Librarianship Quotes & Sayings

The perfect Librarian is calm, cool, collected, intelligent, multilingual, a crack shot, a martial artist, an Olympic-level runner (at both the sprint and marathon), a good swimmer, an expert thief, and a genius con artist. They can steal a dozen books from a top-security strongbox in the morning, discuss literature all afternoon, have dinner with the cream of society in the evening, and then stay up until midnight dancing, before stealing some more interesting tomes at three a.m. That's what a perfect Librarian would do. In practice, most Librarians would rather spend their time reading a good book. — Genevieve Cogman

Those who know God can smoothly adapt to changes — Sunday Adelaja

But against sandfly fever one could be inoculated, and I have another, hideously vivid picture of a great menacing brute of a doctor sticking a Thing that ended in a vicious needle into my mother's arm. Mad to defend my own, I scrambled off my father's knee, and flew to her rescue. I fixed my teeth in the doctor's horrible hairy wrist and hung on like a terrier, until my father succeeded in prising me away. Afterwards, everybody said how wonderful the doctor had been, because he continued calmly giving the inoculation while I was prised off him, instead of breaking the needle in my mother's arm. But nobody said how brave it was of me, only three years old, when all is said and done, and gone in the legs at that, to take on such fearful odds for the sake of love. — Rosemary Sutcliff

When the Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelus demanded it for the Orthodox, Saladin decided that they must share it under his supervision and appointed Sheikh Ghanim al-Khazraji as Custodian of the Church, a role still performed today by his descendants, the Nusseibeh family. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

The ocean flows of online information are all streaming together, and the access tools are becoming absolutely critical. If you don't index it, it doesn't exist. It's out there but you can't find it, so it might as well not be there. — Barbara Quint

Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves — Terry Pratchett

Everybody should have a librarian. — Beth Fantaskey

To librarians, booksellers, and collectors there is nothing limited in the subject of books about books. — Leona Rostenberg

It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our lives. — John Burnside

Librarians hoard the wisdom of humanity. They are the keepers of all knowledge, the guardians at the temples of understanding and devoted protectors of the sanctuary in the midst of uneducated anarchy. — Stephen Colbert

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? — Philip Pullman

Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind. — Karen Armstrong

His elegant librarianship ... made me appreciate how order is created: Not through grand schemes - to which I was often drawn - but by small graceful actions, repeated often and refined with time. — Avi Steinberg

She is a very conscientious person," said Miss Lydgate, "but she has rather an unfortunate knack of making any subject sound dull. It's a great pity, because she is exceptionally sound and dependable. However, that doesn't greatly matter in her present appointment; she holds a librarianship somewhere - Miss — Dorothy L. Sayers

Of course. Ask your librarian. Always the right answer. — Marilyn Johnson

Librarianship is a form of heroism. It's just not as flashy as swords and dragons. — Seanan McGuire

I think you're more an archivist than a librarian," he said.
He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful.
"They like everything," he said, "gum wrappers as much as books." He said this with a hint of disdain.
"Librarians like throwing away garbage to make space, but archivists," he said, "they're too crazy to throw anything out."
"You're right," I said. "I'm more of an archivist."
"And I'm more of a librarian," he said.
"Can we still be friends? — Avi Steinberg

We find the library world, like the real world, impossible to understand on a rational basis. We turn then to the outer reaches of our mind and treat librarianship with the irrationality that it deserves. While we most often turn to humour merely to enjoy ourselves, we do sometimes do so to make a point. That point is simply that the world of librarianship is ridiculous and that we should all take a far less serious view of our work. What we accomplish as librarians is not, after all, likely to change the world."
~ Norman D. Stevens — Peter Gellatly

She, of all people, knew the sacred trust that word
"librarian"
implied. Because a librarian was supposed to to be a spiritual, intellectual mentor who kept your secrets and didn't give you a funny look when you checked out a book on the care and feeding of pythons ... A librarian opened up new doors for you, intellectually, too, without shoving you through them.
A librarian was important. — Beth Fantaskey

Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion. — Marilyn Johnson

I found that I could not contemplate an adult life in which books were not dominant. I wanted to live and work with them ... I had to be able to take books from their places, run my finger over their backs, see how they opened, flick their corners straight. I wanted a perspective of bookshelves always in my eye. And books, books, books. This was not a rational way of determining on a career and was much tainted by mushiness. But it was the way in which my decision hardened, before I was fifteen years old, to become a librarian. — Clifford Currie Librarian Of The Ashmolean Library Oxford

In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship. — Elizabeth McCracken

That's how librarians are. They just can't help it. — Carla Morris

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly. — Teresa Of Avila

Librarians' values are as sound as Girl Scouts': truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they possess a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they're not trying to sell us anything. — Marilyn Johnson

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 arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. — Marilyn Johnson

Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet. — Susan Beth Pfeffer

When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own. — Colin Powell

In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know. I don't know of another occupation like that. The more you know, the better you're going to be. — Allen Smith

The historical principles of librarianship - universal access to information, individual privacy, freedom of expression, and truth above all else - are as necessary now as they have ever been and must persist. At the same time, the balance of library leadership needs to swing more forcefully toward the new or libraries will fade in their significance to the American public. — John Palfrey

Knowledge equals power ...
The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.
Power equals energy ...
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Energy equals matter ...
He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string. — Terry Pratchett

Librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect. — Jan Struther

So where does one go in such a wobbly, elusive, dynamic, confusing age? Wherever the librarians and archivists are.
They're sorting it all out for us. — Marilyn Johnson

One of the reasons I decided to enter this profession," one of the Riot Librarrrians wrote, "was because I'm in love with information, and the library remains one of the few spaces in our lives where information is not a commodity ... There's a subversive element to librarianship that I adore. — Marilyn Johnson

The kiss stayed there with no place to go, no sensory reserve that could absorb it and file it away as a common act of intimacy, a thousand times received. He knew what Anna was asking: whether you could love someone without habits. — Nicole Krauss

Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself - Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be. — Saul Bellow

I don't give a fuck who can hear us, Garrett said angrily. This one's for me. — Tara Sivec

I got mugged. And they got my knapsack with my comedy notebook in it. So if anybody see two cholos bombing at the Funny Bone chain, that would be them. Just give me a jingle. — Janeane Garofalo

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 to be trained in the art of librarianship. Sadly, this is not the case; its roots are a bit more academic. — Scott Douglas