The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650)

One of the earliest English-language pleas for professional librarianship, this 1650 treatise imagines libraries as engines of both intellectual and spiritual transformation. John Dury, a Puritan divine writing amid the chaos of the English Civil War, argues that the library keeper's true calling is not profit but the advancement of learning and the preparation of humanity for a divine millennium. He offers a radical vision: librarians as stewards of knowledge, creating order through meticulous cataloguing, fostering scholarly collaboration, and democratizing access to books. Dury's critique of mercenary keepers driven by financial gain feels strikingly contemporary, prefiguring modern debates about the purpose of information institutions. For historians of the book, scholars of 17th-century England, and anyone curious about the origins of library science, this brief work illuminates how early modern thinkers conceived the relationship between knowledge, power, and the public good.