Across fantasy and science fiction (with the occasional stop in horror), there are any number of amazing fictional libraries we’d love to visit—especially to meet up with the guardians of the stacks! After all, what’s a fantasy story without an awe-inspiring tower full of potentially curséd books? Or a sci-fi adventure without the cumulative knowledge of civilization stored somewhere to guide our heroes on their quest?
We decided it was time for an overdue celebration of the keepers of knowledge, from experts in Egyptology to far-future book-lovers fighting tyrannical governments to sword-wielding barbarians, we have a librarian for every occasion.
Wan Shi Tong—Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra
An ancient, wise, and powerful spirit, Wan Shi Tong is not one to be trifled with. He spent a lifetime gathering books in hopes that humans would use his library to better themselves. But when he learned that the Avatar planned to use his knowledge for violence instead, he closed the doors of his library to humans forever. Until, that is, Jinora is allowed to explore the library in exchange for her knowledge of how radios work.
Barbara Gordon (Batgirl/Oracle)—Batman
Head of Gotham Public Library by day, crime fighter by night—no one can pull this (or that shimmery purple suit) off quite like Barbara Gordon can. (We wouldn’t mind zipping through Gotham on her snazzy purple bike, either.)
Even after her role as Batgirl ended in the comics, Barbara took her librarian skills to a a new digital level as an information expert and super-hacker known only as Oracle.
Death—Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
It’s pronounced deeth, like teeth, though certain characters in Kristin Cashore’s novel “liked to mispronounce it by accident on occasion.” Possibly the crankiest librarian on any list—and with good reason—Death is the royal librarian in the kingdom of Monsea, and endured the reign of a hideously abusive tyrant king. Death’s Grace, his unique power, is the ability to “read inhumanly fast and remember every word forever,” which comes in incredibly handy when young Bitterblue, trying to correct some of the many wrongs perpetrated by her father, needs him to help restore books the previous king destroyed. Like so many of Cashore’s characters, Death has been through a lot and reacted in his own way, and even when he’s testy, it’s impossible not to feel for him (and his hissing cat).
Rupert Giles—Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Librarian of Sunnydale High School, Watcher of slayers, and the wizard-formerly-known-as-Ripper—is there anything this man can’t do? Giles won us over guiding Buffy toward her destiny, reminding us all that the best defense against evil is a little research. Giles was typically stuffy and intellectual, but he could cut loose from time to time—he has a passion for open mic nights, Halloween costumes, and a certain magical chocolate bar. And who could forget the practically poetic speech he gave defending the fact that knowledge should be, well… smelly.
The Librarian—The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
Transformed into an orangutan by a wayward beam of magic, the Librarian is a member of the small, elite group who have the knowledge and ability to travel through L-space. His true identity is unknown and he speaks only through a series of “ooks” and “eeks,” but he’s still a pretty low-key guy when he’s not protecting the world’s knowledge. Just don’t call him a monkey. Trust us on that one.
CAL—Doctor Who (“Silence in the Library” & “Forest of the Dead”)
The story of Charlotte Abigail Lux (CAL) is tragic enough to break both your hearts. When she was dying, her father preserved her consciousness within a program that simulated a dream world, giving her access to all the knowledge in the library. CAL used this knowledge to help save the Doctor, Donna, and others from the fearsome Vashta Nerada.
A-Through-L—Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente
This is a very particular entry, because A-Through-L isn’t so much a librarian as … a library. To be more specific, a wyverary: half wyvern, half library. Ell, as he’s called, knows everything about subjects that begin with the letters A through L, but is less helpful when it comes to later portions of the alphabet (his siblings know about those). A faithful and wonderful companion to our heroine, September, Ell is one of the great creations of children’s literature and belongs on every list, especially ones to do with libraries.
The Grey Lady—Ghostbusters
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the scariest librarian of all, the ghost of the Grey Lady from the opening segment of Ghostbusters. The Grey Lady’s “full torso apparition” roams the lower stacks of the New York Public Library, emptying card catalogs, arranging books in unhelpful piles, and generally terrifying the current library staff. She may look like a harmless elderly lady, but speak too loudly in her library and she’ll turn into one fearsome ghoul—just ask our intrepid ghost-busting heroes, who fled their first real ghost-busting gig in terror.
The Librarian/The Town’s Librarian—Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Technically there are two librarians in Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. The book shuffles two realities together in alternating chapters—the cyberpunky “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” and the surrealist “The End of the World.” In the first, the Librarian is a girl who’s always hungry, and who acts as a research guide to the book’s narrator, a Typical Murakami Protagonist, Who Notices All the Weirdness and Just Kind of Accepts It. In this book, said protagonist wants to learn about unicorns. In the second book, the Town’s Librarian tends to the skulls of beasts that have dreams locked inside of them. She assists the OTHER Typical Murakami Protagonist, Who Doesn’t Understand the Kafkaesque Nightmare in Which He is Trapped. His job, which he Does Not Understand, is to read the dreams in the beast’s skulls.
Eventually, things come to a head. Or a skull, whatever.
Mike Hanlon—IT by Stephen King
Mike is the last member of the Losers Club. As one of the only Black people in the extremely cursed town of Derry, he deals with horrific racism on top of all the clown murder. Since he’s also a giant nerd, he’s pretty resigned to his outcast status until he finds the Losers Club. He becomes the group’s resident history expert, using his research into Derry’s to help in the fight against Pennywise. He’s the only member of the Club to stay in Derry, becoming the town’s librarian and continuing his research until it’s time to call his friends home for the final fight.
Isaac Vainio—Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines
Brilliant but undisciplined, Isaac Vainio has the ability to reach into books and create objects from their pages. It’s a talent that almost any librarian would envy, except that the hazards of his job include a neurotic fire-spider named Smudge, a dryad with a penchant for sword fights, a missing Gutenberg, and secrets that could loose a devastating magical war upon an unsuspecting world.
Zelda Schiff—The Magicians
There are plenty of librarians on The Magicians, but Zelda is the Head Librarian, and the one we get to know the best over the show’s five seasons. She’s loyal to the library until she has good reason not to be, and her conflicted feelings about the library’s mission, hedge witches, her relationship with her daughter all combine to make Zelda a fascinating secondary character—and one who’s also a masterful magician in her own right. (Let us also take a quick moment to appreciate Zelda’s tendency to walk around with her hands held just so.)
Honorary mention to Penny, of course, who also becomes a librarian—a job that requires an eternity of service. Service that continues even after death.
Wong—Marvel Cinematic Universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnR7TRqey38
Wong is briefly the librarian of Kamar-Taj, after he replaces an earlier librarian—who unfortunately doesn’t get any character development as we meet him while he’s being murdered by Kaecilius. During Wong’s tenure, however, he makes for an ideal pop culture librarian: gruff and no-nonsense, snapping at Strange to stay away from the forbidden books, but just lost in Beyonce enough to not notice when Strange… inevitably steals the forbidden books.
While we’re very pleased that Wong has taking a more active role in his subsequent MCU appearances, we’d still like to see him have an adventure that actually involves librarian-ing. Is that so much to ask, Kevin Feige?
Evelyn Carnahan—The Mummy
How could you not love a brilliant Egyptologist who will stop at nothing to find the lost book of Amun-Ra, even when it brings her face-to-face with flesh-eating scarabs and an army of the undead? She may be a bit clumsy early on, but Evie holds her own with a gun and dagger, dishes out the sass as well as the facts, and delivers adorably drunken proclamations like this:
“I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am… I am a librarian.”
And then there’s all that chaotic energy she generates with Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell.
Lirael—Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix
Lirael is the patron saint of every reader who took a long time to figure out what they want—and those of us who are still working on that. A daughter of the Clayr, who live in a glacier and See glimpses of the future, Lirael grows up miserable. She’s never Seen anything, and every birthday is just a reminder that she’s long past the age at which most Clayr get the Sight. But when she begins working in the Clayr’s incredible library, she finds new purpose: the library is huge and contains so much more than books, and Lirael, a true introvert, spends much of her time exploring, stumbling upon things both dangerous and delightful. The magic she learns in the library will bring her her truest friend and introduce her to her true calling—but she never really stops being a librarian, even after she saves the world and discovers a family she never expected.
Rex Libris—The Rex Libris Comics by James Turner
Dealing with loitering zombies and chasing down alien overlords who refuse to pay their overdue book fees is all in a day’s work for Rex Libris, Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library. Rex will go to the farthest corners of the universe (literally—what else would those transportation crystals be used for?) to defend the sanctity of the Dewey Decimal System.
Lucien—The Sandman Comic Series by Neil Gaiman
The first Raven of Morpheus, Lucien is entrusted with watching over Morpheus’s crib while he’s away. Though that’s not his only job.
Lucien is also Chief Librarian of a collection that includes every book ever written, conceived, or even dreamt of. Which means he can spend his time perusing the unfinished volumes of Ray Bradbury or flipping through the dream-stories of J.R.R. Tolkien—we’re definitely jealous!
The Library Daemon—Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
There’s a lot going on in Neal Stephenson’s seminal cyberpunk extravaganza, Snow Crash. After all the hacker/samurai shenanigans and trips to the Metaverse and pizza deliveries and nonconsensual brain-rewiring, our hero, Hiro Protagonist, visits the Librarian in order to research ancient Sumerian mythology and language in the hopes of saving people from having their brains scrambled by
The Librarian has been coded to be reassuringly professorial, thus it “looks like a pleasant, fifty-ish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes, wearing a V-neck sweater over a work shirt, with a coarsely-woven, tweedy-looking wool tie. The tie is loosened, the sleeves pushed up.” It probably isn’t sentient? Yet.
Mr. Atoz—Star Trek: The Original Series
Like any good librarian, Mr. Atoz helped the inhabitants of Sarpeidon escape the death of their sun by transporting them into their planet’s history, letting them choose a time and place where they could live out the rest of their lives. He also accidentally sent the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy into Sarpeidon’s past in “All Our Yesterdays.” But that could probably happen to anyone.
Jocasta Nu—Star Wars: The Clone Wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b91OGDtGd68
As if passing the trials of the Jedi Academy wasn’t enough to secure her place on this list, Jocasta went on to serve as Chief Librarian of the Jedi Archives where she faced down Darth Vader himself. She refused to ignite the Jedi Beacon, an act of bravery that would be her last. She died as a hero, defending the place, and the people, she wanted most to protect.
Romney Wordsworth—The Twilight Zone, “An Obsolete Man”
In a far future totalitarian state (how totalitarian you ask? Here are their thoughts on Hitler and Stalin: “their error was not one of excess it was simply not going far enough!”) anyone who isn’t of use to the state is deemed “obsolete” and eliminated. And surprise! Books are forbidden, and if you’re a librarian, you are obsolete af, and the state’s gonna kill you. Or, as the evil Chancellor puts it, “Romney Wordsworth, librarian, goes to his own Nirvana. That’s what they call it in your books isn’t it, Mr. Wordsworth?” And then he literally throws a book at him—presumably Michael Azzerad’s Come as You Are. This being The Twilight Zone, the obsolete Mr. Wordsworth responds to the Chancellor with several speeches about the importance of books, and there is, of course, an excellent twist.
A few years ago I might have called this episode ham-handed, but in today’s climate I’m just going to call Romney Wordsworth a hero and move on.
Conan (The Librarian)—UHF
We never get to see a full episode of his show in Weird Al Yankovic’s masterpiece, UHF, but the preview promises a celebration of books, balanced with the bloodthirsty punishments meted out for overdue books.
Night Vale Public Librarians—Welcome to Night Vale
Boasting more than 30 copies of Helen Hunt’s biography, the Night Vale Public Library really is the place to be. And if you’ve been drafted into the summer reading program (“Catch the flesh-eating reading bacterium!”), you really have to be there. Seriously, you have no choice.
But don’t worry, the library is totally safe now! Especially since librarian repellent dispensers have been placed throughout the building. Just remember: if you’re approached by a librarian, remain as still as possible and try to make yourself look bigger than the librarian. Right. Good luck!
***
Of course, we couldn’t fit all the best librarians into this post, so let us know which of your favorites we missed in the comments!
Madame Pince in Harry Potter should be included. She maintains control over many old and dangerous books!
Don’t forget Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle) from the TNT made-for-TV franchise The Librarians. Starting as three 90-minute films, two of which were directed by Jonathan Frakes, it spawned a four-season television series starring Rebecca Romijn, not to mention a few books and comics. It takes the notion of Indiana Jones, archaeology-professor-cum-adventurer, and pushes it to the next extreme.
After being forced out of college, perpetual student Flynn Carsen somehow proves his worthiness to be the next Librarian. However, the Library is no ordinary library, but a repository of all manner of mythical and mystical artifacts. It, via the proxy of the mysterious and enigmatic Judson (played by Bob Newhart), tasks Carsen with retrieving the items missing from its collection. Homebody Carson must now travel from country to country, putting his 22 academic degrees to use, rescuing the artifacts while in turn being rescued by badass women who inexplicably fawn over him (unless they grew up watching ER; maybe that explains it).
A bit of quirky fun and obvious wish-fulfillment of every nerdy guy who wished his complete knowledge of trivia would actually be useful for once, The Librarian series is worth a watch if just for the goofy fish-out-of-water humor.
As a major bibliophile, I really loved the concept behind the “Read or Die” manga/anime series, in which special agents of the British Library utilise superhuman paper-controlling powers, as well as combat paper and an actual double-oh license to kill.
Um, Tor? Let’s not forget THE LIBRARIANS tv series, which we actually publish the tie-in novels to!
The Cheshire Cat (AKA. Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire, or Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, or, to his mother, Archibald) from the Friday Next Series.
Tuesday Next of the Jasper Fforde series. She and her agency protect literature from people who can go into the books and change them around.
Young Dorrie and her friends in “Ninja Librarians” series by Jen Swann Downey. Juvenile fantasy. Kid librarians travel through time to save important books.
Jess in Rachel Caine’s young adult fantasy, “The Great Library.” The Great Alexandria Library didn’t burn. Instead, it spread through the world, and its evil librarians took all the books away from people and only allow people to read certain books. Young Jess and friends fight this.
Teen Johanna in CHRONICLES: THE LIBRARY OF ILLUMINATION. CA Pack. Young adult contemporary fantasy. Johanna becomes the head librarian of the Library of Illumination where all books are stored, and many that are opened release the characters and stories within. Another young librarian in training screws things up.
Casanova, yes THAT Casanova! Ended his life as a librarian.
Excellent, excellent list, Mr. Stubby!
I was particularly pleased to see Avatar, Terry Pratchett, and The Twilight Zone Represented. Your choice of Twilight Zone episode was really good, too, as “An Obsolete Man” is truly an anthem to the importance of the archived word. I might have made honorable mention of Burgess Meredith’s other great episode, “Time Enough at Last,” which speaks in a slightly different way to the importance of literature, but that’s truly a very minor gripe.
A more significant gripe would be the absence of perhaps the greatest archivist in the history of science fiction literature, and that would be Master Ultan, the ancient and blind head curator of great library of Nessus in Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer. The book’s narrator, Severian the torturer, meets Master Ultan when he was tasked with delivering a letter from his master. I’m tempted to just retype the entire passage (Chapter VI, “The Master of the Curators”), but I’m sure that would be unwelcome. A couple of passages, then:
I don’t believe Master Ultan makes an appearance outside of Chapter VI, but he made an indelible impression on me, and deserves to be in this august list of curators.
Elizabeth Wintern, the heroine from the movie Thrill Seekers, in which a reporter and a librarian discover a mysterious man who keeps appearing at disasters throughout history– and then he shows up in the present. I like Liz because she’s intelligent, resourceful, brave, knows how to use power tools, and defies a lot of stereotypes about librarians.
Roshni Singh, the librarian from the Morrigan Crow book series by Jessica Townsend. At the Gobleian Library, the inhabitants of the books sometimes escape and wreak havoc, so it’s really not the best place for a school trip. Fortunately, Morrigan and her friends have a competent librarian to guide them.
You left out the Hell’s Library series by A. J. Hackwith. My favorite books (and I am a librarian) of all time.
Irene Winters of the Invisible Library Series belongs on the list. There the library collects (steals) various versions of books across the multiverse to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos. In addition the creatures of chaos tend to get stuck in their own creative identification and stereotype. So far all have been good reading.
A most excellent list (My personal favourites from it are Mrs Evelyn Carnahan O’Connel, Doctor Horace – OOK! – ahem, The Librarian of Unseen University and – my Personal Favourite – Mr Rupert Giles, late of the Watcher’s Council, the person on this list whose example one would most like to live up to*).
*Well, y’know, except for the bit about demonic possession for kicks.
I’m afraid no further suggestions occur to me, because I’m too busy imagining The Librarian casually popping up in the libraries run by all those other characters on it (and, more entertainingly, their reactions to same; I’m betting Lucien would be the only one to regard this sort of thing as perfectly normal and I’d bet cash money Buffy Summers would be one of the few unwise enough to call The Librarian a monkey – in all innocence, to be fair – quite able to give the old fellow a surprise when he tries pulling his usual routine**).
**Being a Slayer, Miss Summers is probably quite capable of pulling his arms out of their sockets.
How about Henry DeTamble from The Time Traveller’s Wife, or Professor Harold Postmartin from the Rivers of London books?
I also really appreciated the librarian who put Nita in the way of the titular manual in Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard.
@11
in addition to Irene, all the other visible librarians of the Invisible Library, particularly Coppelia.
And it’s Thursday Next, not Tuesday, and not her son Friday.
Twilight Sparkle: unicorn, librarian, lives in a library inside a tree, saves the world if she is not on “booksortation” (book sorting vacation)
Oook!
The original Conan the Librarian from Reading Rainbow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2qZrz_3LOA
The Albertian Order of Leibowitz deserves mention, one would think…
In middle grade fantasy, there are the two Library of Ever books by Zeno Alexander. In the first, protagonist Lenora encounters a librarian in the magical library with all books from all worlds, and she also becomes a Fourth Assistant Apprentice Librarian herself. In the second, the new management of the magical library is evil, and Lenora joins the resistance which is working to liberate knowledge.
At #3, I agree on Read Or Die!
Morgan Le Fay is a “magical librarian” in the Magic Tree House books.
The librarians of the Galactic Patrol, led by Nadine Hostetter Ernley, win a bet for Galactic Coordinator and Gray Lensman Kim Kinnison against his posthuman son Kit, by finding sufficient information about a mystery planet (that had been obscure to Kim for decades) in less than five days.
Favorite librarian– the sesame street librarian that cookie monster visits. Check YouTube for a sketch.
Sybel in the forgotten beasts of eld by mckillip.
What about The Librarians in the Alcatraz series?
@24 – indeed. Here’s to the fabulous Ms. Fletcher – aka Shasta Smedry.
The City of Silk and Steel, by Mike, Linda and Louise Carey, has a librarian called Rem, who weeps tears of ink and can see the future.
A long time ago in 2005, in the massivley-multiplayer web based game Urban Dead, I decided that in such a horrorscape, the Library must be sacrosanct. And so I started using all my turns each day to role-play the Head Librarian of the “Dowell Library.”
And others came. And became librarians as well. Over the years librarians have come and gone, and the narrative has changes and my name has been forgotten, but the last time I logged in after a decade away, there were still librarians in Dowell Library.
Do Well, Dowell Library!
Oh dear me no, this character founded the Quartly Study Group; it was an alt that was at Dowell Library. That’s what I get for not playing the game in more than a decade.
One of the deadliest Librarians out there is Adele Mundy of David Drake’s RCN series. Not only a librarian pressed into service as a spy but a deadly pistol shot to boot. Fun reads in the vein of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin stories but with a SF flavor. These are David Drake books though so they do have his typical level of grittiness typical for his writing.
Iku Kasahara and friends from the manga series Library Wars deserve a shoutout.
Can I put in a plug for a scholarly book on libraries and librarians in science fiction and fantasy? Coming soon (as soon as I finish the index) from Mythopoeic Press is _Lore-Masters and Librarians in Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Gedenkschrift for David Oberhelman_, edited by Jason Fisher and Janet Brennan Croft. Lots of excellent essays, covering many of the stalwart librarians mentioned above!
John Dalmas’ dedication to his historical, ARMFELT: A Drama of the Great Northern War, included this:
And my thanks to librarians, beginning at the community library in rural Liljendal, in Finland, who pulled and photocopied an extremely helpful book on the campaign for only the cost of the paper. And for encouraging this in-over-his-head American novelist in an unlikely project. It was one of them who first suggested that this novel would find an interested audience in Scandinavia.
(It was at Armfelt’s farm at Liljendal that the general spent his final, more peaceful years. The farm, the site of a memorial, is just up the road a hundred meters or so from the library. I stood on the foundation of the farmhouse and looked out over a landscape which had not, I suspect, greatly changed over the intervening 260 years—a view he must have looked at innumerable times. What a marvelous and inspiring privilege!)
In Norway to an administrator in the Oslo library, whose name and exact professional position I have unforgivably forgotten. We met and talked on the train from Stjørdal to Trondheim, and her interest and encouragement were very welcome. She too suggested —without prompting!—that this book would find a Scandinavian audience, readers interested in what an American author might do with this harrowing piece of Scandinavian history.
(And who knows better than librarians what interests readers?)
Also in the beautiful Norwegian backcountry, to the Tydalen librarian (located at the middle school). Her English was very good. I asked if she had a Norwegian novel that might expand my sense of the Armfelt campaign. Yes, she said, she did.
“May I photocopy it?”
“You could, except our copier isn’t working, and won’t be fixed till Tuesday. Why don’t I sign it out to you? You can get it copied in America and mail it back.” Can you imagine? I accepted the offer eagerly, and of course I did mail the book back; I’d have fought to the death to protect it.
She also asked me to send a copy of my novel. I hope it doesn’t disappoint her.
And to the hostess-caretaker at the rustic timberline lodge at Nordaune. An older lady, she spoke no English, and I almost no Norwegian, but she understood my clumsy halting Swedish, and spoke slowly and carefully herself, keeping it simple and repeating as necessary, so that I could follow her Norwegian. She also loaned me her personal copy of the local history, so I could read its chapter on the activities of Armfelt’s army in that locale.
https://www.johndalmas.com/media/1/application/pdf/original/9_1_1_6_armfelt.pdf
What a great list! Here are a few more:
Mr. Penumbra from Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan – all about an ancient library with a hidden message. Nice and quirky.
Aurora Teagarden – from the series by Charlaine Harris. Professional librarian by day…amateur crime solver in her spare time.
Cussy Carter – from The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek – Kim Michele Richardson. Cussy is a librarian who delivers books by pack mule in Kentucky. She’s also blue.
From a recent tome worthy of the list, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library – Mrs. Elm, the main character Nora’s grade school librarian. She guides Nora through the changes and mysteries of the world in between.