Depends. Librarians in the old days were true information managers, and had to know everything from reference questions to how to catalog a book from scratch. These days, it's literally all copy and paste, and most of them are useless at reference questions.
They did, themselves. I worked in a library in the lowest position you can get - the one who knows how to reshelve the books properly without needing a fucking university degree to do it.
Though honestly, the real snobs were the accounting witches. Those were the big fat busybody types.
university libraries increasingly started switching to RFID tags, so when you return the book, it passes through the passive gateway and the book is automatically inventoried. and since the person who manages putting the books back is usually student labor, the librarian is not even that.
you could check books out yourself, totally self serve with your student ID. the alarm would go off before you made it to the doors if you had a book that was no-removal or not checked out. the librarian wouldn't even stop you... security would, and most of the time it was innocent mistakes.
the librarian doesn't really have to do anything. and this was over a decade ago before i graduated.
this is why so many libraries have drag queen story hour... they organize shit like that instead of doing actual work.
Eh, by their nature they possess the potential to do either great things for their communities, or terrible, so the particularly good ones really can stand out. Of course that means NPCs who have an overly simplistic world view tend to worship the profession it's self.
Who the hell elevated librarians to a high place anyway? They are an inventory manager for a warehouse of books, nothing more.
Depends. Librarians in the old days were true information managers, and had to know everything from reference questions to how to catalog a book from scratch. These days, it's literally all copy and paste, and most of them are useless at reference questions.
Half of them are the useless busybodies who weren't even good enough to pass the incredibly low bar of "qualify as a teacher"
They did, themselves. I worked in a library in the lowest position you can get - the one who knows how to reshelve the books properly without needing a fucking university degree to do it.
Though honestly, the real snobs were the accounting witches. Those were the big fat busybody types.
Librarians were the single largest employment demographic for small donor donations to the Biden campaign in 2020.
The profession is ideologically and culturally captured. That is why they are considered important.
On the reverse side. The single largest employment demographic for small donor donations to the Trump campaign in 2020 was... "U.S. Marines"
Librarians are all women. You do the math.
university libraries increasingly started switching to RFID tags, so when you return the book, it passes through the passive gateway and the book is automatically inventoried. and since the person who manages putting the books back is usually student labor, the librarian is not even that.
you could check books out yourself, totally self serve with your student ID. the alarm would go off before you made it to the doors if you had a book that was no-removal or not checked out. the librarian wouldn't even stop you... security would, and most of the time it was innocent mistakes.
the librarian doesn't really have to do anything. and this was over a decade ago before i graduated.
this is why so many libraries have drag queen story hour... they organize shit like that instead of doing actual work.
Eh, by their nature they possess the potential to do either great things for their communities, or terrible, so the particularly good ones really can stand out. Of course that means NPCs who have an overly simplistic world view tend to worship the profession it's self.