Librarianship Quotes

“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, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

“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 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, The Masked City

“When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.”
― Bill Moyers

“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, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

“Every day, librarians enforce copyright policies that we may disagree with and that, in some ways, run contrary to the values of our profession. Every day, librarians must decide between a desire to preserve the privacy of our community members and offering services our communities demand. Every day, librarians must make a choice between doing what’s easy, doing what’s right, and determining what’s right in the first place. No textbook or mission statement or policy document can relieve us of the necessity to make those decisions, nor remove the complexity of those decisions. That’s why we are librarians and why librarians are professionals, not clerks. That’s why we are stewards within the communities we serve, not servants to them. That’s why we must shape the missions and the work of our organizations and communities, and not simply accept them.”
― R. David Lankes, The New Librarianship Field Guide

“Librarianship... it's not for the faint-hearted.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, A Rare Book of Cunning Device

“The truth is out there, but the truth also seems to be very subjective. With access to so many types of information, there is bound to be some miscommunication that goes on in libraries. "Some" could be an understatement. Okay, there is a lot of miscommunication happening. To combat this, librarians strive to develop excellent listening skills, impeccable library instruction, and good follow-up questions. And a killer poker face hidden by a fashionable pair of glasses never hurts.”
― Gina Sheridan, I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks

“Never underestimate the power of Libraries and Librarians”
― Abid Hussain Library Officer

“It was this idea that books contained secrets. Important information that would be lost if someone didn't preserve it. And then I studied history and got really into that and I realized that was true not just about sex but lots of things. If someone doesn't care about books, shit gets lost. And then I became a librarian. And archivist.”
― Sara Gran, The Book of the Most Precious Substance

“Ultimately, the imperative to be practical in our field hinges on a deep (if somewhat paradoxical) individualism. In spite of overtones of inclusivity, it treats critical work as self-contained, suggesting that truly ethical work in the library world requires each of us to come up with complete sets of questions and complete sets of answers, to individually balance what is understood to be theory with what is understood to be practice, to ensure that our language is always going to be intelligible to everyone. We in the library world ought to understand that this is neither possible nor desirable, as so much of what we do points to the fact that all work is both necessarily incomplete and necessarily interdependent--the citation, the bibliography and its community of complicated absences, the shelf with more than one item, the marginalia and corporeal micro-residues (visible and invisible) left on magazines pulled through circulation, the reference interaction in which knowledge reveals itself to be created between subjects rather than springing forth ex nihilo as the stuff of individual genius. But the individualist myth of exhaustiveness is pervasive, even if it is persistently exhausting. Such tiresome individualism is, of course, profoundly entangled with whiteness, serving as an animating force in well-worn colonial narratives of race: the unhinged white loner as mass shooter, as contrasted with the terrorist motivated by collective cultural allegiance; the intrepid white explorer 'discovering' the land through economic enterprise; the dark masses of migrants threatening to flood the white nation's border, containable only through mass detention, expulsion, or assimilation; the dispossession of a black single mother read as black cultural pathology. More specifically, it aligns epistemologically with the individualism of liberal racial politics: racism as an attribute of individuals, anti-racism as self-work, the problem and solution collocated and self-contained”
― David James Hudson

“Curiosity about the world and how people create, use, and access information should fuel our practice.”
― Michael Stephens, The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change

“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.”
― Michael Stephens, The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change

“Let your actions speak louder than words, however: professionalism matters, while popularity is illusory, fleeting, and short-lived. Your contributions to the field, by enhancing service, creating new models to replace outdated practice, and quietly working to improve communities, matter most.”
― Michael Stephens, The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change

“This was a third and somewhat surreal life-changing moment in which I was struck by the fact that, even in such a remote and unique area of the world, LIS issues such as encouraging engagement during story time, crowd control, and developing confidence while reading aloud are common concerns.”
― Cate Carlyle, Your Passport to International Librarianship

“Librarianship was a good choice of profession for him, he claims, since ‘it has just the right blend of academic interest and administration that seems to match my particular talents, such as they are’.”
― James Booth, Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love

“Being a librarian isn't an especially high-level job, I can tell you. Pretty close to being in a factory. I'm a cultural assembly line worker.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“We intentionally call out "dominant culture" in this historical summary because both social work and librarianship upheld the values of the dominant culture, prioritizing them over the values, people, and ideas of other cultures also present during these times. Early efforts in both professions improved countless lives but did so from a moralistic and narrow belief about the "best way" to live. Both social work and librarianship currently engage in significant discussion on how to over come these legacies but have yet to find effective solutions that permanently shift our deeply ingrained professional cultures.”
― Sara K. Zettervall

“Whispering in libraries is prohibited, Talking in libraries are crime, studying in libraries is useful, librarians are united for this argument.”
― Abid Hussain Library Officer

“Marina, I’m not just a bookfighter now. I’m a *librarian.* I’ve got my own beat. I can’t keep bending the rules for you anymore, Maz. We’re not kids anymore.” She pulled at her sleeve. “I wear a *cardigan*, for goodness’ sake.”
― Jessica Townsend

“each value on which librarianship prides itself is inequitably distributed amongst society”
― Fobazi Ettarh

“Some people give you courage, some give you lessons, a librarian will give you a book that gives lessons and courage to fortitude.”
― Abid Hussain

“I can not explore the world with my own pocket money, but I will explore the world if I sat in the library.”
― Abid Hussain

“A Pleasant moment can only be enjoyed while reading a good book.”
― Abid Hussain

“But the library was different: it was a place, a dynamic social setting where groups gathered, where people were put into relation with others. A space an individual could physically explore on his own.”
― Avi Steinberg, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

“Do the marginalized people in your community know they're welcome in your library? It's easy to create a welcoming space with subtle touches. Unobtrusive stickers on monitors, small flags, a pronoun pin on your lanyard, even choices of colors can create an environment that feels safe to marginalized people.”
― Jayne Walters

“Libraries are indispensable pillars of knowledge, research, and education. Keep visiting a nearby library to broaden your mind.”
― Abid Hussain

“She loved the calm regularity of librarianship; each book a treasure trove of information or experience that would be categorised, labelled and stored in its rightful place. And she could think of nothing more magical than spending her days surrounded by stories.”
― Daisy Wood, The Royal Librarian

“We are the heart of our communities, and that only works because of what the people who run libraries give of themselves. They do it knowing that there will be hard days and disappointment, budget fights, and individuals whom they may not be able to reach. The best librarians make that emotional investment because they believe in the institution and the community they serve.”
― Michael Stephens, Wholehearted Librarianship: Finding Hope, Inspiration, and Balance

“Ah, an admirable profession. But no, I'm not a librarian.”
― Alice Franklin, Life Hacks for a Little Alien