A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic...

There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wantsto protect culture. The only thing about my pending career thatwas changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,not...

To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of thepast and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. Iwas motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others.

They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?

We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.

The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.

It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if...

I like to imagine that library school was started because of some sort of silly bar bet where a guy got really plastered and told his buddy that he could convince people that librarians needed...

…killing rats wasn’t in my job description.

If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.

Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the PhD.

Forgive, I hope you won’t be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this,...

Rare-book people have this in common with poets: they too are born, not made.

There is a somewhat time-worn joke about people taking up library work because they like to read : the joke consisting of the fact that librarians have so little time to read. But, I tell...

Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.

Librarians are on the front lines of an invisible struggle over our information diet and, for better or worse, the scales are not tipping in their direction.

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.’ It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature… books that distinctly commend what is wrong,...

I regretted my human form briefly; it would be so much easier to drag and rope information into the brain as neatly as one dragged and dropped information on the computer. Perhaps I was suffering...

Libraries are always bigger on the inside because every book has an entire word inside of it.

I have always thought that librarians are a little bit like doctors, travel agents and professors all rolled into one. We all know that a great story can lift spirits, take you anywhere in the...

Books are only half our job ; the other half is human nature.

Impersonating a quiet, gentle librarian like Barbara Gordon–You deserve to be taken out of circulation!

I was just turned last week. I’m a librarian.”He stilled, as if I’d just told him I was the inventor of the tube top. “I watched a movie about a librarian once. Well, she was...

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians.

Librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy.

Creating a world within the imagination one day at a time through words and colors.

Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, ’cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year.

For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers.

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior—benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it...

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading...

Jace’s eyes sparkled, but he said calmly, “Not at all. the Silent Brothers can help her retrieve her memories.””You hate the Silent Brothers,” protested Isabelle.”I don’t hate them,” said Jace candidly.”I’m afraid of them. It’s...

I was under the librarians’ protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians,...

To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community.

The old man was peering intently at the shelves. ‘I’ll have to admit that he’s a very competent scholar.’Isn’t he just a librarian?’ Garion asked, ‘somebody who looks after books?’That’s where all the rest of...

When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their small sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.

I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian.

I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren’t even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords,...

On a good day, my style is librarian chic. On a bad day, it’s frumpy mother.

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler’s army who had a sex change and took up...

She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her...

Mr. O’Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. “Ms. Auerbach! What will it...

When I run the world,librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.

[W]hat people truly desire is access to the knowledge and information that ultimately lead to a better life–the collected wisdom of the ages found only in one place: a well-stocked library.To the teachers and librarians...

As if on cue, a line of silhouettes emerged from behind a desert scrub—shapes that moved like cats. They wandered through the landscape of corpses, touching each with a gentle nudge. They grew closer, and...

Don’t mark up the Library’s copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They’ll track you down! They have skills!

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a “true reflection of our history,” whether it’s a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful...

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge,...

Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It’s like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.

Rule number one: Don’t fuck with librarians.

Librarians are trained to be polite, patient, and helpful, no matter who stands across the reference desk.The most important thing is that we look them in the eye and take them seriously. Our work demands...