librarians

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 a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

...killing rats wasn__ in my job description.

We don__ have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.

A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there__ this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady__hat iconoclastic lady__as with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn__ make the library. People made the library. That__ what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books.

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__o improve on the ideas of others.

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 the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it__ about time to open a snack bar.

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.

The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T__ng Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That__ how I knew I was in the right section.

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

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior__enefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.''Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course__s the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

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, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn't have much time for people, he loved books.)

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

Or possibly possessiveness was a characteristic of draconic affection. They were supposed to be hoarders, after all. Not so different from Librarians.

My ultimate authority would be the school librarian Mrs. Greenbacher.

And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild.

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

As if on cue, a line of silhouettes emerged from behind a desert scrub__hapes that moved like cats. They wandered through the landscape of corpses, touching each with a gentle nudge. They grew closer, and it became clear that Chuluum was leading the other cats on their sorrowful homage, giving the fallen librarians the honor they deserved.