Characters
What do you think about Frances, Christine and the other cast members? Here’s a great poster of them all (and a synopsis of the plot).
3 Responses to “Characters”
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What do you think about Frances, Christine and the other cast members? Here’s a great poster of them all (and a synopsis of the plot).
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October 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
After having working in various types of libraries over the past 10 years the main thing that strikes me about the characters is that there are way way too many men working in this library for this series to be a true depiction
November 1st, 2007 at 8:50 am
That’s true, there are too many men. The Welsh guy who was a postie - I also used to be a postie who became a librarian. I would like to point out I never did what he did!
November 1st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
The number of men working in the library is definitely too high compared to reality and the age profile seems rather young. ALIA did some research a few years ago and found that 72% of librarians are 40 or older so the age profile in the series is skewed the wrong way.
I found it difficult to differentiate between the staff in terms of their position - Dawn is probably a library clerk, Frances is a librarian, Christine apparently qualified as a librarian but does not have any experience working in a library, the Welsh guy is doing community service as a shelver, Nada (I’m not sure I got her name right but she’s the one with the head scarf) is a librarian and is quietly competent (unlike most of the others) and I don’t know about the rest. It will be interesting to see whether the later episodes make the roles and responsibilities of the staff any clearer. Medicine and law have much clearer boundaries between professional and paraprofessional roles - we all know that hospitals have doctors and nurses and that law firms have lawyers and clerical staff, possibly because of all the tv shows, books, etc. that make this difference apparent but libraries … well, no one outside really knows what we do.
I don’t think the show is particularly funny but it could generate some interesting discussions. It is a comedy, after all, and isn’t meant to be literally true. Perhaps we should be concerned less with how close to reality the show is and more with the perceptions of reality within our profession and outside of it. As Robert Burns said, “O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.”