Trust Me: I’m a Librarian

One of the big announcements at Maine Library Association’s annual conference in November was that the Maine State Library had commissioned a survey to find out how trusted our profession is. Apparently there’s a common survey done every year to look at the reputations of many professions, from lawyers to nurses to car salesmen and everything in between. Except librarians. We’ve never been included in the survey, and this was an attempt to correct that.

The result? Librarians are the second most trusted profession in Maine. Right behind nurses, and ahead of pharmacists, medical doctors, and high school teachers. 78% of Mainers have very high or high trust in librarians. (2% of them think we’re shifty-eyed weasels, of course . . .)

Conversely, 79% of Mainers don’t trust telemarketers. At all. (But of course, 2% of them believe every word those telemarketers say. I’m baffled by some people.)

So this got me thinking: is there a profession out there that you highly trust? If you had questions about something and wanted honest answers, who would you go to?

I’m really happy librarians rated so highly, because I think that as a whole we do a good job with providing reliable data to people. We try our best not to be judgmental, and we focus on finding answers. Way to go, us!

And to those people out there listening to telemarketers for advice? Please come into a library and get some better answers. Just sayin’ . . .