"This is a library, after all."- Kaisa, the librarian of Trolberg. On this blog, I review animation, movies, and other cultural mediums, attempting to counter stererotypes of libraries and librarians, while reminding people what libraries (and librarians) are all about.
Millie, the librarian in an episode of Madagascar: A Little Wild
Happy Better Hearing and Speech Month! For this post I’ll be focusing on fictional librarians and the importance of storytime.
Storytime is a vital program at many libraries, specifically public libraries. As Tom Bruno writes, storytime is “a great free form of entertainment for parents looking for activities for their children…[and] can provide a bonanza of cognitive benefits,” serving as the “heart and soul of the library…[and] showcases the depth and breadth of your local public library’s commitment to your community with respect to early literacy and child development.”
More than any other character, this is evident for Amity Blight in The Owl House. First shown working in the children’s section of the Bonesborough Library in the episode “Lost in Language”, in a flashback in the episode “Understanding Willow” and most recently in the episode “Through the Looking Glass Ruins”, Amity understands what Bruno is saying to some extent. Whether she knows about the cognitive benefits of reading to children or enjoys it, the fact is that she is comfortable with this activity, even if she ends up getting embarrassed when seeing her-later girlfriend, Luz Noceda.
Amity, who is voiced by the talented Mae Whitman, also has the distinction of being a student, a lesbian,and wears her hair up, but not in a hair bun like some librarians are shown stereotypically to do. Instead, she wears a pony tail. Her look somewhat resembles those who work in religious libraries as I noted in a post this past November. All in all she displays the importance of the library as a welcoming place for all and reading itself, as I’ve pointed out.
More to the point than Amity is Millie, a librarian voiced by Johanna Stein. More than 15 minutes into the Madagascar: A Little Wild episode “Melman at the Movies”, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, and Gloria the Hippo go inside the library to the pop-up books section, where they enjoy the pop-up books. Later, Melman the Giraffe finally joins his friends inside, after it starts raining. Melvin finds a book with the ending to the film, but none of them know how to read.
Following this, the librarian, Millie, announces that storytime starts in 15 minutes in the reading room. They have a plan to replace the book she is going to read with another one so they can know the end to the story, using the slide ladder in hopes of getting behind the librarian’s desk to change the book before she returns.
After that, one of the elderly patrons thinks he hears something, then goes back to reading his book. Melvin tries a distraction but it doesn’t work and they are unable to pull off the book swap. But, Melman is happy nonetheless and sings a song. His actions cause the book to drop from the shelf, with the librarian shrugging as storytime begins. They are pleased with hearing the end of the book which they had looked forward to in the first place.
Through it all, Millie, who is shown shushing after she hears a loud sound, i.e. Melman’s “distraction”, is pretty chill. When a book falls from the top of a book case and on the information desk, a strange occurrence, she shrugs her shoulders and takes it in her hand, preparing to read that book rather than another one instead.
Her character has to be the most realistic depiction of a librarian doing storytime that I’ve seen to date. Perhaps there is another fictional librarian out there, apart from Amity, who could do it better, but I’m not sure who. None of the librarians I’ve covered extensively on this blog, like Clara Rhone in Welcome to the Wayne or Kaisa in Hilda are ever shown reading books to children. Neither is Myne/Main in Ascendance of a Bookworm, George and Lance in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and the unnamed presumably Thai librarian in We Bare Bears, to name a few, do this either. Perhaps it isn’t in their job descriptions.
In any case, storytime is described by libraries across the U.S. as important for developing “early literacy skills” of children, makes learning fun, teaches children to read, and helps build child development, ensuring “strong, resilient families.” [1] Again, it is not known whether Millie or Amity is aware of this. Even so, they likely realize its importance and enjoy reading stories to kids.
Some time ago, I came across tweets by Fobazi Ettarh expressing her disappointment that people defended a White female librarian who called a Black woman a racist term, then doubled down on her tweet. From there, I followed the links and came upon her 2018 In the Library with the Lead Pipe article, “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves.” I had read it before, but I decided to give it a read again and thought as to how this could be applied to what I’ve written about on this blog in the past. Originally I was planning to put every point she made in the article into one blogpost, but that seemed to be squeezing too many ideas into one place, so I split off many of her points into specific blogposts, to fully explore what she says and to explain more how can relate to fictional depictions of librarians.
Ettarh began her article noting librarians “administering the anti-overdose drug Naloxon,” saying that while this seems natural at first, with these librarians working to “save the democratic values of society as well as going above and beyond to serve the needs of their neighbors and communities,” the rhetoric around this “borders on vocational and sacred language” instead of “acknowledging that librarianship is a profession or a discipline, and as an institution, historically and contemporarily flawed, we do ourselves a disservice.” She goes on to define “vocational awe” as a “set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique.” [1]
There are undoubtedly fictional librarians believe that institutions are seen as “good and sacred,” and “beyond critique,” especially since these characters are almost universally created by those who haven’t been librarians, have worked in libraries, have library degrees, and so on. As such, their views of libraries are informed by popular perceptions. As such, some characters clearly see librarianship as a vocation or a calling, based on the Christian tradition of calling requiring a “monastic life under vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience” as Ettarh points out.
One of those characters is Myne in Ascendance of a Bookworm who works in a church library, which she had been excited to be a part of. Unfortunately, in Part 3 of the series, she is not shown in the library. Instead, she is only shown being denied from the library and becomes subservient to authority, which is sad to see for her character.
This different from previous parts of the series, in which she undoubtedly sees her role as a librarian as one of obedience. Through all of the series, her role as a librarian becomes interconnected with her role as a gray-robed priest. This related to what Ettarh adds about vocation within librarianship. She argues that she has “allusions to religiosity and the sacred” and states that libraries created with the “same architectural design as churches in order to elicit religious awe.” She goes onto say that awe is a overwhelming and fearful feelings rather than a comforting one, meant to elicit “obedience from people in the presence of something bigger than themselves.”
This differs from O’Bengh, also known as Cagliostro, in an episode of What If…?. He is a sorcerer who works in a library, which looks exactly like a temple. He is a manifestation of librarians as priests. Sometimes it isn’t as explicit as his character. As I noted in the aforementioned post, O’Bengh falls into the librarian as an information provider stereotype. The fact the library is a temple, this, as I noted in that post, furthers the perception that libraries, and by extension librarians, are sacred. In many ways, he acts like a monk inside of a monastery who never leaves the monastery, as he never appears in any other episodes.
Ettarh goes onto argues that vocational awe manifests itself in “response to the library as both a place and an institution,” with library workers easily paralyzed by the “sacred duties of freedom, information, and service.” As a result of these “grand missions,” advocating for a full lunch break or taking a mental health day “feels shameful.” This awe is “weaponized against the worker,” meaning that there can be vocational purity test of sorts in which a worker “can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint.”
Shown at 45:29 in this film. She comes back for a scene at 47:24 where she is shelving books
In some ways this is weaponized against librarians. Take for instance Gabrielle (voiced by Victoire Du Bois) in I Lost My Body. She has an annoying supervisor who fits many librarian stereotypes and attempts to stop Gabrielle from talking to Naoufel (voiced by Hakim Faris), the show’s other protagonist, who is checking out books. While she is shown to be hard at work shelving books elsewhere in this mature film, she also is enforcing library rules and expectations all at the same time, with Gabrielle dubbing her “Mrs. Watchtower”. Since the library scene is so short and we see the movie mainly from Naoufel’s perspective, we don’t know the motivations of this annoying supervisor, who doesn’t even have a voice actor, and fellow librarian.
The same can be said about Amity Blight (voice by Mae Whitman) in The Owl House. In the episode “Through the Looking Glass Ruins”, her boss, Malphas (voiced by Fred Tatasciore) fires her after she is found in a forbidden section of the library. Although she isn’t supposed to be there, she is trying to help Luz Noceda (voiced by Sarah Nicole-Robles), who later becomes her girlfriend, find a book about a previous human traveler to this magical world. She accepts the consequences but Luz gets Amity’s library card back after going through a series of trials. Not surprisingly, Amity is grateful and kisses Luz on the cheek.
Ettarh writes that librarianship by its very nature privileges those within the status quo. She goes onto see that those outside of the center of librarianship can see more clearly, for the most part, disparities between reality of library work and “espouse values.” She goes onto say that vocational awe refuses to acknowledge libraries as flawed institutions, meaning that when marginalized librarians, including people of color, speak out, their accounts are “often discounted or erased.” She adds that vocational awe ties the twin phenomenon of undercompensation and job creep, when employees are pressured to “deliver more than the normal requirements of their jobs” which is gradually increased by the employer, within librarianship due to workplaces that are self-sacrificing and service-oriented.
This results in, as Ettarh puts it, librarians becoming self-selected. It leads to expectations that entry-level library jobs need usually voluntary experience within a library, coupled with “class barriers built into the profession.” What this means that those who have financial instability and cannot work for free have to take out loans or switch careers entirely. Furthermore, those librarians with family responsibilities cannot “work long nights and weekends” and librarians with disabilities can’t make librarianship a “whole-self career.”
In animation this is shown in terms of oft-stereotype of White female librarians who are elderly spinsters. It is implied that such librarians, who are often strict, have experience in library school, degrees, and have been in the library for ages. It is further indicated that even if one moves beyond White librarians in animation, I can’t think of one librarian who is physically disabled, which Ettarh seems to be talking about in her article. Many of the librarians may be mentally disabled though, through their demeanor and actions. Often they are characters for only one episode, so there isn’t enough of a focus on them to know who they are as actual people. That is the nature of current depictions
Back to Ettarh, she further says that having an “emotional attachment” to your work is often valued, and says that while it isn’t a negative, vocational awe is endemic and “connected to so many aspects of librarianship.” She goes onto say that the problem with this is that efficacy of a person’s work is tied to their amount or lack of passion rather than “fulfillment of core job duties”. She adds that if being a good librarian is “directly tied to struggle, sacrifice, and obedience,” then the more one struggles in their work, their institution / work becomes “holier”. This means that people are less likely to “feel empowered…[or] to fight for a healthier workspace.” [2]
Poor Kaisa, she just wants to finish her library tasks of re-shelving books, but Hilda has to be persistent.
Perhaps this is what Kaisa, the ever popular librarian in Hilda feels as she feels exhausted in one episode. More than that, she is experiencing burnout. As I wrote in that post, Kaisa exhibits many of the characteristics of burnout, or what some call librarian fatigue. However, it is hard to know whether her workload is sustainable, if she has a lack of personal control over her workplace, if is insufficiently compensated or recognized, or has a lack of social support, which often leads to burnout. As I put it in that post, librarian burnout/fatigue is something which librarians need to discuss more openly and it should be shown more directly in fictional depictions.
As a reminder, burnout, as noted in that article, means a “syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do ‘people work’ of some kind”. It is caused by factors such as an “unsustainable workload, role conflict…lack of personal control at work, insufficient recognition…lack of social support, a sense of unfairness, and personal values…at odds with the organization’s values.” This is connected with feelings of detachment and cynicism, a lack of accomplishment, sense of ineffectiveness, and overwhelming exhaustion, with physical symptoms including hypertension, muscle tension, headaches, chronic fatigue, sleep disturbances, and more.
I end with words from Ettarh. She writes that libraries are only buildings and that people inside, the librarians, do the work, who need to be treated well. She adds that “you can’t eat on passion. You can’t pay rent on passion. Passion, devotion, and awe are not sustainable sources of income.” She goes onto say that while libraries may have a purpose to serve,but is that purpose so high and mighty when it “fails to serve those who work within its walls every day”. She concludes by saying “we need to continue asking these questions…and stop using vocational awe as the only way to be a librarian.” That is something I have to agree with wholeheartedly.
[1] She also says that the article tries to “dismantle the idea that librarianship is a sacred calling…describe[s] the institutional mythologies surrounding libraries and librarians…dismantle[s] these mythologies by demonstrating the role libraries play in institutional oppression….[and] discuss[es] how vocational awe disenfranchises librarians and librarianship” in hopes that librarianship can “hopefully evolve into a field that supports and advocates for the people who work in libraries as much as it does for physical buildings and resources.”
[2] Ettarh defines a healthy workplace as “one where working around the clock is not seen as a requirement, and where one is sufficiently compensated for the work done” and says it is not a workplace where “the worker [is] taken for granted as a cog in the machinery.”
Happy May Day! Today is also known as Labour/Labor Day and International Workers’ Day, celebrating working classes and laborers, which is promoted by the international labor movement. It is celebrated every year. In her 2018 In the Library with the Lead Pipe article, “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves,” Fobazi Ettarh stated that a lack of compensation for library work is nothing new, with underemployment issues as a continued source for unhappiness. Librarians continue to be paid hourly and isn’t a primary job for everyone, while the institution gains reduced price or free labor with the enforcement of awe through its “dramatic and heroic narratives.” Interconnected to this is the mythologies of vocational awe which reinforces “themes of sacrifice and struggle,” while librarianship sustained itself through labor of librarians who reap only the “immaterial benefits” of having done supposedly “good work.”
This interconnects to fictional librarians. In this article I’ll focus on librarians who presumably get a wage, rather than student librarians which I wrote about earlier this month, or salary. [1] These librarians include Kaisa in Hilda, Isomura in Let’s Make a Mug Too, Lydia Lovely in Horrid Henry, and Ms. Herrera in Archie’s WeirdMysteries. There’s also unnamed librarians in We Bare Bears, Gabriel DropOut, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform, and Cardcaptor Sakura, to name a few who work in public or school libraries. All of those and more will be reviewed in this article.
Kaisa is a supporting character in Hilda and she works at the Trolberg Library. Although she is never shown getting a paycheck, there is no doubt that she is receiving some wages or salary. However, it is implied that she may be overworked and may be experiencing burnout. She often has to deal with annoying patrons, like Hilda herself. Even so, she is still helpful to patrons like Hilda and her friends. She is even a person who would stand up to her bosses, as she would have done in standing against them in a scene which never made it in Hilda and the Mountain King. Otherwise, she seems relatively content with her job, at least as her scenes in the show indicate, although the times we see her is relatively limited, so its hard to know for sure.
Since the show is set in an alternate version of Scandinavia, we can say she would earn an average salary of approximately 9,936 Euros or about $17,843 U.S. Dollars. [2] However, if we chose largest amount, she would earn about $42,274 U.S. Dollars a year, and around $3,386 U.S. Dollars a year at the minimum. Compared to those classified as Librarians and Library Media Specialists by the BLS, the average salary of $61,190 U.S. Dollars a year. Her salary is closer to those classified as Librarian Technicians and Assistants by the BLS which earn an average salary of $34,050 U.S. Dollars a year. Hopefully Trolberg has enough money to pay her, so I’m going to hope that she earns the equivalent of $37,000 a year, which means she would earn about $17.78 dollars an hour, assuming a 2,080 hour work year. That may be far too optimistic, but I’m really hoping here.
That brings me to Isomura in Let’s Make a Mug Too. She is a librarian and curator of local ceramics museum in the town of Tajimi. Since she has both jobs, she doesn’t devote all of her time to the library. However, she is from the city hall and is apparently a new hire. Now, librarians in Japan have an average salary of $5,882,809 Japanese Yen, the equivalent of $44,355 U.S. Dollars or $295,721.24 Chinese Yuan Renminbi. As for curators, they earn a bit more, $6,717,387 Japanese Yen. [3] That is equivalent of $337,578.57 Chinese Yuan Renminbi or $50,647 U.S. Dollars. If we average the two together, assuming she has a librarian-curator position, she would be earning an equivalent of $47,501 U.S. Dollars a year. If we use the same amount of hours per year I mentioned earlier, then she would earn about $23 dollars an hour! That’s pretty good for an amount of money to earn in a year.
The curator talking to the show’s protagonist about pottery
More broadly, the library that Isomura works in is one of the thousands of libraries in Japan. Some of those are listed on the “List of libraries in Japan” page. A small number of these libraries are “beautifully designed” and I’d guess that some of them are like temples, as some are said to be designed by so-called “master architects.” Libraries in Japan have evolved from being a study room and place for limited use to a place with attitudes about guarding the “people’s right to know” and ensuring equal and free access to information for everyone. Furthermore, librarians in Japan said to be “very passionate” about including “all areas of thought” in their daily discourse and collections, since library collections in World War II were heavily censored. [4]
There are many librarians in Japan who work at public libraries. Take, or example, the unnamed librarians Cardcaptor Sakura. The latter show has librarians shelving books and searching for items on their computers, helping the protagonists. They seem respected by those in the library itself. Unfortunately, looking at the listing on IMDB, it does not appear that the four, or even more, librarians in the episode are uncredited, unless they are listed as a character. The same can be said about the two unnamed librarians who appear briefly in the first episode Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, “My Senpai is a Bunny Girl”. Both work at Fujisawa Library, a public library.
Similarly, consider the librarian in Gabriel DropOut. She has a more direct role. In the episode “Fun Forever After…”, an unnamed female librarian helps Tapris, who stumbles at first when getting into the library and struggles to get on the internet. She doesn’t even know what a mouse is, and even touches the screen when its not a touch screen. The librarian helps her, guiding her to books on computers and programming, leading Tapris to read books about them. Again, unfortunately, the librarian is not credited.
This differs from the unnamed librarian in Akebi’s Sailor Uniform. She works at an all-girls private school, Roubai Girls’ Academy. In one episode, “There’s No School Tomorrow, Right?”, she shushes protagonists Akebi and Erika after they excitedly talk to one another. After the librarian shushes them so they express themselves non-verbally and remain excited to hang out that upcoming Saturday, the following day, together. Like other school librarians, she likely takes training courses and work to make sure the services of the school library meets the needs of the school. [5]
This contrasts with Lydia Lovely in Horrid Henry, a children’s animated series set in the United Kingdom. She works as a school librarian during the series but is generally disrespected by the show’s protagonist. Putting aside that a White woman voices her, even though she is a Black woman, as I’ve talked about how this is problematic in the past, lets consider an average salary. In the UK a librarian earns about £23,019 British Pounds a year, and £10.14 British Pounds an hour. [6] That’s the equivalent of about $28,788 U.S. Dollars a year, or about $13 USD an hour. That is relatively low compared to what I’ve mentioned before. I’ll get to librarians in the U.S. later.
Henry’s teachers, with Lovely on the right
The diversity of UK librarians is even worse than in the U.S.: 97% of librarians identify as White! Compare that to the U.S. where 87% identify as White according to recent information. As such, Lydia Lovely is in the minority in terms of Black librarians in the UK. I don’t know whether there are Black librarian groups there like there are in the U.S., but I sure hope so, because they really need more diversity in their ranks of librarians, without a doubt.
They aren’t the only librarians in the UK which I’ve found in my watching of animated series. There’s the unnamed librarian in Sarah and Duck, a non-human librarian. Appearing in the episode “Lost Librarian” and voiced by Tom Britton, this librarian works at what appears to be working at the public library. Sarah and Duck who had gone to the library to learn about a periscope, help him after he loses his paper catalog . He eventually gets back the paper catalog, even as he shushes the duck at a later point. The one thing that is strange is that he has a paper catalog and there is no back-up. Strange and supports the idea of stereotypes of librarians and libraries as antiquated.
This profoundly contrasts with the librarian in Totally Spies who may be voiced by Janice Kawaye, a voice actor of Japanese descent, as I’ve written before, most recently in March 2022. She works at the Liverpool Library, based off the Liverpool Central Library as I noted in my post on April 18. It is the largest of the libraries in Liverpool. If she continued to work there, even as a buff librarian, with some spinster qualities, she would be in a building with “Wi-Fi access throughout the building with 150 computers” according to the library’s official website. The library also has 15,000 rare books, a local studies collection which provides the “rich and fascinating history of Liverpool“. Furthermore, in connection to what the librarian does in the episode, they charge for late returned items. This is something being phased out in many libraries, although Liverpool Central Library isn’t one of them.
That brings me to Gabrielle in I Lost MyBody. In the mature animated film, set in France, this librarian, voiced by Victoire Du Bois, she is a young woman who becomes friends with the protagonist after he, a pizza delivery person, delivers a pizza to her. She asks if he is ok, says he should change jobs, and they talk through the intercom while there is a hard rain outside the apartment building. She tells him she works in a library. It is later revealed, she delivers medicine to a man named Gigi. That she works at the Guy de Maussurant Library, possible referring to Guy De Maupassant, who is a great French writer of short stories. As a librarian there, checks out books for him there, helps him, tells him to bring them back in four weeks. Through it all she has an annoying unnamed library supervisor, while acting thoughtful, elusive, and hip from time to time. She rides a motorcycle, like Rin Shima in Laid-Back Camp, and is unique in that way.
Currently, the average salary of librarians in France is €47,292 Euros. That is the equivalent of about $50,534 USD per year, or $24.2 per hour, assuming the same 2,080 hour work year I mentioned earlier. It is worth noting that there are over 16,000 “public reading spaces” in France, but only 17% of the population are registered library users, due to limited hours open, remoteness, and continued stereotypes. At the same time, libraries of American Committee for Devastated France, otherwise known as CARD, containing librarians from the U.S., served as the foundation of modern libraries in France. There are also various professional organizations for librarians in the country. [7]
For Gabrielle, her job is probably pretty secure, even recommending The World According to Garp when he brings back another book. She probably doesn’t he has a second job seems to imply that her librarian job may not be paying her enough to stay afloat. However, if a second job is emblematic of the librarian field in France, one might say it means there is precarity at play. As Yoonhee Lee put it in American Libraries, “precarity within and outside of libraries is tied to larger structural forces.” If this is the case for Gabrielle, it could mean, on the one hand, that her job is not as secure and a symptom of larger trends. After all, it seems to be the case in France, at least to some extent, especially for those in the gig economy. [8]
Bookworm supports oppression against Rocky and Bullwinkle
That brings me to Cletus Bookworm in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. He is a librarian in the small town of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. Considering he is in the U.S., and in small town, what Jessi Baker, a small-town librarian said, is relevant here, that such librarians “often follow a different set of professional norms” since what may be considered “professional behavior in a larger area could be considered impersonal behavior by a small-town patron.” There is even an Association for Small and Rural Libraries. Other librarians also pedal around books and deliver them across the town. [9]
In the case of Bookworm, he appears to be respected enough to stay in his position even though he is complicit in kidnapping of his own patrons. Although this matters little to him, as all he wants in the library, similar to the general librarian stereotype of shushing librarians. is order in the library by any means necessary. He is very different from other librarians, like Archie the Archivist in RegularShow, which is set in an indeterminate location, who helps the protagonists, and is also the guardian of special laser discs, for some reason.
That brings me to the many librarians in the U.S. As I noted earlier, Librarians and Library Media Specialists earn an average of $61,190 U.S. Dollars a year and Librarian Technicians and Assistants earn an average salary of $34,050 U.S. Dollars a year. Most of the animated librarians in Western animation work in public libraries. Consider the unnamed librarian in We Bare Bears who is seemingly of Thai descent, who works at a branch of the the Los Angeles Public Library. She is shown as burned out and overworked, similar to Kaisa in Hilda.
She is not unique in this. Arguably Stewart Goodson and Myra in The Public may be be burned out to an extent. This differs from Mr. Anderson, the library manager. They all work at the Cincinnati Public Library. Also working in the Midwest is Bobby Daniels in The Ghost and Molly McGee and Clara Francis Censordoll in Moral Orel. Daniels is unique. He is one of the only Latine librarians apart from Mateo in Elena of Avalor and Eztli in Victor and Valentino that I know of in animation. Mateo is voiced by a gay man named Joseph “Joey” Haro, who is of Cuban descent, while Eztli is seemingly voiced by Jenny Lorenzo, who is also of Cuban descent. Daniels is voiced by Danny Trejo, he is presumably of Mexican descent since Trejo is of Mexican descent. There is a rich history of Mexican-American librarians, otherwise known as Chicano librarians, which tries to change the culture of the libraries they worked in to better suit their communities rather than White culture despite institutional resistance.
Censordoll is fundamentally different. In fact, her whole character stands against all the ethics and codes which librarians attest to. She dips books in kerosene so they can be burned and throws away books said to be “objectionable.” She is the equivalent of what the librarian-soldiers were fighting against in Library War and the present-day equivalent of book-banning/censorship efforts in the U.S., which seem to get worse every day. Such efforts are arguably a manifestation of fascism, although people don’t always use that word for them.
Other librarians appear in the Mid-Atlantic. This includes Harold in Craig of the Creek, who works at a librarian in the fictional town of Herkleton, Maryland in the Baltimore/D.C. metropolitan area. Additionally, the unnamed librarian in an episode of Steven Universe, “Buddy’s Book”, is located somewhere in Delmarva, along the Atlantic coast, in what can be called the Eastern Shore. Harold is voiced by Matt Burnett while the voice of the librarian in the Steven Universe episode is not currently known. The latter librarian may be more exhausted and tired than the former, although it is hard to know for sure because she is only shown very briefly in the episode itself.
from left to right: Sherman “Swampy” in Phineas and Ferb, unnamed librarian in Rugrats and Mr. Ambrose in Bob’s Burgers
Apart from these is Sherman “Swampy” in Phineas & Ferb, possibly in the mid-Atlantic region, or other unnamed librarians in the series. This contrasts from Rugrats. Considering the series is seemingly set in Southern California, it means the unnamed librarian in that series is in the same area. This differs from Bob’s Burgers which is set somewhere in the Northeastern United States. Mr. Ambrose works in a school library there, specifically at Wagstaff School. He is said to be “flamboyant” on his fandom page, implying that he could be gay.
Similarly, Archie’s Weird Mysteries is set in New York, in the fictional town of Riverdale. The series includes Ms. Herrera, who may be Latine, and a librarian ghost named Violet Stanhope. In some scenes, she is shown as not a ghost. She remains in the town as she has unfinished business in the human world and can’t leave until it is completed. For all the hassle that Herrera goes through, I sure hop she is compensated well. That’s my hope, although I’m not sure if it is fulfilled or not
Then there is the unnamed librarian in Kim Possible who would fall within the “high school librarian” and “school librarian” category listed by the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. She is voiced by April Winchell. The series takes place in a possibly Midwestern town named Middleton, but still located in the U.S. Considering the fact that she is a menace in the school, she may have strong-armed the administration to pay her adequately. Alternatively, she might be underpaid and is lashing out at students because her pay is low. Its hard to know. I wish someone would write a fan fiction about her, one day.
[5] Iwaski, Rei, Mutsumi Ohira, and Junko Nishio. “PathwaysforSchool Library Education and Training in Japan.” IFLA, May 2019. The library also appears in “Have You Decided on a Club?”, when the head of the literature club is talking to her friends in the library, and seems to read her books there to students as part of the club.
Beilin, a Humanities Research Services Librarian at Columbia University and occasional writer on In The Library With The Lead Pipe, explains [1] how use of European classical and medieval architecture by libraries persists because of specific vision of academia, and due to of its association with class distinction, elitism, and exclusivity. He further argues that such structures are meant to promote or invoke power, yet another indication that libraries aren’t neutral.Today is International Day For Monuments and Sites. Also known as World Heritage Day, it is held on April 18 every year, with activities including visits to monuments and heritage sites, and more, honoring world heritage. For that, many of these monuments and sites invoke power. This is abundantly clear when it comes to libraries, including those in fiction, which are influenced by those in real-life.
Scholars have argued that libraries are operated and designed with a specific “racial motive”. They further have said they served the “interests of a white racial project” by helping with maintenance and construction of a White American citizenry and perpetuate White privilege within the structures o the library profession. [2] Others have stated that racial thinking influenced establishment of information institutions with Whiteness itself, influencing specific forms of infrastructure and policies, resulting in racialized structures.
Additional scholars have said that collections, description, cataloging, and exhibitions have shown resistance to change, with libraries serving as a place which transmits, preserves, and reproduces “certain values and regimes of knowledge”. This happens as libraries remain a place where people study, work, and gather. [3] There has been further discussion as to how libraries “reproduce whiteness and white supremacy” in many ways. This has led to to practices which are undoubtedly non-neutral, and is manifested in collections, hosted in some institutions, containing a “heavy legacy of colonialism”. [4]
Beyond that, there has been discussion about how library spaces themselves are White places, with a close relationship between race, place, and space through history. It has been said that libraries are not a place of non-oppression, questions of how libraries can become a “a place of freedom, liberation, and justice” when there is a place of diversity, racist/colonial cataloging practices, biased and limited collections, and the library itself enacting racism through “the maintenance of its own historically racist structure”. [5]
In response, some have said that alternative spaces should be constructed, places which don’t use the “unmarked normativity” of Whiteness and its dominating power, with its internal orders and external borders. Such normativity relies on “physical and conceptual policing” of the bounds of so-called “shared spaces of normalcy” in whatever that entails, especially at predominantly White institutions. This has led some to resist this and say that their librarianship is not for White people and others saying that White people need to develop the stamina for anti-racist work, transforming libraries into “anti-oppressive spaces where racial diversity is actually possible”. [6]
One such library that invokes power is shown in the Totally Spies! episode “Totally Switched!”. Only shown briefly, it looks like a bit of a temple, and is based on the Liverpool Central Library as confirmed by the Liverpool Library itself. It is within a building called the William Brown Library and Museum according to the relevant Wikipedia page.
The library undoubtedly invokes and promotes power. Furthermore, the librarian inside, whom I’ve written about on two occasions, first in May 2021, and again in March 2022, manifests this as well, by throwing an unruly (or surly) patron across the room. This grand look to the library is almost made to make it look like a temple, to make people see it with awe. The spies care little for this, however, as they break-in to examine the librarian’s date book without any problem, which they later put back. This library is only one example of this in fiction.
Another example is the inside of the Trolberg library in Hilda. Although the outside is somewhat grand with its columns, what is inside would make anyone stare with awe. In the Witches’ Tower, there’s an inner room with stacks upon stacks of books. There, a committee of witches resides, ones which are high-ranking witches. They also appear to be Kaisa’s bosses at the library, getting angry at her for not returning a book on time, harshly threatening to cast her into the void if she disobeys them, despite her strong disagreement.
Even more than the outside of the library in Totally Spies, the Trolberg library is meant to have an aura of knowledge. After all, it is two stories, has cabinets of books on almost every subject, and has secret rooms, the equivalent of special collections, which contain spellbooks.
The same can be said for the inner room of the Buddy Buddwick Library in an episode of Steven Universe. The shelves are neatly organized and cleaned. In some ways, it is so organized that it almost seems that no one uses it, unlike the school library in the latter part of Oresuki, when it becomes more heavily used by students, or any of those in episodes of The Simpsons, to give two examples.
Invoking power more directly is the Biblioteca in various episodes of Elena of Avalor. Accessed by Mateo, a royal wizard who helps the show’s protagonist, Elena, it is accessible through the floor and filled with books, materials, and other items. It also appears, similar to the library in What If…? to be magical in some way or another, as Mateo, or Elena at times, appear to be the only ones who can access it.
In that way, the library has an inherent power of its own which is built into how it can be accessed and the original creator, Alacazar, who happens to be Mateo’s grandfather. This makes it unique from other fictional libraries described in this article.
When the library appears first in the episode “Spirit of the Wizard”, Mateo is in awe of the library after Alacazar reveals it to him and Elena. Their animal friend is impressed, as is Mateo, amazed by all the spellbooks that are there. This awe somewhat fades when they realize that Alacazar will only last as long as the book that contains him remains intact. If it fades into nothingness, so does he. They only stay their briefly and move onto their main mission.
This is not the only instance in which the library projects power. Consider the enchanted library in Sofia the First, by the same creator as Elena of Avalor, Craig Gerber. The library is within a tree and and in a secluded area, only accessible through a secret hole in the bedroom of Princess Sofia, and then a boat ride. After that, it has been opened up with a book-like blue key. Speaking of exclusive! The fandom page for the library states that it “contains hundreds, if not thousands, of books,” many of which contain “unfinished stories of lives” that need good endings, something the Storykeeper, a sort of librarian, fulfills.
Just as imposing on the viewer (and character) is the Bonesborough Library in The Owl House. Luz Noceda, one of the show’s protagonists, first travels there when she is delivering a stack of books for her friend and guardian-of-sorts, Eda. She a little intimidated and undoubtedly in awe of this library. The library’s collections are organized by the Demon Decimal System (feeding them will cause them to sneeze and mess up the card catalog). There are also areas for manga and cyclops, and a children’s section. It is a public library with forbidden stacks and is staffed by an unnamed glasses wearing librarian at the information desk, Amity Blight in the children’s area, and a master librarian named Malphas. Additional parts of the library include a reference, fiction, non-fictions section, along with Amity’s hideout.
Even the library operated by George and Lance in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, two gay Black men who are the fathers of Bow, is imposing in its own way. The fandom page simply calls it a “giant multi-floor residence, museum and library” containing a large staircase, piano, a “grand collection of books”, and a fireplace. The outside is covered with vines making it a bit mysterious and hidden from onlookers. It is so hidden that Bow didn’t tell his friends Adora and Glimmer about it, who only found out when they were worried about about him when he didn’t report back to them.
The same can be said about the library of sorts which appears over and over throughout LoliRock. It is a magical library which the princess can practice their magic and learn new spells. It is a secret magical room which can be “accessed through a basement beside the rehearsal studio” and Talia works to keep order in the library. However, it isn’t as imposing as some of the other libraries, however, in part because it is smaller. Due to its magic, it has a strong effect.
Library in RWBY
Other libraries have such a powerful effect as well. For instance Nigel in Tangled episode “Pascal’s Dragon” reads books in the library inside the Corona castle to learn more about dragons. While there, he learns about their dangers and why should be stopped. The same can be said for the library that Marcy and King Andreas are in the Amphibia episode “Lost in Newtopia.” Both are library users.
There’s also the libraries in RWBY, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, Classroom of the Elite, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and El-Hazard. All of these libraries have a grand feel to them. The same can be said for libraries in Star Wars, Mysticons, Bravest Warriors, or the self-created library in Prisoner Zero. The latter is unique because similar to the bookmobiles in Mira, Royal Detective, the blue-skinned librarian in Prisoner Zero creates his own library in the hull of a ship. Although it is sadly destroyed, the library is filled with knowledge and materials of all types, although it mainly stores different types of books.
The same can even be said about The Stanza in Welcome to the Wayne. It is meticulously organized and it is meant to awe the patron. At the same time, it is accessible to people with a handrail that allows you to move across the library or non-human library assistants who will bring books to you. This is different than many of the other grand libraries shown in animation which have been covered in this article.
None of these libraries experience the decay and disarray which faces real-life libraries in Africa, due to Western designs being imposed on Africa rather than using decentralized models. Instead, these libraries are akin to real-life libraries which are said to be “beautiful” or “gorgeous”, with their imposing and monumental structures claimed to impress and dazzle people. [7] What is not always considered is if these structures are practical for the librarians and for the patrons. That is usually never mentioned in animated series and may be ignored in real-life too, so things can stay the way they are, even if problems exist within an institution which cause it to be rotten to the core.
[1] Ian Beilin,”The Academic Research Library’s White Past and Present” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 88-89
[2] Ibid, 85.
[3] Todd Honma, “Forward” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. xi; Beilin, 80-81.
[4] Beilin, 82; Megan Watson, “White Feminism and Distributions of Power in Academic Libraries” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 166; Section by Nicole A. Cooke in chapter by Nicole A. Cooke, Katrina Spencer, Jennifer Margolis Jacobs, Cass Mabbott, Chloe Collins, and Rebekah M. Loyd, “Mapping Topographies from the Classroom: Addressing Whiteness in the LIS Curriculum” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 237; Natalie Baur, Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, and George Apodaca, “Breaking Down the Borders: Dismantling Whiteness Through International Bridges” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 287.
[5] Beilin, 83, 86, 91, 93; Vani Natarajan, “Nostalgia, Cuteness, and Geek Chic: Whiteness in Orla Kiely’s Library” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 130.
[6] David James Hudson, “The Whiteness of Practicality” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 206, 213-214; Jorge R. Lopez-McKnight, “My Librarianship is Not For You” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 261, 265; Section by Kristyn Caragher entitled “Anti-Oppression Workshop Series at the University Library” within Melissa Kalpin Prescott, Kristyn Caragher, and Katie Dover-Taylor, “Disrupting Whiteness: Three Perspectives on White Anti-Racist Librarianship” in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science (ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Library Juice Press: Sacramento, CA: 2017), p. 301.
12 librarians with hair buns in Western animation. [1] The last one is Censordoll again because she is a prominent bun-wearing librarian
Often librarians are portrayed as quiet, bookish people, who shush those who are noisy, and act in a stereotypical manner. However, librarians come in many types and kinds, either with an MLIS/MLS or not, and those stereotypes can be disrupted when a librarian changes professions as it changes audience expectations. Even so, librarians aren’t united on what the image of librarians should be changed into in order to counter the stereotypes. Through all of this, many librarians are portrayed with hair buns, part of the oft-stereotype. [2] Today, I’ll explore that, determining why this is the case, its significance in librarian portrayals, and what it means overall. As Swallow said in Act I of William Shakespeare’s classic comedy play, The Mary Wives of Windsor, “if you should fight, you go against the hair of your professions,” meaning that you are going against the grain.
Fictional librarians are often shown with so-called “traditional” outfits, looks, and hairstyles, including hair buns, which are symbolic in research around stereotypes themselves. This has even cropped up in webcomics. This is in part because styling one’s hair can be “highly politicized” and complicated, especially for people of color, who experience microaggressions when people want to “touch” their hair or question it entirely. Some have even argued that different hair styles can be empowering and resist stereotypes, even as a library can be a “very conservative” place to work, although this may not be as strict in university library environments. Hair can also be an opportunity to communicate change, while serving as an intricate part of the identity and responsibility of the profession itself, with different hair styles having the potential to dispel stereotypes. [3]
In Western animation, this is clear as librarians of color, like Clara Rhone in Welcome to the Wayne, and Mira in Mira, Royal Detective episode (“The Case of the Missing Library Book”) don’t wear hair buns. Neither does Ms. Herrera in a Archie’s Weird Mysteries episode (“The Haunting of Riverdale”). However, the unnamed librarian in a We Bare Bears episode (“The Library”) prominently wears a hair bun, and serves as the only librarian of color that I know of, in Western animation, that does so. This could be a function of her role in the library and set rules which may establish that she dresses to “impress” in a semi-formal outfit. So, it could be a consequence of that, as other librarians I’ve mentioned may work in environments which are more open with their rules around self-expression or care little about how people look.
When it comes to White female librarians in animation, it is a different story. Apart from Kaisa in Hilda, the unnamed librarian in a Steven Universe episode (“Buddy’s Book”), the librarian in the first Zevo-3 episode, Mrs. Higgins in a Sofia the First episode (“The Princess Test”), and Amity Blight in The Owl House, who briefly wears her hair in a pony trail, which became a sensation among fans of the series, to give a few examples, many of the other librarians wear hair buns. [4] This includes the librarian characters, who are effectively one-episode-wonders or only appear very briefly, in episodes of Futurama, DC Super Hero Girls, Rugrats, Kim Possible, Timon & Pumbaa, Dexter’s Laboratory, Totally Spies, Phineas & Ferb, and The Simpsons, to name a few shows.
Also, Francis Clara Censorsdoll in MoralOrel wears a hair bun. Even, the blue-glasses wearing librarian in The Flintstones episode “The Hit Songwriter” wears a hair bun. At times, it appears that librarians with hair buns are meant to symbolize social conservative and prudish people, like the librarian in an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head (“Cyber-Butt”), who faints when she sees a nude image on a computer screen. Although she doesn’t wear a hair bun, what she symbolizes is similar to how some librarians are portrayed in Western animation.
Others have declared that the perception of librarians with hair buns or lace collars should be discarded, as librarians are highly active and high tech now. While someone can easily agree with this, it is harder to push away the image of a spinster librarian with a hair bun, with some wearing buns and braids while working in the library. There is the further point that many librarians may not have enough hair to put into a bun in the first place. At one point, librarians adopted the hair bun style at one time, giving life to what became the stereotype and cliche. However, nowadays many younger librarians have different hair styles, and some might even have better eyesight than anyone else as they don’t need glasses! [5] Still, tropes like the”Prim and Proper Bun” remain, with those with this hairstyle said to be in charge or be respected. This is somewhat countered with the “Loony Librarian” trope, which is said to describe a librarian who’s let “their profession mess with their mind a little.”
Top row, from left to right: Violet Stanhope in Archie’s Weird Mysteries, Miss Dickens in Carl Squared, Sara in Too Loud, Sarah in Too Loud, and Mrs. Shusher in The Replacements. Bottom row, from left to right, Marion the librarian in Hanny Manny, Millie in Madagascar: A Little Wild, unnamed librarian in Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, unnamed librarian in Martin Mystery, unnamed librarian in Martin Mystery, and unnamed librarian in Uncle Grandpa.
The stern librarian with hair tied tightly behind their head, peering at patrons from behind their glasses, still remains a go-to-stereotype for too many, even perpetrated by journalists who should know better. Some even try and make it sexy, serious, while others highlight other hairstyles or fashions instead. [6] The shushing librarian remains, despite the fact it doesn’t reflect reality, with uptight librarians fading from existence except in pop culture, where they remain a negative stereotype. They appear as early as a 1921 silent film, with hair buns becoming an “occupational indicator” of librarians over time, even as there is no single image of a librarian. [7] Instead, actual librarians are different, and have varying styles. Jennifer Snoek-Brown, who runs Reel Librarians, has recognized this with posts about librarian style, like a librarian-themed clothing collection she posted about in May 2022.
Of course, there are actual librarians out there, like the elderly White woman with grey hair in a bun shown at the beginning of Ghostbusters, and others who embody the stereotype or wear librarian costumes for Halloween. However, there are just as many who run afoul of that stereotype, either by not shushing any patrons. The stereotype itself has its roots in gender with the profession dominated by White woman, although it is not accurate in the slightest. [8] There is supposed “greying” of the profession which only reinforces the images of frumpy stereotypical librarians, an image with unknown origins. The latter image is something which has become a signifier of the profession, for better or worse, despite efforts to counter it. The fight to counter such images continues, with some showing they are more than a librarian, like those who also bellydance, and others who thrive on change and want to dispel of the bun entirely. [9]
There are various librarians in Western animations who don’t wear hair buns. Apart from Amity, who I mentioned earlier, there’s Violet Stanhope in an episode of Archie’s Weird Mysteries (“The Haunting of Riverdale”), Miss Dickens in Carl Squared episode (“Carl’s Techno-Jinx”), Sara and Sarah in Too Loud, Mrs. Shusher in The Replacements episode (“Quiet Riot”), Millie in Madagascar: A Little Wild episode (“Melman at the Movies”), and Marion the Librarian in Hanny Manny. There are additional unnamed librarians in Martin Mystery, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Uncle Grandpa, Phineas and Ferb, andAmphibia, none of whom wear hair buns either.
But there is something more to the bun hairstyle. In some ways, it can be practical, despite being a stereotype for librarians, and is claimed to add “glam” or “chic” to any outfit, with no “right or wrong way to wear a bun” as one site declared. This can also be pushed away by people of color who want to move away from being called a “bun lady”. At the same time, apart from the types of buns, some of which are said to show that a person is “sophisticated.”
Ancient Chinese, Koreans, Polynesians, and Greeks, often women, all wore hair buns. The hair style was popular in Korea and Japan among men, for one reason or another. It became popular beginning in the 1800s, as styles from ancient Greeks and Romans entering into high society, and again in the 1870s, during the Victorian period. [10]
This isn’t the case for all librarians, however. The above librarian, Nagisa Yasaka (voiced by Hisako Tōjō), appears in one episode of My Roommate is a Cat, “Ones Who Can’t Be Controlled”, and is overjoyed when the protagonist gives her a book, thinking she’d be interested in it, after struggling to decide what to give her, not knowing her interests. She tells him that she is a school librarian. Unfortunately, we only see her in this one episode and never again, so it isn’t known whether she wears a hair bun while working in the library or not.
She is not alone in this. Hair buns are somewhat rare for the librarians I’ve seen in anime to-date, with even Fumio Murakumi in Girl Friend Beta having her hair braided into tails, but not tied up in a hair bun. The same is the case for Hasegawa Sumika in Bernard-jou Iwaku a.k.a. Miss Bernard said, while Himeko Agari in Komi Can’t Communicate has hair too short to put into a hair bun. Even the two librarians briefly shown in the first episode of Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai don’t have a hair bun, as one as her hair in a ponytail and the other doesn’t have her hair tied up. The unnamed and uncredited librarian shown in an episode of Kin-iro Mosaic aka Kinmoza (“The Girl on My Mind”) doesn’t have her hair in a hair bun either. Instead, its just in a pony tail.
However, there are a couple librarians in anime who have a hair buns. Take for example, the unnamed librarian in an episode of Akebi’s Sailor Uniform episode (“There’s No School Tomorrow, Right?”). More prominently, there’s Rin Shima in Laid-Back Camp. Apart from her sleeping at the information desk, from time to time, as I described in a post back in January, she seems comfortable with a hair bun. It allows her to keep her hair tied up while she works, and doesn’t serve as a distraction. She might be the most prominent Japanese fictional librarian who wears a hair bun.
This difference in fictional librarians is one of the many aspects which sets apart librarians in anime from those in Western animation. If the photographs on Wikimedia and scattered images online are any indication, Japanese female librarians often don’t often wear hair buns. So, in this sense, the anime may be reflecting reality. The same may be the case for Western animation, to an extent, except that there has been a strong resistance to the “bun lady” perception in Western countries, especially by librarians of color, who don’t want to tie up their hair in buns. Hopefully, Western animation, in coming years, features more librarians without hair buns, and guts the stereotype entirely, even if it is too easy to rely on old cliches of librarians (often White) who are strict, curmudgeonly, and have hair buns.
[1] Top row, from left to right: unnamed librarian in Futurama, unnamed librarian in DC Super Hero Girls, Ms. Hatchet in Kim Possible, Rita Book in Timon & Pumbaa, unnamed librarian in Rugrats. Bottom row, from left to right: Mrs. L in Dexter’s Laboratory, unnamed librarian in Totally Spies!, unnamed librarian in We Bare Bears, Eztli in Victor and Valentino, Francis Clara Censordoll in Moral Orel, unnamed librarian in Big City Greens, Arlene in Phineas and Ferb, and Censordoll again.
[4] Amity is beloved by fans since she is a somewhat prominent recurring character and she is a lesbian who is in a romantic relationship with the show’s protagonist, Luz Noceda.
Left to right: Kaisa Hammarlund, Mae Whitman, Victoire Du Bois, Tara Strong, Kelsy Abbott, and Jennifer Grey. These are some of the many White women who have voiced animated librarians over the years.
In this sixth part of this series, I am profiling the over 20 White women who have voiced librarian characters over the years.
About the voice actors
A few voice actors are prominent. First among them is Swedish voice over artist Kaisa Hammarlund who voices Kaisa in Hilda, a character she calls “your favorite goth librarian,” celebrating the announcement of the second season, and has interacted with fans. She also said she is “lucky” to voice the character, along with other supportive comments about Kaisa as a character and noting she plays “several fun characters in this ace animation,” specifically the Nightmare Mara and Kaisa. Voicing Kaisa is her first animated role, as she has previously voiced characters on TV, in feature films, in short films, on stage, in video games, at workshops, in commercials, and elsewhere.
Second among them is Mae Whitman who voices Amity Blight in The Owl House. Amity is shown as a librarian in the episode “Through the Looking Glass Ruins.” Whitman is pansexual, saying in August 2021 that for her it means she “can fall in love with people of all genders,” and calling her role as Amity as something she is proud to be a part of, arguing that “queer representation is sososo important.” She has also called Amity “incredible” and seems that she really loves voicing the character, which is great to see.
Just as important are three other voice actors: Victoire Du Bois, Alia Shawkat, and Tara Strong. The first two voice Gabrielle in I Lost My Body, with Du Bois providing the French voice and Shawkat the English voice in the dub. Shawkat is part Iraqi and part Italian, while Du Bois is French. In comparison, Strong, who voices Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, is Canadian and has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. She has also voiced characters in some of my favorite animated series like Samurai Jack, Futurama, Bravest Warriors, Young Justice, and Sym-Bionic Titan, most of which I have mentioned on this blog in the past.
Other voice actors include Kelsy Abbott as Sara in Colaleo’s Too Loud. She is a TV writer and I know her best for her role as Reggie Abbott, the protagonist of Twelve Forever. Sara is a big part of Too Loud as she is one of the protagonists along with Desiree (given another name during the series) who is voiced by Colaleo and is a trans woman as I’ve written about before. Then there’s Jennifer Grey as Arlene, first appearing in the Phineas and Ferb episode “Phineas and Ferb’s Quantum Boogaloo,” and later in other episodes. Grey has been an actress since 1979, although she has done very little voice over work.
There were further wonderful voice talent out there like Susan Blu who voiced Marion the Librarian in Hanny Manny, and Joanna Ruiz problematically voices a Black female librarian named Miss Lovely in a Horrid Henry episode named “Horrid Henry: Computer Whizz”. Blu is well-known for voicing characters in Transformers animated series, while being a voice/casting director for Handy Manny. Ruiz is a British voice actress who has a long history of voice over work.
Just as talented are those who do characters who appear even more rarely. This includes April Winchell who voices the sadistic Ms. Hatchet in the Kim Possible episode “Overdue”, Tress MacNeille who voices Rita Book in the Timon & Pumbaa episode “Library Brouhaha”, Linda Hamilton as the librarian in a Big City Greens episode named “Quiet Please” and Gillian Vigman as a non-human librarian named the Bat Librarian in an episode of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles entitled “Mystic Library”. Also of note is Ermelinda Duarte who voices Libro Shushman in the Teamo Supremo episode “Word Search”, and two voice actors in The Mr. Men Show episode, “Library”. Specifically, Rebecca Forstadt voices Ms. Giggles and Katie Leigh voices Ms. Chatterbox.
Other than this role, Winchell voices characters in series like Goof Troop, Recess, and Wander Over Yonder. MacNeille has almost 400 acting credits in series like Futurama, The Simpsons, Disenchantment, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Sofia the First, The Awesomes, Lilo & Stitch: The Series, Rugrats, Queer Duck, and The Critic. Hamilton is just as qualified, although she has mostly live-action credits and this might be her first animated role. Vigma, on the other hand, currently voices Dr. T’Ana in Star Trek: Lower Decks, while Forstadt has, according to her website, been a voice over actress since 1981, including “work in hundreds of Japanese anime cartoons” and Leigh has voiced characters in series such as Super Crooks [dubbed version], Space Racers, Totally Spies! (as Alex), Olivia, Sailor Moon (as Sailor Iron Mouse), and many others.
Other than the above voice actors, Sarah Ann Kennedy voices Miss Rabbit in the Peppa Pig episode (“The Library”), Kath Soucie as a librarian, also known as Ms. L, in Dexter’s Laboratory episode entitled “Book ‘Em,” and Mindy Cohn voices a librarian in the Dexter’s Laboratory episode “The Blonde Leading the Blonde”. Additional voice actors include Russi Taylor as Mrs. Higgins in the Sofia the First episode (“The Princess Test”), Susanne Blakeslee as the librarian in multiple episodes of Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, and Beverly Archer as the librarian in a Rugrats episode (“Quiet Please!”).
Kennedy voices characters in other series like Nanny Plum and Crapston Villas, while Souice, who voiced the librarian, has also voiced characters in Rugrats, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, The Weekenders, The Replacements; and TaleSpin. Cohn is known for voicing Velma Dinkley in the Scooby-Doo franchise for 13 years, from 2002 to 2015. Taylor famously voiced Minnie Mouse for 33 years, Blakeslee is known for her roles in voicing prominent characters on The Fairly OddParents and in the Kingdom Hearts series. Archer is best known for her roles in the live-action series Mama’s Family and Major Dad.
About the characters
Left to right: Kaisa, Amity Blight, Twilight Sparkle, Arlene, and Marion
Kaisa is perhaps the most prominent librarian in a recent animated series, specifically in Hilda. She is mysterious at first, with very little is known about her. As the story and series moves forward, she becomes a more important part of the series. In the process, she helps out the protagonists with the questions they have and their struggles with magic in the town of Trolberg.
As I wrote in January, for I Love Libraries, Amity’s character counters stereotypical notes of librarians by displaying “the importance of reading and the library as a welcoming place for everyone by reading to children,” and is deeply in love with Luz Noceda, the show’s protagonist. Her role as a librarian is an important part of the story, especially in the episode “Through the Looking Glass.”
Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a pony as a librarian, loving libraries, is very studious, and she travels with her friends on adventures. In some ways she bucks stereotypes, as she is a non-human librarian. She is also a central character in the aforementioned series, and a unicorn pony, who sends friendship reports to a princess before she becomes a princess.
Arlene is an elderly married woman who works as a librarian in a bad alternate future caused by Candace. Unfortunately, apart from the episode “Phineas and Ferb’s Quantum Boogaloo,” where she reminds Candace that lab coats had to be worn and gave one to Candace, she isn’t a librarian, she is not a librarian. Instead she watches a comet fly past Earth and she feeds squirrels nuts.
Marion in Hanny Manny is the head librarian of Sheet Rock Hills Library. No matter what, she helps those in need, either stacking books, helping people with book returns, and other tasks. She has a business casual look, but very close to styles of other librarians.
Left to right: Lydia Lovely, Ms. Hatchet, Rita Book, unnamed Librarian, and Bat Librarian
Lydia Lovely a.k.a. Miss Lovely, is a Black female librarian. In the Horrid Henry episode “Horrid Henry: Computer Whizz,” is on library duty, helping Henry with getting a book, but it is just a ruse to get her to look away so he can change his grades. As a result, a whole stack of books falls down, almost crushing her, but she still gets the book he says he needed. She is also the teacher of Perfect Peter.
Ms. Hatchet in the Kim Possible episode “Overdue” is a sadistic librarian of the school library at Middleton High. She is feared by many students and known for strict actions when it comes to books from her library. She later puts Kim through a “proverbial grinder” as punishment. Later she opens an ancient text from Monkey Fist and it causes an explosion in the library. It isn’t known what happens to her after that.
Rita Book in the Timon & Pumbaa episode “Library Brouhaha” is an interesting character. On the one hand, she continually shushes Timon and Pumbaa in the library, and anything that makes noise, even a bluebird. Even so, after the bookworm, Pumbaa, and Timon are injured and sent to a hospital, she was the nurse. In other episodes, she watched Timon and Pumbaa criticize chicken served at a restaurant, and threw a book at Pumbaa in another episode. Her appearance is stereotypical with grey hair in a bun, a collared shirt, and large tinted glasses. She is also mean-spirited and a curmudgeon, liking quiet and peace, even using physical force to achieve this. Her name is actually a wordplay on the sentence “read a book.”
The unnamed librarian in a Big City Greens episode, “Quiet Please”, is just as bad. She demands complete silence in the library and if people aren’t silenced, they are banned or abducted. As I put it back in April 2021, “one of the worst stereotypical librarians I have EVER seen in animation” and she even gets a character banned from all the libraries around the world. She even shushes the narrator at the very end of the episode, as well, to add to the terribleness.
Then there’s the non-human librarian named the Bat Librarian in an episode of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles entitled “Mystic Library”. She is in charge of the mystic library, and does not tolerate excessive noise, even employing bats to kidnap patrons who are too loud, carrying them to the “kiddie room” of the library. [1]
Left to right: Libro Shushman, Little Miss Giggles, Little Miss Chatterbox, Miss Rabbit, and Ms. L.
Libro Shushman in the Teamo Supremo episode “Word Search” is one of the most devious villains and librarian. She is so tired of people returning books late that she comes up with a plan: all the words in the state will be stolen by her using a Dictionary of Doom. Somehow her plan is not a success and she is stopped by the heroes.
Miss Giggles, also known as Little Miss Giggles, has many part time jobs in The Mr. Men Show. This includes working in a library, a phone receptionist, and part-time firefighter. Just as bad is Ms. Chatterbox, also known as Little Miss Chatterbox. She lives in a house shaped like a telephone, is often girly, fun, pretty, and giggles.
Miss Rabbit is a librarian in the Peppa Pig episode (“The Library”). She is known for having many jobs over the course of the series, basically every job there is to have. This means that she may not have very much job security if she is going from one job to the other.
Then there’s the librarian, also known as Ms. L, in Dexter’s Laboratory episode entitled “Book ‘Em.” She once admired Dexter for being efficient and responsible, but when he broke in to return a book he illegally checked out, she caught him. As a punishment, she forced him to read children’s books to minors.
From left to right: Unnamed librarian, Mrs. Higgins, unnamed librarian, and unnamed librarian
There’s also an unnamed librarian in the Dexter’s Laboratory episode “The Blonde Leading the Blonde.” He is very helpful to Dexter, unlike the other librarian. Even though he is a man, he is voiced by a woman.
Mrs. Higgins in the Sofia the First episode (“The Princess Test”). She works at the Royal Preparatory Academy as a librarian. She helps Sofia with her princess test, and she is an old lady with a bonnet.
An unnamed librarian appeared in various episodes of Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil. She works at Mellowbrook Elementary School, even trying to kill Kick, shown to be power-hungry, and claims anything in the return box of the library as he. She even thinks that Ronalo destroyed the library, so she tries to kill him with a laser.
Then there is the librarian in a Rugrats episode (“Quiet Please!”). She is a stickler for following rules, when it comes to slight damage to books and talking. She is only seen in that episode. As I wrote in April 2021, the librarian agrees to get the Rugrats kids library cards, and outlines the rules: no food allowed, all books needing to be returned to their shelves, and total silence. Ultimately, the librarian tasks Chuck with doing various things to make the library more efficient, meaning that she might not be the worst after all.
[1] This fandom article claims “like most librarians, especially those in fiction, she does not tolerate excessive noise.” Are most librarians in fiction really like that? I want to say yes, and I sadly think its true.
Views and visitors to this website as shown in the stats for Dec. 21, 2022. The numbers have undoubtedly gone up since then.
Hey everyone! This is my last post of 2022. I’d like to talk about what I’ve accomplished this year on this blog and look forward to the coming year. [1] I have continued to write about library classification, librarians of color, library stereotypes, library users, LGBTQ librarians, and much more, even more than I did in 2021.
I began the year with the recently added titles from December 2021, along with a post on Sarah, the book jail and the “sanctity of library property” in Too Loud. I followed that with posts on Mateo in Elena of Avalor, and the church library in Ascendance of a Bookworm. Posts in later months focused on Amity Blight in The Owl House, the fictional library in LoliRock, reprinted my review of libraries/librarians in The Owl House for I Love Libraries, Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony, the Library of the Eternal Equinox in Mysticons, and reprinting yet another post from I Love Libraries, this one about libraries in Milo Murphy’s Law. One of my favorites, from those first three months of this year was on the unnamed buff librarian in Totally Spies! (expanding from a post on the same subject I had written in May 2021), a post which garnered attention on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit. In that post, I wrote:
…The episode clearly is setting the expectation that librarians aren’t “supposed” to be this strong. Rather they supposed to be “wimps,” as the librarian herself remarks, and “mild-mannered” as Jerry, the head of WHOOP, head of the spy agency…put it. Without a doubt, it is wrong for a librarian to assault patrons. Her reaction is understandable…when it comes down to it, I would even venture that Sam, and maybe even Alex, are fine with this librarian being buff, as long as the librarian isn’t decking patrons of course…By the episode end, there is an open question as to whether those whose personalities have been switched are switched back. This is because the spies don’t have time to switch back the personalities of anyone, apart from Jerry and Clover. Did they switch the personalities of the librarian and wrestler? Or did they leave them intact? That is open to viewer interpretation…I would argue that by being buff, this librarian is going against usual depictions of librarians, often as those who are strict, elderly, and uptight, as Snoek-Brown explains…I still think it is possible she was voiced by Janice Kawaye, an actress of Japanese descent who has voiced characters since 1983…Although this librarian in Totally Spies! is the only fictional librarian that I am aware of who lifts weights, jumps rope, and does other exercises, there are actual librarians who are also weightlifters…In writing this post, I really got into it and found that there are two wrestlers out there who compete using a librarian gimmick…there is an inaccurate image of a librarian in popular culture, a ‘petite, humorless woman…dressed in dowdy clothes, spectacles on her face, [and] hair knotted in a bun.’ A weightlifting librarian, or a wrestler-librarian…blows that completely out of the water, without question.
In April, I reprinted a post I wrote about Kaisa for Jennifer Snoek-Brown’s Reel Librarians, arguing that she is one of the best depictions of fictional librarians to date. That same month, I posted on the librarian, Barebones, in Brownie and Barebones, and the High Guardian Academy library in High Guardian Spice. This was followed by posts in May on Blinky’s library in Tales ofArcadia, and Gabrielle in the animated film, I Lost My Body. Some of my other favorite posts that I wrote which were published in May, and in later months, are as follows:
I am proud this year that I finally added a page on librarians and libraries in film and another on watching pop culture media which I watch on this blog, showing where you can find the shows / films I’m writing about on this blog, making it accessible to the readers. I additionally did a huge update to the Bibliography page, so it now lists articles cited in each post and makes that available to users, while gutting the pages I had on Jennifer Snoek-Brown, who is often cited on this blog, and “Higgins o-rama.”
Upcoming next year will be a continuation of the Behind the Screen series with posts on White female and White male voice actors who bring fictional librarians to life, and revisiting the fictional librarians in Archie’s Weird Mysteries, which I had written about a while back. There will also be a post examining Hanamaru Kunikida in “Love Live! Sunshine!!”, a librarian and a school idol all in one!
Building upon the titles listed for July/August, September, October, November, and and December 2021, and January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September of this year, this post notes recent titles with libraries or librarians in popular culture which I’ve come across in the past month. Each of these has been watched or read during the past month. Not as many animated series or films with libraries this past month, but I did come across a good deal in comics, whether in webcomics or anime.
Eztli shushes Victor with her extended skeleton arm
This post is a scary and spooky one for sure! I wrote this post specifically to appear right before Halloween on October 31st, and the beginning of the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos), which is celebrated between November 1st and 2nd. Today’s post examines Eztli, the skeleton librarian in the Victor and Valentino episode “An Evening with Mic and Hun“, and is likely voiced by accomplished actress of Cuban descent, Jenny Lorenzo.
Let’s start with what she is wearing: she has a black dress with a white collar, a medallion around her neck, and horn-rimmed glasses. This seriously invokes the spinster librarian stereotype, as she has her hair tied up in a bun, even though that seems somewhat unnecessary. Her first contact with Victor and Valentino, the two protagonists, is to shush them with her extended skeleton arm. Val, often the rule follower, accepts this, saying “she’s a librarian, she wants us to be quiet.” Victor rejects this and she then scares them away by doing something that is the equivalent to yelling.
After they run away, she starts putting books on a cart with the extra skeleton arm, and is sitting at the information desk, with a stack of card catalogs behind her. I loved the part when she stamped on the book “Past Due Fee: One Soul.” That made me laugh a little. Val comes up with a plan, distracting the librarian by ringing a bell, annoying her. That is until a huge orb, looking a planet, falls down on the librarian and scatters her bones. Val is annoyed at Vic, as that wasn’t the plan, as he was supposed to swing down and grab the arm. Funny enough, Vic shushes Vic with the arm, they subdue one of the other people trying to get the arm of Hun, and flee the library.
While the scene in the library is only a little more than a minute long, there is a lot going on here. More than anything, the library and librarian can be portrayed with vintage looks because there is “something nostalgic about reading books” and possibly even gives the implication that the librarian career is outdated. [1] The latter seems to be somewhat true in this episode, as there are card catalogs behind Eztli at the information desk and a bell to ring sitting on the same desk. What Eztli is wearing seems more sinister, evil, and mysterious than classy, distinguished, slimming, elegant, sexy, or chic like the outfits that Amity Blight in The Owl House or Kaisa in Hilda, which are either partly or fully black in their color. I’ll focus on that topic in my post next month, “Beauty, dress codes, and fashion: Examining twenty fictional White female librarians,” so look forward to that!
Eztli behind the information desk with a wall of card catalogs behind her, while Val comes up to the desk
Eztli is not the only skeleton librarian out there. Mumm-Ra in the Fudêncio e Seus Amigos episode “Biblioteca Maldita” is a librarian/priest and an evil figure. He considered the librarian his own private domain, claiming that time means nothing to him. But, he can be tricked, as the characters fool him into thinking that he has the real eye of Thundera after they destroy the actual one. Then there’s the librarian in an issue of the 1992 Detective Comics who is the enemy of Batman as he has a library of souls or the soul records in the webcomic 180 Angel. Beyond this, in the webcomic, Guillotine Public Library, a librarian named Skeezix a.k.a. Jonathan von Abendroth finds out that a patron, Lavii, is a skeleton/reaper, causing him to freak out. It turns out that this librarian is Lavii’s mentor, causing her some shock, and he tells her that if she tells anyone about him then she will lose her powers! They later catch-up and he gets her a library card. [2]
In Mexican culture, skulls represent death and rebirth, as a skull represents life and afterlife, while skeletons, in Mesoamerican cultures were considered a symbol of fertility, good luck, and the “dicotomy of life.” On top of this, there are decorative skulls known as calaveras which are often created with cane sugar put on altars (known as ofrendas) for Día de Muertos, with José Guadalupe Posada creating skeleton imagery like La Catrina beginning in 1910, with its influence still felt today. Skulls and skeletons in Mexican folk art also reflect a dualism of balancing forces, like life and death, and without that duality in all parts of life, then ‘the universe loses its equilibrium.” At the same time, Indigenous Mexican art is said to celebrate the skeleton, using it as a “regular motif,” with the festival of the Day of the Dead along with its iconography of skeletons and skulls becoming part of works by those like Diego Rivera and becoming a “celebration of uniquely Mexican identity.” Such art of skeletons and skulls is also meant mock death in a powerful way. This is relevant to Eztli as Victor and Valentino puts a spotlight on mythologies and folklore from Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya, Olmec, Aztec, and other indigenous peoples. [3]
In Victor and Valentino more broadly, some of the episodes completely or partially are from the underworld (also called The Realm of the Dead or The Land of the Dead), as a Latin American folk-themed show, and various characters like Mic, Hun, El Toro, Elefante, Moreno, and Alfonso all live there. There’s even a sarcastic dog named Achi who occasionally joins or pushes Victor and Valentino in their adventures on the surface or in the underworld. The show itself premiered two days before a local Day of the Dead ceremony. Victor is voiced by the show’s creator, Diego Molano, a former writer for The Powerpuff Girls and background designer for OK K.O.!: Let’s Be Heroes, among many other series, while he hoped that the show would be a “good lesson for kids,” making Victor a bit of a self-insert. The show itself was even described as a “richly designed homage to the folk art and traditional storytelling of Mesoamerica” and said to creating “digestible content” which is rated for kids. [4]
Keeping this in mind, Molono, through Vic, is saying he won’t be stopped or silenced on his path forward. Eztli may represent those forces which are trying to hold people back and need to be resisted. Perhaps this is reading too much into it, but it would not be too far-fetched considering that Molono voices Vic. The episode writer David Teas, storyboarder Kayla Carlisle, and story writer, Julie Whitesell, may be able to shed more light on the themes in this episode. Teas previously has worked on shows like The Casagrandes and The Loud House, while Carlisle previously storyboarded for The Adventures of Puss in Boots and Whitesell for many comedy and drama sketch shows since 2010, almost exclusively live-action.
Eztli puts a book that Vic dropped on the ground onto the book with the help of the extra skeleton arm
There’s another aspect which I noticed when re-watching this episode for the purpose of this post: the religious imagery and intellectualism exuded by this library. You can’t say that Eztli is a priest, but the library itself, which is hidden away in the underworld house of Mic and Hun, is a bit of a sacred space. Librarian Fobazi Ettarh has argued that the physical spaces of libraries have often been seen as sacred spaces, treated as sanctuaries by keeping people and sacred things, serving as a refuge or shelter. This idea, she argues, is based in the fact that original libraries were monasteries, with buildings meant to “inspire awe or grandeur.” This still holds true today as libraries continue to “operate as sanctuaries in the extended definition as a place of safety,” centering themselves as “safe spaces.” [5] This isn’t the case for this library, however, as it isn’t really a place safe for anyone, but more of somewhere that is hidden away, almost the private domain of Eztli which needs to be quiet (and orderly) no matter what.
This is in contrast to libraries that are safe spaces, like the public library shown in the independent film by Emilio Estevez, The Public. It is one of the first films I reviewed on this blog back in 2020, and which I am thinking of revisiting sometime in the future, even though that library does not inspire “awe or grandeur.”At the same time, libraries in shown in the series Ascendance of a Bookworm,What If…?, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, are all sacred in their own ways. Specifically, the library in the latter animated series is a refuge (and home) for the two dads of one of the show’s protagonists. This is also the case for the magical secret library known as Stanza in Welcome to the Wayne and the huge library at the center of Yamibou, which allows people to access worlds. I have further explained on this blog how libraries are shown as a “place of refuge” in the animated series RWBY, with one character hiding in the library to escape her controlling father.
Many libraries which I have mentioned on this blog in the past are grand, like those in Classroom of the Elite, Macross Frontier, Adventure Time, Revolutionary Girl Utena, RWBY, El-Hazard, Steven Universe, Equestria Girls, Sofia the First, Elena of Avalor, and Simoun, to name a few. One series which somewhat counters this is Hilda, which has a relatively ordinary library on the outside but has a grand inner chamber called “Witches Tower” which is under the library itself. This means that most ordinary patrons would never be in “awe” of the library.
Getting back to Ettarh, she says that if libraries are sacred spaces, then the workers would be priests, noting that the earliest librarians were priests, noting that the service orientation of the profession motivates many to become librarians. This means that librarians are seen as “nobly impoverished,” working selflessly for the community and “God’s sake,” having a calling, with “spiritual absolution through doing good works for communities and society.” She continues the librarians-as-priests comparison to argue that the primary job duty of librarians is then to “to educate and to save,” with the idea of creating an “educated, enlightened populace, which in turn brings about a better society,” meaning that librarians who do this “good work” are the ones who “provide culture and enlightenment to their communities.” This carries with it the expectation that “fulfillment of job duties requires sacrifice…and only through such dramatic sacrifice can librarians accomplish something ‘bigger than themselves.'” [6]
Eztli happily stamps a book with an overdue stamp, using the skeleton arm, saying that the person who gave her the book (Vic in a sense, as he dropped the book) has to hand over his soul!
In the case of Eztli, she is less of a priest than characters like Iku Kasahara, Asako Shibasaki, and many others on the Library Protection Force in Library War. They are a manifestation of librarians as those who sacrifice, fighting those who try and censor books, although this is always with the idea that the library is neutral and that the books will enlighten society. The same can be said about Aruto, Iina, and Kokoro in Kokoro Toshokan a.k.a. Kokoro Library who live in a rural library and get very few visitors, or Isomura in Let’s Make a Mug Too episode (“The Garden of Sky and Wind”), to give two examples. Perhaps the same could be said about Hisami Hishishii in R.O.D. the TV, Himeko Agari in Komi Can’t Communicate, Fumio Murakumi in Girl Friend Beta, and many other librarians out there in fiction. [7]
The library that Eztli presides over may have a tenor of sacredness, but she is no priest. She is more akin to the spinster librarians of other series, in that she shushes the two protagonists and wants the library to remain quiet. This library is no temple either. It may be dated in what it has, but perhaps this isn’t a surprise as I don’t even think that the series itself is set in the present-day, although I can’t be totally sure about that. She has to deal with disruptive, problem patrons, who don’t follow the library’s rules, and crush her body into many pieces. How is she supposed to do her library work if her information desk is smashed and her body is in pieces? We never get the answer to that, because Victor and Valentino go to the next room, leaving as quickly as they came in, on their quest to find the rest of Hun’s body before is too late, and beat any of the other skeletons trying to get the body first.
Although I could be hoping too much, I think it would be interesting if she returns in a later episode, maybe even as a ghost who haunts them. Who knows. There’s a lot of interesting storylines with her that could be done. In any case, she is unlike any librarian I have seen since, and I hope to see more skeleton librarians, whether her or someone else, in animated series in the future. Criticisms and commentary on this post are welcome in the comments below this post, which I vet to make sure that I can make sure comments from spammers aren’t published and to publish those comments which are genuine instead.
[2] See episodes 1, 2, and 3, named “Skeleton in the Library“, “Chance Reunion“, and “Catching up” respectfully. There’s also skeletons in the world of Hilda as an elderly patron, Matilda “Tildy” Pilqvist, checks out a book entitled “The Skeleton Whisperer”.
[6] She also says that considering the conjoined history of librarianship and faith, it is “not surprising that a lot of the discourse surrounding librarians and their job duties carries a lot of religious undertones. Through the language of vocational awe, libraries have been placed as a higher authority and the work in service of libraries as a sacred duty. Vocational awe has developed along with librarianship from Saint Lawrence to Chera Kowalski,” and says this idea has become so “saturated within librarianship” that Nancy Kalikow Maxwell can write Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship which details the connections between faith and librarianship while advising libraries to nurture the “religious image conferred upon them.”
[7] This includes Hamyuts Meseta, Mirepoc Finedel, Noloty Malche, and Ireia Kitty in Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra, along with unnamed librarians in Cardcaptor Sakura episode (“Sakura and Her Summer Holiday Homework”), librarian in Little Witch Academia episode (“Night Fall”), Yamada in B Gata H Kei, Azusa Aoi in Whispered Words, Fumi Manjōme in Aoi Hana / Sweet Blue Flowers, Chiyo Tsukudate in Strawberry Panic!, Anne in Manaria Friends, Grea in Manaria Friends, Hasegawa Sumika in Bernard-jou Iwaku a.k.a. Miss Bernard said, Sophie Twilight in Ms. Vampire who lives in myneighborhood.
top row: Lilith, Sophie Twilight, and Mo Testa. Bottom row: Sabine, Chiyo, Desiree, and Amity Blight
Today is National Coming Out Day, a day to celebrate the act of “coming out,” i.e. when an LGBTQ person publicly shares their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. In honor of that, I’d like to highlight some LGBTQ librarians I’ve written about on this blog, this year and years previously, and others on the List of fictional librarians that I put together in late 2021.
Lilith in Yamibou
She is the caretaker of the Great Library (after Adam), and travels through much of the series with a girl she has a crush on, Hazuki, going through book worlds, looking for Eve. The latter is later shown as another caretaker of the library, who loves Hazuki. Part of her duty is to make sure worlds within the books are secure, an interesting job as a librarian. Due to the fact she is one of the protagonists of this series, who has considerable knowledge and wisdom, it means that libraries are still a key part of the series.
Anne and Grea in Manaria Friends
Anne is one of the protagonists who is a soft-spoken girl, Princess, and honor student at Mysteria Academy, a prestigious magic school. Anne even ventured through the “forbidden” archives of the library in order to find something which would cure Grea of a fever. She and Grea appear to enter a relationship later on. Both work in the library as assistants, although not as full-fledged librarians.
Sophie Twilight in Ms. Vampire who lives in myneighborhood
One of the protagonists of this anime, she drinks blood, but only when refrigerated, and she is shown weeding through her books in one episode. She has a refined appearance and liked going to comic book conventions. She brings in a high school girl, Akari, to live in her house, and appears to have feelings for her. Another vampire girl, Ellie, clearly is romantically attracted to her as well.
Fumi Manjōme in Aoi Hana / Sweet Blue Flowers
In one episode, she weeds books and remembers her kiss with Sugimoto. Later in the episode, she later talks with other students about the role and influence the Literary Club has on the library. In another episode, Fumi and Sugimoto go to the library and kiss there. Ultimately, Fumi at least knows some library skills, in terms of weeding, which is an important part of library work.
Chiyo Tsukudate in Strawberry Panic!
She works at the school library at Astrea Hill, known as Maiden’s Garden, and is a member of the literary club. She looks up to her fellow students and undoubtedly has a crush on Nagisa, one of the show’s protagonists. She checks out books and does other library duties well and efficiently. The library is a key location in the series.
Azusa Aoi in Whispered Words
In the episode “Did You See the Rain?,” she serves as the librarian in this episode, while the Girls Club members go on a treasure hunt to find a message, coming in and out of the library throughout the episode. Later, Azuza joins them in their quest. Azusa is a studious person who reads during breaks and takes an interest in learning, perfect for a librarian. She is a fan of yuri and loves Masaka Orino, unaware it is Ushio‘s older brother.
Fumio Murakumi in Girl Friend Beta
Fumio and Erena
Although she was originally introverted and lonely, she got more friends after meeting Erena. She works at the school library. Erena appears to be the closest one to her and both may be in a relationship with one another, although its implied.
George and Lance in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
They call themselves historians, but run a family library/archives/museum. in a magical forest known as the Whispering Woods They are Bow’s dads. They are two middle-aged men and help the show’s protagonists translate an ancient message in the Season 2 finale. In a later episode, Bow and Glimmer meet George and Lance who tell them about an ancient rebellion and fail-safe on a superweapon. This information becomes vitally important going forward.
Desiree in Too Loud
Desiree with her sister, Sara, and Sara’s friends at a slumber party
She is a trans woman. In an episode which was supposed to end the show, according to series creator Nico Colaleo, she begins to explore her trans identity, as she had been a closeted in her usual workday. This episode, “Slumber Party Sneak-In” was praised by reviewers. Desiree works every day with her sister Sara and co-worker Sarah at the local public library, but has a voice which is so loud, hence the name of the series, smashing library stereotypes along the way.
Amity Blight in The Owl House
Luz and Amity blush at one another in the episode “Through the Looking Glass Ruins”
She is a librarian who works at the Bonesborough Public Library, is a witch, and a student at Hexside Academy. Over the course of the story, her relationship with a human witch named Luz Noceda develops and later they begin a romantic relationship.
The protagonist of this webcomic, Sabine works in the local school library as a part-time job, beginning early in the comic. She a fully committed asexual girl who tries to make friends and not have any romantic relationships, just like the comic’s author. The later also implies that she is, as a result, aromantic as well as asexual. Not all aromantic people are asexual, and vice versa. She is still learning more about herself all of the time, while she majors in history. As the comic’s author stated, Sabine is unaware of her asexuality, and isn’t sure she is aromantic, just that she isn’t ready for sex.
Mo Testa in Dykes to Watch Out For
Mo and Sydney
As the protagonist of this comic, and later comic book, she is a graduate of library school who worked at a feminist bookstore named Madwimmin Books, and appreciated “literary connectivity.” She is a committed lesbian feminist who later gets a job as a reference librarian. She has a lover in college named Clarice, but her eventual partner is a woman named Sydney. The comic’s creator, Alison Bechdel, recognized she was a lesbian after checking out books from the library, stating that an apparent “a key characteristic of queer people [is]…shamed persons who are drawn to lonely stacks and secret research,” and she worked at the circulation desk as a librarian while she was a college student, influencing the comic itself. She also stated that Mo had been drawn into “the pitfall of vocational awe, believing that her public library job is a religious calling.”
Concluding words
It is undetermined if Azusa Aoi in Whispered Words is LGBTQ. You could also argue that Kaisa in Hilda, a feisty character with unmatched knowledge of mystical items and cemetery records, who is a mysterious witch, is asexual based on her color scheme. There will likely be other LGBTQ librarians in the future, since many anime series have characters who go into libraries. [1]
Pop Culture Library Review 
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