Shelley Howells: The secret life of tattooed and bellydancing librarians

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Librarians rock. That reputation they have involving buns, sensible shoes and shushing people is merely a cunning ruse, developed over centuries, to conceal their real lives as radicals, subversives and providers of extreme helpfulness.

Combine librarians and the net, and in no time they will rule the world.

One example of the potentially powerful web/librarian combo is that Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation might not have been released without big rewrites that the publishers were insisting on in the post-September 11 environment. But a quiet, vitriolic online campaign by librarians apparently forced the publishers the reassess the situation.

Librarians, Moore writes in the book's introduction, are "one terrorist group you don't want to mess with".

He also praises them in a Salon article: "Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. You've got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them."

Absolutely. Not only do they fast-track information searches that would take a civilian many hours, but I've seen them provide Panadol and Band-aids, too.

I've seen kids turn up at library counters empty-handed and facing major homework assignments - and leave with completed work after lots of librarian help, from paper and pens to books, websites and good ideas.

Recently, I've been investigating their secret lives online.

The Bellydancing Librarian spends her days info-seeking but at night, she writes, "our gal trades her Birkenstocks for beads and serves her adoring public's entertainment needs with the music and dance of the Middle East."

Lurking beneath the cardies of the many Modified Librarians are tattoos and piercings galore.

The site provides "a forum for the discussion of body modification in the context of librarianship", and lots of photos and "rants", including one by an expat kiwi.

There are naked librarians, a page created by someone with a fascination for "the juxtaposition of scant clothing and reading material", and anarchist librarians: "The revolution will be catalogued."

The Lipstick Librarian is for the glamorous librarians among us with "the ability to look fabulous while poking around a dot-matrix printer with a bent paperclip". Complete with handy - occasionally dangerous - beauty tips. The web log, or diary, of a library fashionista is a good'un.

Other good librarian web logs (dry humour and useful info-links) include the Laughing Librarian and New Zealand's own Valis (Vast Active Library and Information Science) blog by Simon Chamberlain - "Powered by Prozac, despair, rage and genius. Oh, and lots of coffee."

The Library Weblog has a good collection of other LibBlog links.

The Ska Librarian is a grumpy, gay New York modified music librarian and the Warrior Librarian Weekly calls itself the'zine for librarians who defy classification, and has links to much library humour.

Conan the Librarian reveals some of the bizarre questions he has been asked to find answers for, like How do you milk a cow? What do you call fear of the number 13? What do you call someone who dresses the hair of the dead? What is the magnetic declination of Maracaibo, Venezuela? Did Adolf Hitler wear his pants stuffed into his boots?

Just a taste of the challenges faced fearlessly by librarians everywhere.

A quick click through these websites proves that librarians are a mixed - often funny, sometimes scary - bunch. What they have in common is a passion for information, and the know-how to sort and find it.

Some people say that with screeds of information available on the net, we have less need for librarians. Fact is, we need them more than ever to help us sift through that mountain.

* Email Shelley Howells