The Modern Librarian: A Role Worth Checking Out

Susan Turrell, a star of the film, is director of Tunkhannock Public Library, serving a community of 28,000 in rural Pennsylvania. At a reception preceding the screening, the 62-year-old Turrell, speaking in a soft drawl, cited her absurdly broad range of duties:

Providing tech support, plunging toilets, changing light bulbs, spraying for ants, browsing MySpace, dressing as Winnie the Pooh, proofreading résumés for library patrons, safeguarding against online porn, providing pro bono therapy -- and coordinating endless fundraising efforts that have included golf tournaments and square dances. All without even the benefit of office space, which was converted into community rooms.

"Some days," she said, due to the sheer busywork of the job, "I don't even see a book."

Darby O'Brien, a silver-haired librarian in Utica, N.Y., can empathize. "Public libraries are just about the last place that anyone can go. We serve the homeless and the mentally ill, we teach the disenfranchised how to use the Internet. We're also the last bastions of democracy and free speech, which is in short supply under this administration," she said, because of such legislation as the Patriot Act.

"Darby!" admonished her co-worker Mary Lou Caskey.

"Well. It is."

Speaking of talking freely, watching a movie with several thousand librarians is surprisingly . . . loud. There were cheers for clips from "Matilda," groans for "Zardoz" and guffaws for a " Shhhhhhhh!" montage featuring 70 years' worth of Hollywood librarians telling patrons to simmer down . The biggest round of applause came during a scene from "Party Girl" in which a prim cataloguer interrogates her hapless trainee: "I assume you are familiar with the Dewey Decimal System?"

Heh heh heh. Librarian humor.

Laughing at themselves is something librarians are very good at. (Check out the highly excellent "March of the Librarians" on YouTube). They have to be, they say, when the profession is so misunderstood. One librarian from Wisconsin recalled a friend asking -- seriously -- whether the MLS degree took so long because librarians first had to read all the books. As in, all of them.

Laughter is also the best way some of them have found to deal with the real crises facing the field. As experienced librarians retire, the profession lacks an infusion of young blood. Not that some public library systems could afford many new employees, anyway. One of the film's recurring themes is lack of funding, illustrated with the story from Salinas, Calif. -- John Steinbeck's hometown was forced in 2005 to shut its three branches for nearly a year, after citizens voted down a tax increase to fund the libraries.

Primarily, the ALA conference devotes itself to addressing serious issues like these. The sessions cover topics from preserving intellectual freedom to recruiting black male librarians, who are in extremely short supply. Julie Andrews, Judy Blume and former senator Bill Bradley are just three of the speakers scheduled to discuss the importance of literacy and library education.

For the "Hollywood Librarian" premiere, the librarians could combine those issues with a little bit of glamour -- giggling on the red carpet, joking that Joan Rivers should have attended.

After the screening, Ann Seidl relaxes long enough in her emerald-green gown to snap a few photographs with fans. But by the next morning, she'd be manning a booth, persuading her colleagues to screen "Hollywood Librarian" at their own branches and spread library awareness to patrons.

Seidl hopes the film will penetrate, grass-roots style, the consciousness of everyone who has ever loved a library. "If everyone knew how smart and funny and dedicated librarians were," she says, "no library would ever be shut down again."