1. The author of this letter was not a librarian.

2. I was not making fun of librarians.

3. I regularly attend ALA conferences.

(Gasp! Clutch the pearls!)

Hm. I read this as one of those tired, typical “Librarians are prissy bitches with no sense of real priorities!” remarks. We’re a bunch of pearl-clutching, shushing micromanagers who are just out to spoil everybody’s good time, right? Well hey, there’s no need to further stigmatize the intelligent, fiercely-pro-First Amendment, career-driven women who have worked for over a hundred years in this country to make good information available to all regardless of race, class, creed, age, or ability. We’ve already gotten enough shit for the hard work we do, and a great deal of it is because we are powerful, educated women who have command over a public space. We practically make Patriarchy’s collective balls shrivel up and die just by existing. We get enough crap already, believe me.

No, I don’t care if you eat while reading “my” library books, but I do care if you damage them, whether with food, rainwater, dog pee, ink, or anything else that renders useless an expensive item that we’ve taken the trouble to purchase, process, and make available to the entire public. Libraries are an important part of a civil society, and I do care when people do things that affect our ability to help the public.

And yes, I’m proud of being a librarian. I’m proud of my education, my drive to help others, my drive to preserve information and share it. I’m proud of the fact that I have to avoid wearing nice jewelry (no pearls, and no rings, either) because a real librarian gets her hands dirty. I’m proud of having go wear comfortable clothes I can move around in, because I am going to lift something over 20 pounds at least once during a shift, I will break a sweat, I will race from one end of the building to another–all for a patron who may, once I’ve finished helping her, turn around and make snotty remarks later about “those prissy librarians.”

Incidentally, despite what the “future librarian” above may say, a lot more goes into the cost of a library book than the replacement purchase price. Not having to replace damaged books means we can have bigger, more diverse collections. It means we can get an updated copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves while still satisfying the patrons who want copies of the newest romance novels. Maintaining the collection is an important part of what we do, and pearls and fainting have nothing to do with it.

And if the book is ancient or important, it should be in a vault somewhere anyway.

Also, eating near a book bound in human skin would be really gross.

I like collecting the weird things people use as bookmarks and then forget to take out when they return the book.