“A strange crew – these people who come up to the desk: the man who wants the complete history of Piscataway Township from the year 1837 to date; the woman who is reading Zola volume by volume simply because it is in the restricted section; the little girl who asks naively for a ‘real good story with lots and lots of love in it, for mama.’ Sometimes, dealing as you must at close quarters with their individual idiosyncrasies, you wonder whether there are any really discriminating readers at all; sometimes, in a benevolent mood, you wonder almost reverently at the consuming passion for reading that seems to be inherent in so many and such diverse people.”

The New York herald. (New York, N.Y.), 17 Dec. 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045774/1922-12-17/ed-1/seq-84/>

An idle search for librarian news through Chronicling America yields plenty of results that catalog the history of librarianship in America, from descriptions of expected wages, to career paths, and differing responsibilities based on population. You will also find musings from the librarian’s perspective on daily life and patron demands. The sentiments are eerily duplicative of modern day-in-the-life sketches that can be found on the internet of librarian blogs today.