They seemed to be quiet types, the women and men in rubber-soled shoes. Their favorite word, after literacy, was privacy--for their patrons and themselves.

There's a magical part of it (writing obituaries), too, which is you're trying to breathe life back into someone who has just died. You're trying to conjure them up.

I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. The would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.

We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing’s certain, though: if we throw it away, it’s gone.

Librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy.

In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste.

This is the greatest and most fraught romance of modern society, the marriage between the IT staff and those who depend on them.