Librarians on Screen

Norm Geras has an entertaining post in which he links to Martin Raish's web site Librarians in the Movies. Norm describes the site as follows:

Martin has four lists, encompassing some 550 librarian movies: someone clearly identifying himself, herself or some other character as a librarian; a library as setting; a librarian or library mentioned in passing; and suspected librarian movies, but yet to be seen by the compiler. There's also a list of the people who have portrayed librarians; it includes Arthur Loft and Amanda Ooms.


I'm not really big on watching movies just because libraries or librarians are mentioned in them, though I have enjoyed a few over the years. My favorite librarian movie is definitely Party Girl. It's quite hilarious, especially when Parker Posey proclaims at the end "I want to be a librarian!" Another good one is Foul Play, where Goldie Hawn's librarian teams up with Chevy Chase to foil an assassination attempt against the Pope. Ironically, this movie was scheduled to be shown on CBS the same week that Mehmet Ali Agca shot John Paul II, and so had to be rescheduled. Finally, philistine product of the 80's that I am, I have to mention Ghostbusters, whose opening sequence was set at the main branch of the New York Public Library.