Do we give the public a wrong message when we call ourselves “dry cleaners”?

Alexandra S. Levine’s article about the conservation of maps in the New York City Municipal Archives (“Delicate Job for ‘Dry Cleaners’: Revitalizing the Maps that Bind the City to its Past” , The New York Times, September 12, 2017) is very informative about the processes and procedures that the conservators use to treat fragile maps which have been rolled up and stored in less than ideal conditions for decades. However, she chose to use the conservators’ in-joke that they are “dry cleaners” in her opening paragraph and the headline writer followed suit. Should we be more careful about how we describe ourselves and our work to non-conservators? Do we give the public a wrong message when we call ourselves “dry cleaners”?