Librarians and Harry Potter - An Introduction of the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument

Sep 17, 2026

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Librarians and Harry Potter: An Introduction of the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument examines how Madame Pince’s portrayal in popular media contrasts with real librarians who provide access, defend youth reading rights, and champion the Harry Potter books. It reviews challenges to the series and J.K. Rowling’s own clarification that the Pince caricature is a plot device. The discussion then frames SHHH! (Sorting Hat: Hogwarts Houses) as a tool for understanding work styles and professional self-awareness through psychological integrity.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction and context

Libraries in popular media

Harry Potter challenges and media reception

SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument

Purpose and professional use

SHHH! categories and Hogwarts Houses

OLA Quarterly Volume 14 Number 1 Lively Librarians Loose in the Limelight: Libraries in Popular Media (Spring 2008) July 2014 Librarians and Harry Potter: An Introduction of the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument Connie J. Bennett Eugene Public Library Recommended Citation Bennett, C. J. (2014) . Librarians and Harry Potter: An Introduction of the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument. OLA Quarterly, 14(1), 9-13 . [http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1186](http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1186) © 2014 by the author(s) . OLA Quarterly is an official publication of the Oregon Library Association | ISSN 1093-7374 Librarians and Harry Potter: An Introduction of the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument by Connie J. Bennett Director, Eugene Public Library Madame Pince, the cranky mis tress ofthe library at Hogwarts, is hardly a role model to emulate. In the librarian’s constant search for professional balance between providing generous community access to resources on the one hand—and safeguarding those resources from the public on the other—she’s clearly on the parsimonious end of the continuum. However, in a discussion of the librarian’s image—or anything else, for that matter—in popular media, Madame Pince cannot be ignored. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books1 are nothing if not popular. The seventh and ﬁnal book of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sold a record-breaking 8.3 million copies in its ﬁrst 24 hours on sale in the United States, according to Scholastic.“No other book, not even any of the six previous Potters, has been so desired, so quickly. Deathly Hallows averaged more than 300,000 copies in sales per hour—more than 5,000 a minute.”2 Madame Pince provides an ironic contrast to the real-life librarians worldwide who have eagerly put the books into readers’ hands, have opened library doors at midnight for special release parties, have sought to connect kids with more books through “read-alike” kits, displays, and lists. And to the real-life librarians who have defended the rights of youth to read the Harry Potter books at all. Another record achieved by Rowling’s books is frequency of challenges. The Harry Potter books were number seven on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000. In a 2007 Banned Books Week media release, the ALA reported,“The Harry Potter series ranks as the number one most challenged book series of the 21st Century (2000–2006).”3 While many articles have been written in defense of the books, there have also been many written against them; Rowling’s Madame Pince, guardian 9 of the Hogwarts library’s restricted shelves, would stand squarely with the latter group. J.K. Rowling has acknowledged that the Pince caricature is merely a plot device. During a beneﬁt reading on August 2, 2006 at Radio City Music Hall, answering a question from a librarian in the audience, she said,“I thought you were going to attack me for Madam Pince and I would like to apologize for you and any other librarians (crowd laughs) present here today and my get-out clause is always if they’d had a pleasant, helpful librarian, half my plots would be gone.‘Cause the answer invariably is in a book, but Hermione has to go and ﬁnd it. If they’d had a good librarian, that would have been that problem solved. So, sorry.”4 With Rowling’s books still occupying multiple slots on the best selling books list this week5 no matter how you count it,6 perhaps we librarians should move beyond the caricature to look for other aspects of the Harry Potter stories that can speak to our organizational—and thus perhaps to our professional—lives and images. Libraries have, as organizations, adopted many of the tools and models of the business world to identify work styles, improve communication, reduce workplace conﬂict, increase team effectiveness and productivity, and for library staff to better understand ourselves

FAQs

What contrast does the article draw between Madame Pince and real librarians?

Madame Pince is characterized as restrictive, while real librarians are portrayed as eager to put the books into readers’ hands and to defend youth access to Harry Potter. The article uses this contrast to discuss librarians’ public images in popular media.

How does J.K. Rowling describe the Madame Pince caricature?

Rowling acknowledges the Pince portrayal as a plot device. She notes that having a pleasant, helpful librarian would remove half of the story problems by solving them through information in books.

What is the SHHH! Personality Assessment Instrument used for in this article?

The article presents SHHH! (Sorting Hat: Hogwarts Houses) as an instrument librarians can use to understand themselves and others. It links the SHHH! categories to psychological and professional integrity by grounding interpretation in the original texts.

Sep 17, 2026

Uploaded by Aldword