Community Lending Library

It's a Wonderful Life tells us a story about what it means to be a librarian. In this alternate reality, Mary is portrayed as a librarian in order to convey just how bad things got without George around. Mary is an old maid, and in 1946, "old maid" was synonymous with "librarian".

This character certainly reflects societal beliefs about librarians in 1946: that librarians were single, unhappy women. Librarian identity in film has become a bit more complex since then, but Mary's character is still all too familiar.

Photo: Hot Pantz: Do It Yourself Gynecology zine

Hot Pantz provides readers with an understanding of anatomy, recipes to conquer yeast infections and hormonal imbalances, an extensive glossary of self-healing herbs, a list of aphrodisiacs, and it provides instructions on how to give foot massages that will alleviate cramps! I can't tell you how often I consult this zine, or how excited I've been to share information from this zine with a friend in need.

This week marks the first From the Bitch Library post that examines the history of female librarianship as well as the relationship between feminism and libraries.


Image: Melvil Dewey

Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System, is oftentimes praised for having created a new job field for women in the US. In 1883, Dewey was hired as the head librarian at Columbia College (which later turned into Columbia University), and he soon convinced the trustees to let him open a library school. At the time, Columbia College only allowed women into a special women's college, so Dewey's plans to invite women to join the library school were controversial. His first class was comprised of 20 people, 17 of whom were women. While many have focused on Dewey's success in educating and opening up jobs for women, attention is rarely paid to why he felt women would make great librarians. Spoiler alert: he held some pretty sexist beliefs.

Dames on Frames: A Feminist Bike Zine is the first in a series of four zines that explore the relationship between feminism and bikes. When Claire Stoscheck was in Bogotá, Colombia — the city that is said to have the most extensive bike paths in the world — she realized that only around 1-2% of the bicycle commuters she saw on the streets were women. Stoscheck began to ask questions about Bogotá's gender gap in bicycle riding, which then led to questions about the relationships between gender and bikes when she went home to the Twin Cities.

From the Bitch Library will be used to explore the relationship between libraries and feminism, to profile radical and alternative libraries across the globe, to highlight Bitch library happenings, and to review books and zines that are new to our collection.