The title can fool you. The description will fool you. Even the first several minutes of "Hollywood Librarian" will fool you. Don't be fooled.

Yes, on one level the documentary film is about precisely what it claims to be about: an examination of how librarians have been portrayed on film over the decades and how that portrayal contrasts with reality. But on another level there is an underlying theme that you may not even recognize until you reflect on what you have seen, because what this movie is really about is the survival of civilization and how that is entwined with the preservation of knowledge.

On the surface are stereotypes and antistereotypes. There's the scene from "It's a Wonderful Life," in which George (Jimmy Stewart) sees what would have become of his family without his presence, his wife a lonely, unhappy librarian, as if, said producer Ann Seidl of Madison, being a librarian precludes being happy or fulfilled.

On the other side is "Desk Set," a 1957 comedy starring Spencer Tracy as a computer expert and Katherine Hepburn as the head of a broadcasting company library, the operation of which Tracy has been hired to augment. That movie, Seidl said, shows the largest number of competent, attractive, non-geek librarians ever seen at once on the silver screen - four.

The producer

"Most librarians are indignant about our perennial stereotypical image," said Seidl. You know the one - old, thick glasses, hair in a tight bun, and a warning hiss - "Shhhh!" - always ready on the lips.

Like many librarians, Seidl, now 43, came late to library work, and even later to movie production. She started as a paralegal and in 1996 was working on a master's degree in environmental management when she switched to library school at the age of 32.

At the same time a friend asked whether she'd ever seen "Party Girl," a 1994 film starring Parker Posey as an aimless young woman who finds her vocation when she takes a library job and experiences the thrill of helping people find life-changing information. And Seidl saw "The Celluloid Closet," a film exploring images of homosexuals in film.

She looked into films about librarians and found none, not even any lists. "And that's kind of odd because you can find lists of doctors in the movies, and lists of vampires in the movies, and lists of vampire doctors in the movies." Eventually she found a list, just one, and thought librarians would make a good subject for a documentary - for someone else to make.

Seidl finished her library science degree, worked in a library for a time, and then became a self-employed library consultant, one of those people who helps libraries prepare grants and other documents by researching, for example, demographic information about a community.

No one made that documentary.

"And then something happened in my heart, when 2000 rolled around. It was sort of the odometer of the year - you know, zero, zero, zero. And I realized nobody else is going to do this; it's going to be me."

She started read everything she could about documentary film production, found mentors willing to help her, and hunted for money. For two and a half years she hunted for money, and finally received to grants from the Carnegie Corp. She spoke at conferences, and librarians themselves raised $25,000 for her.

Now she's trying to get her film entered in various festivals which are the key to wider distribution. (It will be shown Oct. 5 at the DC Labor Filmfest in Washington) It's a task made difficult by the emergence of digital film technology which engendered an explosion of films, she said, and now every producer faces the task of convincing overwhelmed judges that her film will be as surprisingly watchable as a two-hour documentary about penguins.

"Like most independent filmmakers, I've lived on cereal and soup for a couple of years," she said. "But that's not really here or there. You do what you have to do for your dream."

Eventually she had the money and found a crew. They shot video in 11 states for 11 months, 55 hours of video which has been edited down to 96 minutes. Seidl has arranged screenings in libraries around the country, including Racine, and in Canada during Banned Books Week, which begins Saturday and is intended to remind people of the dangers of censoring books, which means censoring thought.

Books are society

That's part of the other theme, the real theme of "Hollywood Librarian." You begin to see it in the clip from "Cleopatra," the 1963 film starring Elizabeth Taylor in the title role and with Rex Harrison playing Julius Caesar. The Roman army burns the Egyptian fleet, but the fire gets out of hand and burns down the great library of Alexandria which held thousands of scrolls, among them the only known copies of many classical Greek plays and works of philosophy. The film points out that a ruined library, especially in science fiction movies, is often a symbol for a fallen civilization.

Then the documentary moves on to talk about the U.S. invasion of Iraq a couple of years ago, which led to the destruction of the Iraq national library, repository of many treasures from one of the oldest centers of human civilization. And it moves on to the USA Patriot Act which President George W. Bush asked Congress last week to make permanent. It allows federal agents to search library and other records without a warrant and which prescribes criminal penalties for anyone who discloses such a search.

"I see librarians as strong and warriors for intellectual freedom and literally doing battle with the bad guys all the time," Seidl said. "When I say 'bad guys' I mean that metaphorically, but people who wish to censor books, or all of the battles that they have with fund raising and funding cuts and so forth, not to mention the Patriot Act which is really - we know about that thanks to the work of librarians."

Truly, Seidl said, many members of the public have a poor understanding of what librarians do, as if there were some library fairy which stocked all the shelves with books, magazines, videos, and compact discs. Yet, she said, every bit of information has been selected by a person thinking of what information people need and how they go about finding it.

"Librarians don't love books as much as they love people, and people don't go to libraries as much to find things to read as to find answers for their lives. You know, we're really ultimately, in my opinion, trying to connect with each other."

Reading is a uniquely human trait, she said. As far as we know, only humans can save their words. "Which means we can connect with people infinitely in the past, or 5,000 years in the past, and into the future … So the library is the nexus of communication for humanity, really."

And yet libraries are often in line for the budget crumbs, Seidl said.

Her documentary ends in Salinas, Calif., home to novelist John Steinbeck, where a library was named after him because he held them to be so important to his life and work, where the city government voted to close the libraries in order to save money.

People take libraries for granted and say nothing as cities chisel away staff and pare budgets, Seidl said. When there's a crisis, then people will rally around their libraries as even prison inmates did in Salinas.

That's what we have now, she said, a series of crises in which libraries are threatened by endless chiseling. Her film is a reminder of where civilization resides and what keeps it going, and reminds people that they - the ordinary, everyday people worried about mortgages and children and jobs - must act if their libraries and society are to last. One can't depend on government officials, Seidl said. "Sometimes you have to go above those guys heads down to their boss, which is the people."

See the movie

What: The documentary film "Hollywood Librarian."

When: Saturday, Oct. 6, 6:30 p.m.

Where: Racine Public Library, 75 7th St.

Admission: $8 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens, free for anyone younger than 6 and for librarians.

Why: Proceeds go to the Racine Public Library Foundation.

Also: Come in costume if you wish, wearing Hollywood attire.

INFO: For other show dates and locations, such as in Madison or Milwaukee or Chicago, and more about the documentary, visit the film's Web site at http://hollywoodlibrarian.com