Talk:Libraries and librarians in fiction

Notability

I agree with previous tags that this page may not meet notability guidelines. Should it be suggested for deletion? Tris1313 (talk) 23:59, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• The article was retained per discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Libraries in fiction. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Merge with Librarians in popular culture

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To merge the list article Libraries and librarians in fiction into the prose article Librarians in popular culture as a list of notable examples. Klbrain (talk) 10:13, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

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Those two articles have near identical scope. The popculture one doesn't really discuss the cultural aspects, it's just a prose-style listing of examples. Frankly, a lot of the content may need to go, given MOS:POPCULTURE, but maybe something will emerge as worth saving during a merge. Also, per this discussion, I'd suggest renaming the single remaining article into libraries and librarians in culture (since it's hard to distinguish what is culture and what is pop culture). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:05, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I support a merge, but with the name slightly changed to Libraries and librarians in culture. Even as a person who added sources for this page a while back, I'm pretty sure that a lot of it is covered on Librarians in popular culture and could easily be merged in there. Anything that isn't there could just be added to the pages for the specific books, comics, films, games, television, and other media, without losing anything. Historyday01 (talk) 16:37, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Both these articles are of dubious quality, but they certainly are the same overall scope. It makes the most sense to merge. Jontesta (talk) 14:26, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

I mean, they definitely could be improved, and trimmed down, but I'd say they are notable enough to be on here. Historyday01 (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Support: The topic of the two articles does overlap, so I support the merger. However, I question changing from "popular culture" to just "culture" as the topics covered in both articles are all dealing with mass coverage (i.e. popular culture) vs. something like high culture. The term "culture" would broaden to subject of this article to include the role of libraries and librarians in society which is not the goal of these articles. Rublamb (talk) 18:25, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Fair point in your comment. Would you suggest the title be Libraries and librarians in popular culture instead? Or something else entirely? Historyday01 (talk) 19:17, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a merge as being called for here. Librarians in popular culture is a prose article about how librarians are depicted in pop culture. It uses examples to illustrate different stereotypes and themes, but it's not a list of examples per se, whereas the other article is precisely that (and I think it should probably be renamed to something like List of fictional depictions of libraries and librarians). For a similar example, compare Cultural depictions of cats vs. List of fictional cats. Colin M (talk) 13:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

There's no reason we should want a list of examples in addition to actual analytical, encyclopedic content. This isn't TV Tropes. TompaDompa (talk) 20:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

That is my thought, especially considering the overlap between this page and Librarians in popular culture. Historyday01 (talk) 21:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I see the appeal of this line of reasoning, but does it not also apply to most of the thousands of articles in the tree rooted at Category:Lists of fictional things? Anyways, if the 'merger' under discussion here will basically result in Librarians in popular culture continuing in its current form without taking in the lists from Libraries and librarians in fiction then this seems like a discussion for AfD. Colin M (talk) 21:29, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Eh, I don't think we need to go the AfD route, as that would put the page into jeopardy. Besides, AfDs should NEVER be a substitute for improvement of a page through editing, with some people on here thinking of AfDs as a shortcut, thinking it will result in "improvements".Historyday01 (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. What parts of Libraries and librarians in fiction do you see as being worth keeping, and how do you see them being integrated into the merged article? The impression I got from the comments above by TompaDompa and you was that you thought the examples (which comprise the entirety of that article) were not encylopedic. Colin M (talk) 22:01, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

That impression is incorrect, as above I said the examples were "notable enough to be on here", not that the examples are "not encylopedic". I think some of the examples that could be integrated would include (I've shortened it to only the names of the series, not the whole sentence here, just to get to the point):

• Library War (also see here for review of Library Wars manga, as an example)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1953) / Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• The Ninja Librarian book series
• The Name of the Rose
• The Library Policeman
• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (2007)
• Angels and Demons (2009)
• The Breakfast Club (1985)
• Doctor Strange (2016)
• From Hell (2001)
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
• The Librarian franchise [including films]
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
• The Name of the Rose (1986)
• The Omen (2006)
• Red (2010)
• She Loves Me (1963)
• The Time Machine (2002)
• Genshin Impact (2020)
• Doctor Who episodes "Silence in the Library" (2008) and "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" (2013)
• Game of Thrones
• Outlander
• Person of Interest [if a reliable source can be found]
• Silent Library
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "All Our Yesterdays" (1969)
• Stranger Things (2016-2017)
• Big City Greens episode "Quiet Please"

Of course, if some of these examples didn't have reliable sources, then I'd remove them from consideration. Currently, these are duplicates on the Librarians in popular culture page, which would be used to improve that said page:

• Batgirl
• "The Library of Babel" (1941)
• The Library at Mount Char
• The Time Traveler's Wife [perhaps add something about the newish series based on the book to the Librarians in popular culture page]
• Lirael (2001)
• Sune series
• The Seventh Sinner (1972)
• Discworld series
• Goodbye, Columbus
• Harry Potter series / Harry Potter films
• Snow Crash
• Among Others
• Citizen Kane
• The Day After Tomorrow
• Desk Set (1957)
• Foul Play
• Ghostbusters (1984)
• Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Monsters University (2013)
• The Mummy (1999)
• The Music Man
• Only Two Can Play (1962)
• The Party Girl (1995)
• The Pagemaster
• The Prince & Me (2004)
• The Public
• Oblivion (2013)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
• Storm Center (1956)
• UHF (1989) (episode featuring Conan the Librarian )
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• The Librarian [2020 game]
• Metro 2033
• Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
• "Ms Dewey"
• Pearl [a librarian action figure]
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2001)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [episode]
• Hilda
• The Inspector Morse episode "Twilight of the Gods" (1993)
• Mira, Royal Detective episode
• "Once Upon A Time"
• Orange Is the New Black
• Parks and Recreation
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
• The Crazy Ones
• The Librarians (2007-2010)
• The Librarians (2014-2018)
• The Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man" (1961)
• We Bare Bears episode "The Library"
• Welcome to the Wayne

Also, the merged page would include information on libraries/librarians in, among others, the following:

• Kokoro Library (see reviews mentioning libraries here and here)
• Read or Die (mentioned briefly in this review and briefly here)
• Ascendance of a Bookworm (library role mentioned briefly here and here, and here)
• A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd (library role mentioned briefly here
• Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito (librarian role mentioned briefly here and also here)
• Tatakau Shisho (librarian role mentioned briefly here, here, here, here, and here)
• Sasameki Koto (librarian role mentioned here)
• Yakusoku wa Toshokan no Katasumi de (manga, librarian role mentioned here)
• The Ancient Magus' Bride: Those Awaiting a Star (noted in this article)

And there may be more, as libraries, and librarians, have shown up in many more shows, but I'm just primarily going off what is currently on the list, and the shows I'm aware of, for this comment. Historyday01 (talk) 00:56, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I see the appeal of this line of reasoning, but does it not also apply to most of the thousands of articles in the tree rooted at Category:Lists of fictional things? Possibly. That would be a feature, not a bug. We should have quality prose articles (or at least decent ones) rather than poor list articles where possible. I have personally converted a fair number of the latter into the former. TompaDompa (talk) 21:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I can agree. It is WAY too easy for people to make list articles into dumping grounds. Historyday01 (talk) 20:40, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

• Support the merge as proposed, the list being a list of instances of the article topic. BD2412 T 17:48, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

  Glad to hear that Historyday01 (talk) 20:39, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 10:13, 2 July 2023 (UTC)