238 Quotes About Librarians

For me, the heart of librarianship is learning. It's a cyclical process of support, engagement, and discovery with deep roots in the concepts of service, access, and freedom to pursue interests of all kinds. No matter what type of institution, someone is gaining knowledge, finding information, or creating something new based on our facilitation.

Not long ago I was invited to a librarians’ event by a lady who cheerfully told me, “We like to think of ourselves as ‘information providers.’” I was appalled by this want of ambition; I made my excuses and didn’t go. After all, if you have a choice, why not call yourselves “Shining Acolytes of the Sacred Flame of Literacy in a Dark and Encroaching Universe”? I admit this is hard to put on a button, so why not abbreviate it to “librarians”?

As I am sure some of you know, I boast of the fact that for a couple of years I was a volunteer librarian, working weekends for no more reward than a cup of tea, a sweet biscuit, and a blind eye to the enormous number of books that I was taking home.

Does he think the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea? Does he think that all a librarian does is to tidy the shelves?

Then too there was the irrepressible librarian in her who could not stand by and watch a human being in distress without leaping to her aid, whether that person could not find the coin slot on the copier or was on the brink of domestic destruction.

A bonfire billowed up. Some in the crowd tossed copies of Ladybird's book into the fire while a librarian pleaded with them not to do that and grabbed a fire extinguisher.**Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.

Having read literally thousands of them, I was sure I knew every which way of killing someone. I never thought a time would come when I would make use of it.

And to love such a librarian requires a surrendering to her eccentricities, a bowing to her pathological quietness, an obeisance to a reticence that is utterly untreatable. If you cannot commit to this sort of dedication, then let her be. Let her wander in wonder among her books and live out her days in her own world without you.

One can never have too many librarian friends.