This New York Times article "
A Hipper Crowd of Shushers" by Kara Jesella is spreading across the library community like the
hamster dance c. 1997. The
annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com posted an
annoyed screed about it. I posted a comment:
Your post is just as shallow as the NYT piece. Other than a disdain for the Brooklyn hipster culture, you offer no real critique of the article or of the people profiled. Of course the article is shallow. It is a puff piece that people read because it turns a commonly held belief on its head. You rail about how these hipster librarians never speak of or perform real librarianship yet you do not define librarianship as you see it. The article was not intended as an investigation of librarianship, and I highly doubt that such an investigation would have made it to print. Other than the profiled librarian's interest in left leaning social activism, which you obviously do not connect with librarianship, your post is at the very least denigrating to your own profession. I don't uinderstand how you can say that librarians do not contribute to society, and your position that only people working for the corporate "man" are contributing members of society is just plain weird. If librarianship does not lend itself to social activism, why then does ALA have committees on intellectual freedom, policy monitoring, diversity, and the status of women in librarianship as well as supporting groups such as the Social Responsibilities Round Table, The GLBT Round Table, and the Black Caucus of ALA? It seems to me that your post is incendiary where it should be ironic. If you want to rail against the writer and the article, do so but leave the hipsters out of it. They'll grow and change (hopefully) to a point where the trappings of rock shows and tattoos are no longer required to support their identities.
P.S. who cares where they buy their clothes?
