Thursday, October 25, 2012

Case Study No. 0612: Nancy Littlejohn, Charlotte Gordon, and Kim Zahller

Talking out Loud with Librarians
6:05
What does a librarian look like? Class project examining the race, gender and age stereotypes of librarians in media.
Tags: librarian media stereotype
Added: 2 years ago
From: bekahlouful
Views: 160

[short film begins with clips from several examples of the portrayal of librarians in mass media (set to "Marian the Librarian" from "The Music Man"), then "Talking out Loud with Librarians: Race, Age and Gender Stereotypes in Libraries" appears on screen before cutting to a young woman speaking directly to the camera]
REBEKAH: Hi, my name's Rebekah Husted. For the last four years, I've been studying librarians in their natural habitat, hidden deep within the stacks of public libraries. What I found may surprise you. For the next few minutes, we're going to explore the world of librarians. Are the stereotypes real, or did the media fabricate them?
["Who are librarians?" appears on screen, then cut to an older female librarian speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Hi, my name's Nancy Littlejohn, and I am ... Caucasian. Um, mostly German, for ethnicity. Um, I'm fifty five years old, and I've been a librarian for almost thirty two years.
[cut to another older female librarian speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: My name is Charlotte Gordon, and I ... this is my last year in this fifth decade of my life, and I'm ready to embrace the next few years. I'm ready for it, whatever it may bring. I am African American, but in my lifetime I have been declared "colored," "negro," "black," "African American!" So, I tell my friends when they ask me, just call call me Charlotte.
[cut to another older female librarian speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: Kim, age forty three. Race, mixed. Gender, female. Position, thirteen years.
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: I am, of course, female. Born that way, and as an official librarian, I've been a librarian now for three and a half years. But I think I've always been a librarian, deep down inside!
[cut back to Kim speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: I would say I'm a mutt! I'm half-Vietnamese, half-German, Irish, Swiss ... Scottish.
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: I started teaching in Norman in 1973. I was the first African American, if you can believe that, to actually teach in the Norman public schools. It hasn't been that long.
["Media stereotypes" appears on screen, then cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Usually, when librarians are portrayed in the media, they are ... um, older. Female.
[cut back to Kim speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: There's an assumption that males are more dangerous with children than females, because females have ... y'know, you picture them as being more nurturing and good with children. And men are, y'know, you don't see that. Y'know, men!
[she starts pantomiming a caveman]
KIM: "Ugh, must get food! Bring home to wife!" Y'know ...
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Doughty ...
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: Well, first of all, they're really stern! It used to be that they would have the bun and the long skirt, but not so much anymore.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Glasses!
[cut back to Kim speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: In the media ... Normally, y'know, the little female librarians have the little horn-rimmed glasses and they have buns and they say "Shhh!"
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Uh, stern ...
[cut back to Kim speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: "Oh, really? You're a librarian?"
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: I don't think that there are that many African American ... um, people that are seen as librarians.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Not much fun ...
[cut back to Kim reading from a copy of "The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity" by Mac Barnett]
KIM: "Just loaned people books? Listen, Steven ... Librarians are the guardians of knowledge! And yes, we make sure knowledge is available, gratis, to everyone. 'Just loaning them books,' as you so crudely put it, is an important job!"
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: They're usually old.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Not very interesting ...
[cut back to Kim as she continues reading from the book]
KIM: "Trust me, Steven ... Librarians are just about the only thing holding this country together!"
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: They don't get it right!
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: I don't fit the stereotype of anything!
[she laughs, then cut to Kim standing in the children's section of the library, singing while holding a cockroach on the tip of her finger]
KIM: "I'm a roach, I kiss your face!"
[she makes kissing noises, as another cockroach crawls up onto her ear]
KIM: "I just like to crawl all over the place!"
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: So I just break all those stereotypes ... right outta the water.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: They do a little bit better on TV shows, but most movies are still just ... making fun of the "old lady" librarians.
["Changing the stereotype: Relating to the public" appears on screen, then cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: The profession has tried really really hard to diversify ... Um, there's lots of conversations in the profession about "How do we diversify?" "How do we recruit minority people into the profession?" "How do we just get more men into the profession?" Um, and there's been a lot of work in that area. I don't know quite how successful it's been.
[cut back to Kim speaking directly to the camera]
KIM: That's more of like a slice of the world ... This is, the world isn't all one color, y'know. It's more like, this is more representative of what the world is like. Um, and not just one little chunk of it.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: Because we want the customers to come in the library, sometimes, to see somebody who works there who looks like them ... "Oh, you look like me, or you're the same ethnicity as me, so we can relate!" Um, but I'm not sure how successful we've really been in getting a more diverse workforce in libraries.
[cut back to Charlotte speaking directly to the camera]
CHARLOTTE: A library is a public place. The people here are the public. The public comes in all shapes, forms, sizes, colors, religious groups. Um, and I have found that my following here - whether I do a storytime on the bus or at the mall - I do have several that would rather come to some things that I do just because there's a comfort level there.
[cut back to Nancy speaking directly to the camera]
NANCY: We'd like to change that stereotype ...

Filmed and directed by Rebekah Husted

Special thanks to
Nancy Littlejohn
Kim Zahller
and Charlotte Gordon
for agreeing to be interviewed
to the staff of the Norman Public Library
for allowing me to film there
and to Tara Buehner
for saving my sanity while cutting the film together

Opening clips from
The Music Man
The Middle
Your Life's Work
Glee
Head Over Heels
It's a Wonderful Life
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Africa
Sesame Street
property of their respective owners

Dedicated to the librarians who don't fit the media's mold

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From wordpress.com:

Here's my final project for Race, Gender and the Media. This was my first attempt at a video, so be kind!

tags: diversity, librarians, Stereotypes, video

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