Drake, David. With the Lightnings (Riverdale, NY: Baen, 1999) 400 p.

Young and beautiful, Adele Mundy has attained the position of Librarian to the Elector of the planet Kostroma. Her job is to organize the library which consists of crates of books in a bare room. Adele is organized and is an expert information gatherer, a skill which is useful beyond the bounds of the library.

Doyon, Stephanie. The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole (New York: Simon & Schuster, c2005) 375 p.

Kitty Higgins is Cedar Hole's librarian. She prefers not to shush unruly children.

Instead, Kitty enforced her rule with a quiet dignity—she allowed three consecutive violations before sitting at her old pine desk to type curt (but polite) letters to the offending families, informing them that their children were not to return without adult supervision (expressly defined therein as a parent or legal guardian and not a slightly older but equally rambunctious sibling). (p. 32).

Kitty takes young Robert under her wing and soon the bright and energetic lad is helping her type her letters. When Robert grows up and becomes a newspaper journalist he continues to promote the Cedar Hole Library. His final gesture is to have a beautiful desk custom built for Kitty Higgins.

Downs, Anne Miller. So Stands the Rock (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, c1939) 341 p.

Miss Matilda Lawrence is a teacher and librarian in the village of Winston, Vermont. When a poor farmer wants to read books to improve his mind Tilly gets books for him and encourages him. Later she invests in a printing press so he can edit and print Winston's first newspaper.

Douglas, Laramee. A Death in Dulcinea (Victoria, Tex.: Alligator Tree Press, c2005) 233 p.

Darby Matheson is the retired school librarian in Dulcinea Texas. “... the last time I wore a size six, I also wore pigtails and played jacks on the sidewalk. I tried to get down to a size ten once, but the diet caused my fingernails to break, and my hair looked like a hairball coughed up by one of my cats; so for health reasons, I keep my weight hovering around one-sixty. On my five-foot frame that makes me just a tad on the non-svelte side.” (p. 7).

Her library experience makes her ideal for solving mysteries.

I'm a librarian for crying out loud. Do you know how many times students have walked into my library and said, 'I need a book'? That's what I get to start with. 'I need a book.' My job for the past twenty-five years has been to discover exactly what that child needed, and I did it by asking questions. (p. 81).

Darby also compares the reference interview with fishing: getting the hook into her student and letting him run with the line for a while, then reeling him in.

Douglas, Kirk. Last Tango in Brooklyn (New York: Warner Books, 1994) 340 p.

Yes, Kirk Douglas the actor. Ellen Riccio is the Medical Librarian at St. Joseph's Hospital in Brooklyn. We don't get to see much of her work in the library, but she is helping her boyfriend, a heart surgeon, do research for a book he hopes to publish. Ellen is five-foot-six with a "tomboy frame." "She knew men found her attractive. She looked a great deal younger than thirty-four with her smooth, round face, large hazel eyes, and shoulder-length, dark brown hair." (p. 20-21). When she does a MedLine search her fingers quickly dance over the keyboard. Ellen is full of life and fun, and she has a well-developed sense of humor. She regularly feeds a group of homeless men.

Dolson, Hildegarde. Please Omit Funeral (New York: Lippincott, 1975) 182 p.

Censorship strikes Wingate, Connecticut when a citizen decides there are too many "dirty" books at the Wingate High School library. The librarian, Miss Marcy Coving, is young and beautiful. She is often seen at the beach in a bikini. She is "quick and graceful." "her hair, which was the pale yellow of a newly sliced moon, was pulled back severely and tied in a hank. On her, it didn't look severe." (p. 4).

She remembered an ex-English Lit teacher she'd met in library school. The woman had told her emotionally, "they wanted me to teach a course in the Modern Novel--to relate to the present. I'd have had to stand up there and talk to the students as if I considered this dreadful modern stuff literature. And I couldn't do it, I simply couldn't. So I'm going to be a librarian."

The logic, or illogic, of it had fascinated Marcy. "But those same books will be in a library."

And the woman had said on a note of triumph, "All I'll have to do is check them in and out. I won't have to read them or talk about them." (p. 134).

Marcy simply believes in the "right to read" and resolves to replace books which are burned by an indignant parent.

Doig, Ivan. Work Song (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010) 275 p.

In the years after the First World War Butte Montana was the copper mining capital of the world. The Anaconda Mining Company does not want labor unions threatening their profits but the miners want a fair wage and safe working conditions.

Into this hostile atmosphere walks Morrie Morgan looking for a job. He finds one at the Butte Public Library. The library is run by Samuel S. Sandison, an ex-rancher with a passion for books. Sandison is eccentric and difficult to work with but has built the best library west of Chicago. He is assisted by colleagues with more traditional qualifications. Miss Runyon is the matron of the Reading Room. “Clapping her chained eyeglasses onto her formidable nose, she directed: 'Come along, you had better know the cataloguing system.'” (p. 54). The staff also includes young Smithers on the periodicals desk and the flirty Miss Mitchell from the cataloguing section.