Librarian Follows up

I reshelved the paper, stepped outside, and locked the door. Miss Mountjoy was still sitting idle at her desk when I returned the key.

“Did you find what you were looking for, dearie?” she asked.

“Yes, I said, making a great show of dusting off my hands.

“May I inquire further?” she asked coyly. “I might be able to direct you to related materials.”

Translation: She was perishing with nosiness.

“No, thank you, Miss Mountjoy,” I said.

Alan Bradley, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (New York: Bantam Dell, 2009), ch. 5

Vision of Library, 1876

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)

A boring life story

If somebody wrote the story of my life before James (and it would be a short book, repetitious and unillustrated), I would not buy it; I would not have it on my shelf. It would be a waste of the budget. 

Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant’s House (NY: Avon, 1997), p. 25.

Librarians annotate, offer good & bad info

I am a librarian, and you cannot stop me from annotating, revising, updating. I like to think that—because I am a librarian—I offer accurate and spurious advice with no judgment, good and bad next to each other on the shelf. 

Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House (NY: Avon, 1997), p. 7.

Librarians: ooh-la-la!

Generally, I flirt with librarians. Librarians are my sex symbols. Growing up, everybody else had Charlie’s Angels on the wall. But I had women in khakis and big glasses. 

–Sherman Alexie on what he does while attending library conferences, Idaho Statesman, August 12, 2003, quoted in American Libraries, Oct. 2003, at 31.