librarian
Americannoun
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librarians
plural
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a person trained in library science and engaged in library service.
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a person in charge of a library, especially the chief administrative officer of a library.
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a person who is in charge of any specialized body of literature, as a collection of musical scores.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of librarian
Explanation
A librarian is someone who works in a library maintaining books and information and lending them to patrons. If you have a research project ahead of you, make friends with the librarian. There are many different types of librarians, from archivists who care for, organize, and lend very old or valuable documents; to school librarians who organize book-related projects and buy books and electronic resources that are appropriate for the students they serve. To become a librarian, you might want to get an advanced degree in library science. The Latin root of librarian is liber, "book." In the 17th century, a librarian was known as a "library-keeper."
Vocabulary lists containing librarian
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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A librarian in an Arab town in northern Israel, Maysa Nasser never thought to vote in national elections.
From Barron's ● Oct. 28, 2026
PBS named him as resident librarian in 2024, and in 2025, he became the new face of “Reading Rainbow.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026
By 2023, he was the internet’s favorite librarian and garnered more than 1 million followers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026
Batter’s path was set when, at college, a librarian introduced him to a slender, exquisitely fashioned poetry quarterly called Peck & Peck: “about eighty pages of—and I know this sounds ridiculously dramatic—throat-grabbing, life-changing words.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
She finds work as a secretary to a vice president at a big bank, then becomes a librarian at an engineering company, where she is paid a decent salary for the first time.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Rather than hiring additional librarians, the district’s high-school librarian spends a few hours a week at each of its K-8 schools.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2026
The USC union, United Faculty-UAW, represents roughly 2,700 non-tenure-track faculty across more than 20 schools and the USC libraries, including lecturers, researchers, clinicians, librarians and pharmacists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
The East SOS Foundation, a Ukrainian humanitarian and human-rights organization, has gathered testimony from librarians and teachers who saw books destroyed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
And what about support staff like teaching assistants, canteen staff and librarians?
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
He stopped in front of one of the librarians at the nearest counter.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
