Librarians on animes: fictional representations and reality

Abstract

Introduction: This work investigates representations about librarians on four animes (japanese animations). It contextualizes the concepts of culture, social representations and representations about librarians. It conceptualizes the animes and emphasize their importance in japanese culture. Objective: To understand how representations about librarians on animes are manifested. Methodology: It utilizes qualitative methodology, being basic, descriptive and has a documental procedure. It uses narratology as a method, identifying the theme, the plot, the environment and the time of the stories, in addition to the physical, psychological and social characteristics of the librarian characters. Results: It discourses about the anchorages observed in the librarian characters on the analyzed animes, making brief comparations between the Eastern and the Western visions about the librarian. In opposite to some stereotypes about the profession, some librarian characters are identified as fighting to pass the information to the user, being even engaged and active on politics. Conclusions: It concludes that the representations about librarians are anchored specially on the vision of the librarian as a guardian, as much of the books, as of the library and memory.