Dictionary

bibliothecary en · NOUN · etymology 1

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin bibliothēcārius (“librarian”), from bibliothēca (“library”) + -ārius, from Ancient Greek βῐβλῐοθήκη (bĭblĭothḗkē, “library”), from βῐβλῐ́ον (bĭblĭ́on) + θήκη (thḗkē). Compare French bibliothécaire and Italian and Spanish bibliotecario. By surface analysis, bibliotheca + -ary or bibliothec + -ary.

Meanings

1. (archaic) A librarian.
   • More important, though, is the blow [Emma] Boettcher’s win strikes for education, academic rigor, book smarts.[…]The nation’s bibliothecaries are no doubt fist-pumping her victory this week. 2019 June 9, The Editorial Board, USA Today, “I’ll take ‘The Importance of Education’ for $1,000, Alex”, in The News-Press, volume 135th, number 165, page 40A:
   • Hence we went to the house of Hippolito Vitellesco (afterwards Bibliothecary of yᵉ Vatican Library)[…] 1644 December 3 (Gregorian calendar), John Evelyn, “[Diary entry for 24 November 1644]”, in William Bray, editor, Memoirs, Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, […], 2nd edition, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […]; and sold by John and Arthur Arch, […], published 1819, →OCLC, page 120:
   • “You can trust Zarifar,” he said. “He’s as close to a bibliothecary as we’ve got.” / “Are you serious?” Torrin asked incredulously. He could understand the tallfolk races patronizing the library, perhaps even serving as its unofficial bibliothecary. They were in Sundasz, after all. But not someone of a race that—if Val’tissa was to believed—had once been drow. 2012, Lisa Smedman, chapter 11, in The Gilded Rune (Forgotten Realms), Renton, Wash.: Wizards of the Coast, →ISBN:
   • Specifically, without the assistance of those bibliothecaries who toil at Florida International University, Miami-Dade Public Library System, and the University of Miami, my task of writing a fact-filled but readable guide to the consular institution would not have been as enjoyable as it was. 2020, Cami Green Hofstadter, “Acknowledgments”, in Modern Consuls, Local Communities and Globalization, Palgrave Pivot, →ISBN, page vii:
   • Bibliothecaries in the audience are likely to shudder when Dorothy (ejected from the whites-only section of a library) steals a computer-programming manual and justifies it to her son by saying, “I pay taxes. And taxes paid for everything in that library. You can’t take something you’ve already paid for.” 2017 February 17, Charlotte O’Sullivan, “True story of the black backroom girls in the American space race”, in Evening Standard, page 34:
   • What I said in my epistle to my reverend friend and master, Doctor James, the incomparably industrious and learned bibliothecary of Oxford, I profess still; but I hold those canons of the apostles uncanonical. 1620, Joseph Hall, The Honour of the Married Clergy:

Forms

Relateds

bibliothecarial · bibliothecarian · bibliotheca

bibliothecary en · ADJ · etymology 2

Etymology

From Latin bibliothēca (“library”) + -ary (“of or relating to”).

Meanings

1. (not-comparable) Of or relating to libraries.
   • I am not alluding to the fragmentation of specialties; I speak of the insignificance of a certain verbal grouping. The individuals who are engaged in disparate pursuits called philosophy can be as broad as you like in their concerns, but the spread of their concerns need be neither coextensive nor concentric with the spread of the administrative and bibliothecary term ‘philosophy’. 1975, W[illard] V[an Orman] Quine, “A Letter to Mr. [Robert] Ostermann”, in Charles J. Bontempo, S. Jack Odell, editors, The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, →ISBN, page 228:
   • My performance of posthumous justice to QZX., my late deceased and much deplored friend, has been somewhat interrupted by a short absence from the peaceful privacy I enjoy at Leighton Buzzard. Your ready compliance, however, with my desire, that these biographical jewels should not lie locked up in a bibliothecary cabinet, has made me feel that I am enabled to he a faithful executor to QZX.’s fame. 1820 November 1, Giles Middlestitch [pseudonym; William Maginn or R. F. St. Barbe], “Semihoræ Biographicæ. No. II. To Christopher North [pseudonym; John Wilson], Esq.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume VIII, number XLV (December 1820), Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies, […], published 1821, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 252:
   • The shaping of Imperial culture through a bibliothecary and stipendiary initiative legitimizes and authorizes a parallel investment by the Valois-Angoulême court. In each case, a policy of state acts as a transformational agent in the very heart of the cultural heritage to encourage it to conceive and flourish. Libraries burgeon; talent and genius are imbued with fixed monetary worth and made to transfuse the cultural reserves – in this case Greek, Hebrew and Latin scholarship within the university body. 2015, Glyn P[eter] Norton, “Francis I’s Royal Readers: Translation and the Triangulation of Power in Early Renaissance France (1533–4)”, in Tania Demtriou, Rowan Tomlinson, editors, The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500–1660 (Early Modern Literature in History), London: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, pages 47–48:

Synonyms

bibliothecal · librarial · bibliothecarian · bibliothetical · bibliothetic · bibliothecarial