To be shocked the librarian was so poorly read?

[bendmeoverbackwards]

In the library recently reserving some books for dd. Librarian had not heard of A Handmaid’s Tale and did not know that As you Like It was written by Shakespeare.

These are not exactly obscure books!

AIBU?

I love The Handmaid's Tale and I did my English A Level coursework on it. When I later did my Publishing MA (20 years ago) we had to introduce our favourite book - which was THT. Quite a few (mainly Eng Lit graduates) hadn't heard of it - Margaret Atwood (was) is not as mainstream as you would expect. A lot of the push has come from the Netflix series and if you aren't interested in that you wouldn't necessarily know about it.

Some of you are spectacularly missing the point. It isn't about knowing every single book or or having encyclopaedic knowledge, or whether you're a "proper" librarian or someone on minimum wage.
Everyone should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of their country's history and culture, surely. To be British (presuming this staff member was?) and to not have even have HEARD of a work by Shakespeare is quite shocking. You don't need to be "into" Shakespeare or even literature, it should be general knowledge! Even I know this stuff and I wasn't born here, and English isn't my first language.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the state of education? Or the growing anti intellectualism, where we have to pretend that ignorance is "equal" to knowledge, so as not to be branded a "snob". And yes, I would expect someone working in a library to have heard of at least the classics!

I am a CSA but also have a library degree and have worked in public libraries before and have managed a Media Library (had to cut hours due to having kids). We have no volunteers in our library and every CSA there can help direct people to suitable books if they are unsure what they want to read and help (pre-covid) with I.T and kids groups, Senior Surfers, bus passes, booking births and deaths registration etc., not to mention the usual upkeep and housekeeping and reservations that also go on in the background.
I, and my colleagues are all well-read but we all have to look up a title now and again...or have a brain-fog. Cut us some slack OP, we aren't just there to sit at a desk and memorise every book - classic, modern, kids, foreign language, non-fiction, reference, biographical...and I could go on just for you.
There would have been nothing to stop you going on the online catalogue of your local library to find out quickly before visiting.

@shouldistop

Most customers are lovely - though the ones who think they are superior to the staff, rather less so.

How very true.

To clarify, I do not think I am superior. I’m not particularly well read, just averagely so. But I would expect people working in a customer facing role to have some basic knowledge, as I would a sales assistant to know about the goods they are selling.

I really don’t see how being surprised at the lack of knowledge implies I have a superiority complex. I want them to be superior to ME 😂

My first job was working in a library when I was 18. I bet I had gaps in my knowledge, even though I am and was pretty well read.

You do need to be a TV watcher to be au fait with the hype about The Handmaid's Tale at the moment, and not everyone is. I don't think I'd be walking around slack-jawed at the idea that not everybody knows about Margaret Atwood.

@IrmaFayLear

I yearn for old library days. The silence, punctuated by the thwonk thwonk of the stamper. The big fat library tokens. The particular smell.

It is sad that some posters here denigrate libraries and librarians and even reading, eg any fool can put some books on a shelf and that it’s snobbish to read anything more taxing that an Instagram post.

Yes I miss the old days too. I think I AM living in the 50s @Pyewackect 😂

@FreezeMotherHubbard

Librarians qualifications have nothing to do with literature and their motivations may have nothing to do with a love or interest in literature. You may have read every classic known to the human race but if you can't master information management to some extent you'd be no use.

This.

@Hadjab

I’m 50, but had never heard of The Handmaid’s Tale until the tv adaptation. A straw poll of my similarly aged friends (from a wide range of cultures and socio-economic backgrounds) showed that only around a quarter of them had, and half of them only because it was a text they’d read at school. *@bendmeoverbackwards* approximately how old was the ‘librarian’? I would expect one in their 50s to have some passing knowledge of classics such as Rebecca - one in their 20s or 30s, not at all.

Agreed. Never heard of the handmaids tale until it was on tv, and only realised is was a book adaptation by listening to others as it's not my kind of thing.

@ChoChoCrazyCat

Some of you are spectacularly missing the point. It isn't about knowing every single book or or having encyclopaedic knowledge, or whether you're a "proper" librarian or someone on minimum wage. Everyone should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of their country's history and culture, surely. To be British (presuming this staff member was?) and to not have even have HEARD of a work by Shakespeare is quite shocking. You don't need to be "into" Shakespeare or even literature, it should be general knowledge! Even I know this stuff and I wasn't born here, and English isn't my first language.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the state of education? Or the growing anti intellectualism, where we have to pretend that ignorance is "equal" to knowledge, so as not to be branded a "snob". And yes, I would expect someone working in a library to have heard of at least the classics!

I'm quite sympathetic to a lot of this and do despair at the anti-intellectualism in this country. I think we could hope that most people would know As You Like It was written by Shakespeare, even if they hadn't read it. I'm not sure I think that people should be found wanting if they haven't heard of Henry VIII, say, or Henry VI part III. There are some quite arcane Shakespeare titles.

Shelving books can require the ability to use logical thinking

Does John le Carre belong under L or C?
Where to put Barbara Taylor Bradford? And Alexander McCall Smith?
With Non-fiction does 940.012 go before or after 940.0013?
And what do you do with the Sophie Hannah Agatha Christie books? The Nora Roberts ones that are written with the surname Robb?

I agree that it's surprising the library staff didn't know those books, but I hate it when people are snotty about what books you have or haven't read or heard of. I have a Literature degree, so naturally I'm well read, must have read 1000+ books in my time. Even so, I've had sneery comments from blokes when they've mentioned a book and I haven't read it along the lines of "I thought you had a literature degree!" Erm, yeah, but that doesn't mean I've read every book in existence. If I spent my entire life doing nothing more than reading, there probably still wouldn't be time to read all the books that are considered 'classics'. Twats.

@IrmaFayLear

I yearn for old library days. The silence, punctuated by the thwonk thwonk of the stamper. The big fat library tokens. The particular smell.

It is sad that some posters here denigrate libraries and librarians and even reading, eg any fool can put some books on a shelf and that it’s snobbish to read anything more taxing that an Instagram post.

Me too.

She might have been having a bad day. I can see someone mentioning some titles of Shakespeare and the librarian not automatically getting it. They might have just had their mind fixed on novels as that’s what most people ask about.

As You Like It isn’t a “book”; it’s a play!

@HeddaGarbled

Here you are, from 2019-20:

Top 10 most borrowed print titles:

1. The Midnight Line: (Jack Reacher 22) by Lee Child
2. The World’s Worst Children by David Walliams
3. NYPD Red by James Patterson
4. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
5. Past Tense: (Jack Reacher 23) by Lee Child
6. Dead if You Don’t by Peter James
7. Night School: (Jack Reacher 21) by Lee Child
8. Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves
9. Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

10. Origin by Dan Brown

That person you’re looking down on may have read every single one of these for all you know.

I read quite a lot but haven't read any of those.

Have heard of Eleanor Oliphant but not read it.

Haven't even heard of any of the others, but have heard of the Jack Reacher character.

I know that Ann Cleeves has written the Shetland & Vera books but wouldn't know the individual titles.

Surely if you are a volunteer at a library rather than say at a cats home it’s because you like books, so you would have heard of these?
Even if you volunteered to go somewhere warm and dry, over time you would see hundreds of books and absorb information?
I’m often surprised at how stupid the general population is.

Surely not knowing about the funding cuts in libraries is worse than not knowing about The Handmaid’s Tale.

Also I bet many people know about The Handmaid’s Tale from the tv programme rather than the book

I don’t think you’re a snob either, op. I’ve not read As You Like It, but certainly know who wrote it. As a pp said, this isn’t about having read the thing, it’s just general knowledge.

The shocking thing is not what individuals don’t know, it’s how little we value knowledge as a society. There have been threads on here where other ops have been shot down for such crimes of snobbery as being unhappy a primary school teacher didn’t understand basic concepts about fractions or questioning a plan to relax English standards for universities (how can they be relaxed any more, I’m sure many of us are thinking).

Time and again these things are held up as advanced skills that only a specialist would be expected to know. Why should a science graduate be expected to know how to use paragraphs? They aren’t doing a PhD in English, etc. It’s depressing.

I don’t think I’m a snob because I apply this to myself too. I studied English at university, but was hazy on many points of punctuation until I bought myself a book several years after graduating because I wanted to be better. There are still things I’m sure I’m ignorant of. Likewise, whole swathes of history not taught in school.

This is the anti-elitist, anti-intellectual culture where the very worst thing you can be is a ‘snob’ and people should be left to their ignorance (even if it’s not what they would choose). You can see the results over on some of the coronavirus threads.

I got a really good list off mn, it's really old and probably outdated now but, the bbc (I think) did a list of the top books ever published.
I'm working my way through it. It also made me Google other "greatest" book lists and there's a fair few to go at.

The chances that it was a librarian you met are slim. Most likely a library or customer care assistant, possibly even a volunteer or an apprentice. Libraries are usually part of a wider library and information service and are often the only public facing side of a council. As such the staff will deal with all manner of enquiries and for example support customers to apply for universal credit, get visas, recently to fill in the census. Enquiries about books will not be the main part of the job, that said I think you'll find most staff will have a passion for some area of the collection, maybe not feminist lit or Shakespeare but manga or Young adult fiction or poetry. Even a professionally qualified librarian might be a specialist in digital information or in local studies or in business confirmation so would not necessarily have or be required to have a huge knowledge of literature.

@Novelusername
People like that are just idiots. I’m sure lots of people have experienced it in their field. Myself included. Having a history degree apparently means you should have knowledge of all the history for the entire world since the Big Bang.

Why don’t some of you volunteer your time to work in the library as are all so erudite!

I was going to post the same thing. I volunteered in my local library for about two years. I very much enjoyed it! Me and the other volunteer were the only people in this small library, which was on two floors, the children’s library being upstairs . We helped a lot of older people but also people and children without any Internet at home.
The absolute worst customer were the ones who asked a question and when we didn’t know the answer, you could tell they were quite put out! I used to say “you do realise we are unpaid volunteers giving up our time to ensure the library is open for you today?” That shut them up!

OP, I feel sad at the decline of libraries too. This is in terms of the quality of books, the education and enthusiasm of staff, and the peace and quiet one can expect.

When I went to my local library to study for a postgraduate exam, I was upset that it was filled with people talking. When I took this up with the librarian, I was told that it’s permissible to talk in libraries. Apparently it helps people feel “at home”.

I don’t want the library to feel like my home. My home is messy, noisy, lacks desk space, and doesn’t have many books. I want a library to be a bloody library so I can bloody concentrate on what I’m reading.

Don’t get me started on the quality of books.

@MoreCheeseVicar

They are librarians , not walking encyclopedias , we all have a clink in our knowledge somewhere

And libraries are more than just about fiction books.

It's quite interesting how MNers get so het up about what they think should be general knowledge. We had it with the Freddie Mercury thread (if you're younger it's entirely possible you won't have heard of him, or have heard the name in passing and it goes in one ear and out the other). Same with The Handmaid's Tale. We don't all read the Culture Section of the Sunday Times (although arguably you should, if you work in a public library).

@adeleh It's not just in this country...I think education standards have fallen in most of Europe, not to mention the USA. I had an ex who couldn't name the capital of Italy or a single artist, not even someone like da Vinci or Picasso. He said he just wasn't into art.