the loveliest librarian

One of the quirks I’d developed over the past four years was an aversion to touching people, especially strangers, so rather than accept his hand, I bent to pick up an imaginary paper clip on the floor. When I stood, his hand was no longer extended.

“The girl at the desk said I needed to talk to Ophelia Jensen. Are you Ophelia?” he asked. When I nodded, his eyes widened in surprise.

“What’s wrong?”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. You don’t look like a librarian.”

“Really? And what exactly is a librarian supposed to look like?”

“You know, older, hair in a bun, reading glasses on a a chain, pencil stuck behind the ear.” He smiled, eying my clothes. “I’ve never met a librarian wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘Tact is for people not witty enough to use sarcasm.’ Or one with a name like Ophelia.”

I looked down at my clothes. He was right. Not my normal librarian look. Mentally, I pulled my tattered dignity around me and stood straighter. “I work alone in my office on Fridays.” That wasn’t any of his business. Why was I explaining? “But it seems the Dewey decimal system is beyond my assistant’s scope of understanding, so someone has to put these books away.” [p. 5]

Title: Witch Way to Murder: An Ophelia and Abby Mystery
Creator: Damsgaard, Shirley
Publisher: Avon Books
Date: 2005
Type: Text

I’ve always had the greatest respect for Mrs. Canard, but it doubled over the last week. The woman must have worked nonstop for the last thirty years. Being a librarian is way tougher than I ever imagined.

In addition to answering questions over the phone and in person, most of which people could have used Google for, there was an extraordinarily long list of tasks that must be performed each day. From cataloguing and reviewing titles to researching and managing receipts of purchased items. Then there are adult and children’s programs, and maintaining the collections. This is a private library and she had several collections from the literary and art worlds.

Overwhelming, to say the least. [p. 161]

Title: Like a Charm
Creator: Havens, Candace, 1963-
Publisher: Berkley Books
Date: 2008
Type: Text

He looked around the room and clicked his tongue in patent disapproval. “Oh my! You have let things slip, haven’t you?”

My cheeks flushed, even though I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of the basement. Once a librarian, always a librarian, I guess. The cascading books did make me feel vaguely uneasy. Like I’d been caught red-handed ducking out of work early, leaving part of my job undone.

Wait.

A statue of a cat had just transformed into a living, breathing man before my very eyes, and I was worried about shelving books according to the Dewey Decimal system? I shook my head. “Just a second,” I said. “Before you start to criticize me, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, I take it you’re a familiar?”

“And I take it you’re a witch.”

“No, I’m a librarian.” [p. 51-52]

Title: Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft
Creator: Klasky, Mindy L.
Publisher: Red Dress Ink
Date: 2006
Type: Text

He kicked Fox in the head, knocked her down, and tied her to a card catalog. He stuffed a handful of moss and dirt into her mouth so she couldn’t say anything, and then he accused her of plotting to murder Faithful Margaret by magic. He said Fox was more deceitful than a Forbidden Book. He cut off Fox’s tail and her ears and he ran her through with the poison-edged, dog-headed knife that he and Fox had stolen from his mother’s secret house. Then he left Fox there, tied to the card catalog, limp and bloody, her beautiful head hanging down. He sneezed (Prince Wing is allergic to swordplay) and walked off into the stacks. The librarians crept out of their hiding places. They untied Fox and cleaned off her face. They held a mirror to her mouth, but the mirror stayed clear and unclouded.

When the librarians pulled Prince Wing’s leviathan sword out of the tree, the statue of George Washington staggered over and picked up Fox in his arms. He trucked her ears and tail into the capacious pockets of his birdshit-stained, verdigris riding coat. He carried Fox down seventeen flights of stairs, past the enchanted-and-disagreeable Sphinx on the eighth floor, past the enchanted-and-stormy underground sea on the third floor, past the even-more-enchanted checkout desk on the first floor, and through the hammered brass doors of the Free People’s World Tree Library. Nobody in The Library, not in one single episode, has ever gone outside. The Library is full of all the sorts of things that one usually has to go outside to enjoy: trees and lakes and grottoes and fields and mountains and precipices (and full of indoor thing as well, like books, of course). Outside The Library, everything is dusty and red and alien, as if George Washington has carried Fox out of The Library and onto the surface of Mars. [p. 201]

Title: Magic for Beginners
Creator: Link, Kelly
Relation: Magic for Beginners
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Date: 2005
Type: Text

Lirael had seen some of the Library, on carefully escorted excursions with the rest of her year gathering. She had always hankered to enter the doors they passed, to step across the red rope barriers that marked corridors or tunnels where only authorized librarians might pass.

“Why do you want to work there?” asked Sanar.

“It—it’s interesting,” stammered Lirael, uncertain how she should reply. She didn’t want to admit that the Library would be the best place to hide away from other Clayr. And in the back of her mind, she hadn’t forgotten that in the Library she might find a spell to painlessly end her life. Not now, of course, now she knew that the Sight might come. But later, if she grew older and older without the Sight and the black despair welled up again inside her, as it had done earlier today.

“It is interesting,” replied Sanar. “But there are dangerous things and dangerous knowledge in the Library too. Does that bother you?”

“I don’t know,” said Lirael, honestly. “It would depend on what it was. But I really would like to work there.” She paused and then said in a very low voice, “I do want to be busy, as you said, and forget about not having the Sight.”

The Clayr turned away from Lirael then, and gathered together in a tight circle that excluded her, speaking in whispers. Lirael watched anxiously, aware that something momentous was going to happen to her life. The day had been horrible, but now she had hope again. [p. 75-76]

Title: Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr
Creator: Nix, Garth
Publisher: Harper Trophy
Date: 2002
Type: Text