"If you won't be silent, I will be violent!"
— Mrs. Hushbaum, All That
It's no secret librarians can be scary, sexy, enchanting, or wicked. But what happens when they're just a little "off-kilter"? What happens when a little too much browsing of recursively huge or eldritch tomes (particularly those containing terrifying or forbidden knowledge) and an obsession with Dewey decimialization goes to your head?
The Loony Librarian is a librarian who's let their profession mess with their mind a little. Whether they're out-of-it, a little obsessed, or simply scatterbrained, these librarians can be either highly entertaining or a little creepy depending on where they work, and their quirks can express themselves in ways ranging from substituting weird punishments for late fees, arranging their books in an unorthodox manner, having a little bit of a volume problem, or just simply being a little bit scatterbrained with regards to certain important details.
Can overlap with any of the other librarian tropes, particularly the Scary Librarian and Evil Librarians, both of whom are less goofy and more stabby, especially when you don't respect their books. May still be a Badass Bookworm, especially if it helps them retain their position. An Extremely Overdue Library Book will still be a problem.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Fullmetal Alchemist: While we don't get to see her actually working as a librarian (courtesy of her quirks having gotten her fired), Sheska counts: not only is she an obsessive bookworm (to the point that when Ed and Al go to her home, she has been buried for a couple of days under an avalanche of books) who has read all of the Central library's books, but she also has a perfect Photographic Memory. After she helps the Elrics by transcribing the book they were seeking (which got burned alongside an entire wing of the library courtesy of the Homunculi trying to keep information away from the brothers), Maes Hughes hires her to copy all of the other burnt literature and from what little we see of her afterwards she spends the rest of the series in this role.
Films — Live-Action
- In Celine and Julie Go Boating, Julie is a quirky librarian who studies magic and does Tarot readings.
- In Ghostbusters (1984), the team is called to the New York Public Library to deal with a full body apparition that frightened a living, more typical librarian. On the trail of the ghost, the investigators find spewed catalog cards and piles of stacked books, eventually encountering a woman in a flowing 19th-century dress and a hair bun. She shushes the guys, before morphing into a terrifying One-Winged Angel form when they try to "get her!".
- In Love Story, the protagonist's Love Interest Jennifer Cavilleri, who works part-time as a Radcliffe library assistant, seasons this with Hot Librarian. When the protagonist asks her for a book, she flatly refuses and instead answers to his request with sarcastic quips; in the end, to get the book, he has to take her out on a date, and this is how their romance starts. Part of it can be attributed to her Belligerent Sexual Tension with him, but given her Deadpan Snarker personality, it's more than likely that it was her typical manner of communication with library patrons.
Oliver: Do you have The Waning of the Middle Ages?
Jenny: Do you have your own library?
Oliver: Listen, Harvard is allowed to use the Radcliffe library.
Jenny: I'm not talking legality, Preppie, I'm talking ethics. You guys have five million books. We have a few lousy thousand.
Oliver: Listen, I need that goddamn book.
Jenny: Wouldja please watch your profanity, Preppie? - The Mummy (1999): Evelyn is a downplayed example, a librarian who, while highly intelligent and physically attractive, is also slightly eccentric and extremely clumsy. This is exemplified in a scene early in the film where she accidentally knocks over an entire library of bookcases like dominoes.
- The Neverending Story has Mr. Coreander, a loony... bookstore owner. He's a bit of a Child Hater because children nowadays prefer entertainment other than books (but he warms up to Bastian because the latter is a bookworm) and, quite ham-fistedly, warns off Bastian from reading The Neverending Story because it's "not safe". However, when Bastian takes the book, Mr. Coreander doesn't mind, hinting that his speech was a Reverse Psychology gambit. The rest of the franchise goes on to imply some of his quirks are the result of having had his own adventures in Fantasia when he was younger.
- Mr. Dewey from The Pagemaster, the "loony" part of his character provided by Large Ham Christopher Lloyd, who ultimately reappears as a benevolent wizard in the animated universe into which Richard is whisked.
Literature
- The Adventures Of Miss Charlotte: In The Mysterious Librarian, the eccentric Miss Charlotte becomes Saint-Anatole's new librarian. She wears a giant hat, takes her books out for walks using a wheelbarrow, and introduces kids to the joys of reading.
- Discworld: Downplayed with the Librarian of Unseen University, who was turned into an orangutan by magical accident and has vigorously refused any attempt at turning back, thanks to the Super-Strength, agility, and rule-breaking his new form allows. He is very particular that people do not refer to him as a monkey, given that orangutans are apes.
- My Weird School: Ms. Roopy is the school librarian who not only dresses up as, but ''legitimately believes'' that she is several famous people like George Washington, Johnny Appleseed, Neil Armstrong, etc.
- In Nos4A2, Maggie Leigh is a librarian with a weird fashion sense (she wears a fedora, a necklace of beer can tabs, and a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles) and psychic powers who can use her Scrabble tiles to predict the future. She also has a stammer, which she developed as a result of using her powers, and which becomes worse the more she uses them.
Live-Action TV
- All That has the recurring Loud Librarian sketches, where the titular hammy librarian does wacky inappropriate activities that make constant noise, all while she screams at the kids in the library to stay quiet.
- The Librarians 2014 was a spin-off from the earlier series of television movies about a young man (Noah Wyle) who was recruited to work at a secret Library which held magical and cursed books and objects. Wylie's character made recurring appearances on the series, which followed three younger recruits, each gifted with an unusual mental talent, and each capable of being loony in their own special way while working for The Library. They were overseen by an ex-NATO colonel assigned as their protector, and Jenkins, a fussy Britisher who was formerly Sir Galahad, who acts as their mentor.
- Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: In the episode "The Library & Volunteering", Ms. Holler definitely qualifies. She's loud, she makes puns, and she plays the accordion. Badly.
- Exaggerated in a Saturday Night Live sketch with Margot Robbie as a Hot Librarian who turns out to be a creepy, murderous, acid-spewing alien.
Video Games
- The titular antagonist of I. M. Meen combines this trope with Evil Librarians. He's an evil, child hating wizard who owns a library. Meen is very hammy, with a Psychopathic Manchild streak, and he only gets more and more unhinged as the player character gets closer to escaping Meen's magic labyrinth. His Creepy High-Pitched Voice and constant Evil Laughs hammer it in even more.
- Cassie O'Pia's Librarian Archetype in Psychonauts 2 is a major Control Freak who insists she's the real Cassie and refuses to let the other Archetypes out of her sight. She ends up being the boss of Cassie's mind.
Webcomics
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures has a rabbit-octopus librarian at the Succubus And Incubus Academy. While her main body is stationed at the front desk, tendrils of herself worm their way beneath the floor and into hollow columns. There, lapine faces appear at eye-level openings, from which this librarian can survey the entirety of the room with no blind spots.
Web Original
- This list
of posts showing the playful side of various librarians.
Western Animation
- Bob's Burgers: Mr. Ambrose is a melodramatic Camp Gay librarian who openly hates his job and often feeds into whatever drama the kids come to him to help solve, usually by loudly whispering something controversial (and plot-relevant) they should research. He also practices witchcraft.
- DuckTales (2017): Emily Quackfaster, Scrooge McDuck's archivist, is more than a little nutty thanks to being... Scrooge McDuck's archivist. In her debut episode, she chases Dewey and Webby with a scimitar for speaking ill of her archiving system.
Quackfaster: You have disrespected the archives! You shall become one with the archives!
- Work It Out Wombats!: Leiko is in charge of the library at the Creation Station, and she seems to enjoy playing her guitar really loudly in there. Loud sounds and libraries don't quite mix.
