Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS

St. Jerome in his Study, 1480 - By Domenico Ghirlandaio - 
Italian Artist - Ognissanti, Florence, Italy - SAINTS - 1480 - fresco

DiBello, Amy

Maxwell, N. (2006). Sacred stacks: The higher purpose of libraries and librarianship. 

Chicago: American Library Association.

Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS, M.A., is a Jewish librarian who maximized

her time during her tenure at the Catholic University, Barry University,

by getting a degree in Catholic theology.Her book Sacred Stacks: 
The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship is a treatise about the 
spiritual and sacred qualities of libraries and librarianship.

Maxwell begins with an examination of how many Americans identify as

"spiritual, but not religious". The sacred and secular blend of libraries is something

most library patrons have identified and expressed to me over the years.

I also consider libraries to be sacred and feel blessed to have meaningful work

in our admirable profession.

There are the patron saints of librarianship to look up to St. Jerome,

St. Catherine of Alexandria, and most notably St. Lawrence,

who would not surrender the archives to Imperial Roman officials in 258 BCE,

which resulted in his being grilled alive. St. Lawrence is famous for telling

his torturers that he was done on one side and to turn him over.

Sacred Stacks equates librarians as confessors through the art of the reference

interview and social justice warriors fiercely protecting patrons' privacy.

Melvil Dewey, creator of his famous Dewey decimal classification system

referred to the education of librarians as “the suburbs of the holy field.”

Librarians do not have supernatural powers, such as parting the Red Sea,

but their knowledge and instincts with cataloging, classification and

saving patrons from drowning in fruitless Google searches, earns Maxwell’s

accolades of “Representing the universe of knowledge through organized systems

for thousands of years.”