been so sure she would get it. Her pride still ached when she thought of the homeliest girl in the class enjoying that coveted position, even though Sue knew that grades, not looks, were the deciding factor. Sue wasn’t looking forward at all to hacking around in the frozen north. But at least it was a job, a temporary job. Sue bit her lip. Now that it was too late, she wished that she’d studied harder. She knew she could have been near the top of her class in library school if only she’d tried. Then she could have had her choice of jobs. [from Books and Beaux]

Or consider this moment of epiphany from Anne Fuller, Librarian:

The microfilm reader fascinated Anne. It had been so helpful in the libraries where she had worked the last two summers. But she had never before had the responsibility of a machine, as she did now. She arrived early on her second day and went to the metal cabinet beside the machine to study the films which the library had collected. It still seemed a miracle to her that the contents of a whole book, or a big issue of a newspaper, could be recorded on a small roll of film less than two inches wide. [p. 67]

Unfortunately, not a single one of these worthy tomes holds out a scintilla of hope for men in the library profession to Find True Love. Presumably truly Manly Men of the 1950's were expected to be off fighting the Cold War, building Chevys, and generally being Manly while demure Anne gawked at the miraculous microfilm machine. (Don't tell her about the Internet; she'll fall down in a dead faint!)

(Link ripped from Jessamyn West, the sine-qua-non of library bloggers.)