Hollywood Librarian- Everyone should see it
My picture of Ann Seidl talking to Merle Moore at the WVLA library conference at Stonewall Resort several years ago
Ann Seidl is now the world’s most famous librarian-turned-filmmaker, completing the feature length documentary, “Hollywood Librarian.” She has been on a year’s long odyssey to fashion this film about the stereotype of librarians in Hollywood movies - and the reality of fighting for survival in the 21st century. Doing years of research, fund-raising all over the country, she has created a document that is required viewing not only for every librarian in the world, but everyone in the world who supports librarians.
I really enjoyed seeing the footage from the 1950s educational documentaries showing actual librarians at work, and discussing their hard work helping give birth to the Information Age that we now inhabit. I also really enjoyed seeing all the clips of Hollywood films, most famously “Desk Set” with Katherine Hepburn as the modern librarian. It was a real coup for them to interview Hepburn’s real sister who was indeed an active librarian.One of the most visited films is the recent “Party Girl” with alt movie star Parker Posey - which I think is truly hilarious in about ten different ways. I also really enjoyed the several interviews with Ray Bradbury, one of the world’s greatest supporters of libraries. ( It’s too bad that she didn’t show the scene in the film version of his “Something Wicked this Way Comes” with Jason Robards as a small-town library director fighting the devil in person for his son’s soul.)
I really enjoyed the narration, done by Ann Seidl herself, who truly knows libraries. Several of the librarians interviewed were from Latin American, adding some relevancy to the film. She also has at least one homeless man who used a library to learn to read. It’s too bad that she didn’t include more about libraries helping the homeless and poor - an obsession of both my friend Sandy Berman, and myself. Berman is the founder of the American Library Association SRRT Task Force on Hunger, Homeless and Poverty , and has shown me that ALA has passed an official resolution that promotes public libraries spending more of their helping the people who most need it. Indeed, both he and I see almost many US public libraries as being outposts of the country club-Wal-Mart worlds, kowtowing to the board members who only use libraries to maintain the dominant toxic capitalist ideology.)
From my own viewpoint, I wish that Seidl had included a lot more about AV access, programs, etc. in libraries. It is ironic that a film about American libraries spends virtually no time on how our libraries should be providing access to regional and local films, like those of WV’s own many fine filmmakers and the films of Appalshop, the official media arts center for Appalachia.
She also mentions nothing about the great use of public library computers by the many people in our culture without access to the Information World that so much dominates our lives. I guess one film can’t be all things. ( Many other films on libraries including a recent one distributed to US libraries produced by the Gates Foundation, “Your Public Library” have been made that do promote the use of computers in libraries. The best recent short documentary on libraries is called “Remote Access” which I may rank as the best single film I have ever seen about the power of libraries in the Third World.)
Perhaps the single most poignant part of this film is the coverage of the John Steinbeck Public Library in Salinas, Ca. She presents the great love Steinbeck had for public libraries, and goes in to the awful events related to its temporary closing and final resurrection, including getting funds from a local prisoner who raised $1,000 to keep the doors open. One of the aims of this film is to help libraries around the country do some fund raising of their own, selling tickets, giving half to pay the large costs of making the film and the other half to support the library - something which I hope works.
I am somewhat of an expert on films about libraries and consulted with Seidl on this film. Julian Samuel in Montreal has made two great films about libraries - “The Library in Crisis” and “Save and Burn” which I have shown at library conferences in West Virginia. The same company that distributes his films, Filmakers Library,also has other films on libraries.
The West Virginia Library Commission where I work itself has a great old film about WV public libraries called “Books, Books, Lots of Books” and a film made by Fred Glazer about WVLC. I offered to let Seidl use both films but I guess she never needed them.
The American world of libraries has an amazing history. Recently several authors have written some that are worth reading….There are also many great articles by Sandy Berman about American libraries that can be read, posted on his website. He also edited for twenty years a biennial series of books, “Alternative Library Literature,” that should have been referenced somewhere in this film. Indeed, Berman himself should absolutely have been interviewed. Luckily, I have in my possession several cable TV shows with Berman talking about relevant topics concerning the very limited world of libraries, especially “inside censorship” which covers the fantastic self-censorship almost all librarians are guilty of - despite the ALA Library Bill of Rights which directs libraries to cover political issues and other issues from “all viewpoints.”
I myself have written some articles on what I have been doing in WV since 1978, providing the poorest, least educated population in America with the best 16 mm film collection from 1978-97. No American MLS librarian has done more to promote access to the world’s best films than I have - if I say so myself. Since I come from the film world, I have always purchased every film about libraries and librarians I could find, and recently planned a series of films by former librarians at the NY Public Library. ( I have worked on many, many films but never directed one. Ironically, my first film I worked on was filmed entirely in a university library, called “Book of Love,” with Julian Smelian who went on to a successful career in Hollywood as a film editor - and who now teaches at the North Carolina School of the Arts. I unfortunately never saw the finished film. )
Carol Smallwood has recently edited a book to be published by Libraries Unlimited that was originally called “Beyond the Circ Desk” but is now called “Innovative Librarianship Today (Librarians Beyond the Circ Desk)” which includes two articles by myself. She is also starting work on a second book, “The Published Librarian: Successful Professional and Personal Writing” which will include a foreword by me. Hopefully some day someone can use these sources, Sandy Berman’s work, the great recent book “Revolting Librarians Redux” by Jessemyn West, and other more non-standard views of what librarianship means in the 21st Information Age world.
