The time was when a library was very like a museum, and a librarian was a mouser in musty books, and visitors looked with curious eyes at ancient tomes and manuscripts. The time is when a library is a school, and the librarian is in the highest sense a teacher, and the visitor is a reader among the books as a workman among his tools.
Melvil Dewey, The Profession, American Library Journal 1 (1876): 5-6 (reprinted in Sarah K. Vann, ed., Melvil Dewey: His Enduring Presence in Librarianship (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1978)
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