"I'd best head to the library. Research beckons."

Pablo and perhaps others will appreciate the existence of the refereed critical journal Slayage : the On-line International Journal of Buffy Studies. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the first issue included an article analyzing the importance of information and research in the exploits of Buffy and the Scoobys. After all, library writer and consultant GraceAnne DeCandido did refer to Giles as "our great sage and sex symbol" in her seminal article on "Giles : Hero Librarian."

The Image and Role of the Librarian

Giles may have had the highest profile of any librarian in pop culture in recent years, but he's not the only one. I recently enjoyed browsing through Haworth Press's book The Image and Role of the Librarian, which was also published as issue number 78 of The Reference Librarian. Particularly interesting essays:

Jungian/Myers-Briggs Personality Types of Librarians in Films by Jeanine Williamson (Marian the Librarian, from The Music Man, is an ISFJ, Mary from Party Girl is an ESTP, and the most common personality types in movie librarians are ISFJ, ISTJ, and INFP, according to Williamson. In contrast, a survey of real librarians found that ISTJ, INTJ, and INTP were the top three. NT's rule!)

Looking at the Male Librarian Stereotype, by Thad E. Dickson

The Long, Strange Trip of Barbara Gordon : Images of Librarians in Comic Books, by Doug Highsmith.

Excerpted form the latter article:

1. "The Library of Souls" (Batman)/ art: Jim Aparo; script: Peter Milligan; colorish: Adrienne Roy; letterer: Jim Apara. 22 p. in Detective Comics, no. 643 (Apr. 1992).

SUMMARY: A murderer, who can "read people like a book," establishes the occupation of each victim and leaves the bodies in jackets with three-digit numbers on them. One victim is found in a library, and Batman notices the Dewey numbers on the books. He guesses that the killer is a librarian, though the librarian explaining the clasification system to him disagrees: "That's a defamation of character. Librarians are gentle, bookish souls." But Batman is correct....

Lucien, the Librarian of The Dreaming, gets a favorable mention, although Highsmith seems mildly dissatisfied with Lucien's apparent lack of a formal graduate degree.

Since Buffy's off the air and the Sandman series ceased, we seem to have a lack of pop-culture librarian role models. Perhaps this show, about "a young man who discovers that the basement of the New York Public Library is loaded with mythical objects like the Ark or the Golden Fleece" and who must therefore "protect the sacred artifacts from the forces of evil" will adequately fill the gap. Or perhaps not.