"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides." [James Quinn]
The LAP founder could possibly be a library specialist working with academic studies or even in the legal, medical, corporate, or technical fields. However, this is impossible to determine with any certainty because the range of specialized librarian fields is far too wide and growing more diverse everyday. New fields in this choice of career of are being created as fast as the creation of new information and our need for same. For research purposes, let's just call the founder of Librarians Against Palin simply a librarian.
What else can we know at this point? It is a given this is a person passionate about their choice of career as the pay scale for librarians is similar to that of teachers coupled with long hours and a heavy work load.
After reviewing again the Internet research on the number of years and level of course work it takes to obtain the position of librarian, we can add that librarians are more qualified for Governor Sara Palin's job than Sara Palin is for theirs.
What kind of person is the founder of Librarians Against Palin? What does he/she look like and how do they act? We have garnered enough clues by now to recognize false leads such as the popular television game show survey by "Family Feud" asking one hundred people what kind of person did they believe the typical librarian to be.
The top five common answers were terms like quiet, mean or stern, unmarried, stuffy and wears glasses. The participants' answers told us more about ourselves than about librarians making that area of research a dead end, but it did afford us all a clue towards insight into our own individual habits of stereotyping.
A much more reliable clue is that the founder of Librarians Against Palin is most likely involved in water sports based on the following:
"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim. [Linton Weeks]
We cannot make the same mistakes as game show contestants and presume the founder of LAP is a prudish, old-maidish, female prone to shushing young children when they whisper too loudly. It makes no sense anyway as no modern day librarian would shush a child for reading out loud and prudes don't tend to be avid readers with a well balance diet of books anyway.
It is possible the founder of Librarians Against Palin is a male, maybe even someone like Jason Robards, Jr. in his role as the middle-aged, bookworm/librarian in "Something Wicked This Way Comes." The real librarian may turn out to be just as flawed as the 'reel' librarian but a hero nonetheless. "He" might even look like George Clooney and wouldn't that be lovely, a male librarian with brawn and brains to boot.
However, the odds are greater the founder of Librarians Against Palin is female and it is a safe bet some of those among us who are male are secretly hoping the founder of LAP turns out to be someone along the lines of the sexy yet repressed librarian Goldie Hawn in "Foul Play" or even June Allyson as portrayed in "Good News" as certainly "not looking like a librarian."
But, most importantly, who is this person, this mysterious founder of Librarians Against Palin, on the inside? What drove them to this career choice and why are they defending libraries, up in arms against John McCain's vice-presidential pick and possible successor to the presidency of the United States, Palin? Why is the founder of Librarians Against Palin upset over the thought of anyone banning books? Why did Palin not allow the librarians of the Wasilla Public Library to do the job they trained for?
We need to understand why librarians become librarians in the first place to help us decide why this particular librarian defends libraries from Sarah Palin today.
Librarian Journal offers information as to what led others to spend all those years of effort, money and time to become a librarian and may give us a few clues as to what drives the LAP founder:
“I appreciated being able to combine my desire to help people with a reason to learn about everything.”
"was impressed by all the people in librarianship who love their jobs.”
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