LIBRARIAN
Workstation: Lectern|14 trades across 5 levelsBiome-specific
The most important villager for enchantments. Sells enchanted books from the full enchantment pool, plus bookshelves, lanterns, name tags, and clocks. Buys paper and books.
What is the Librarian?
The Librarian is one of Minecraft's 13 working villager professions, and an unemployed adult villager takes the job the moment it claims a Lectern — the block that doubles as its job-site marker. Place that lectern within range of a jobless villager and it will path to the block, change into librarian clothing, and open its Novice-tier offers. Remove the lectern before any deal is struck and the villager drops the profession again.
Across its 5 career tiers this villager exposes 14 distinct trades in total, and it is primarily a supplier that sells finished goods for emeralds. It will take paper, book, ink sac, and book and quill off your hands for emeralds, and in return it sells bookshelf, enchanted book, lantern, and glass, and more. Because the Librarian is biome-specific, the exact goods it offers (and their tints, patterns, or stock) shift with the biome its village sits in, so a desert Librarian will not always match a plains one.
For players farming currency, the Librarian's quickest route to an emerald is handing over 2 book and quills at the Expert tier, which is worth keeping in mind when you decide whether to build a trading hall around this profession.
| Input | Output | Price | Uses | Edition | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
24x  Paper |  1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
| 9 Emeralds | 1x  Bookshelf | 9 | 12 | |||
| 5 Emeralds | 5-64 | 12 | Random enchantment from full pool. Price varies by enchantment level. Treasure enchantments (Mending, Frost Walker, Soul Speed, Swift Sneak) are possible. Formula: base_price = 2 * enchant_level + floor(random * 5 * enchant_level + random * 5). Treasure enchantments double the price. |
Enchanted Book Price Formula
The Librarian's enchanted book trade is randomly selected from the full enchantment pool, including treasure enchantments like Mending, Frost Walker, Soul Speed, and Swift Sneak.
base_price = 2 * enchant_level + floor(random * 5 * enchant_level + random * 5)
Treasure enchantments: price is doubled
To get a specific enchantment, place a lectern, check the trade, then break and re-place the lectern to re-roll. See our Villager Rolling Guide for details. Check all available enchantments at enchantments.astroworldmc.com.
Librarian trades by tier (Novice to Master)
A Librarian climbs five career ranks, and each rank it reaches adds a fresh batch of offers on top of the ones below it. In vanilla 1.21 the experience gates are fixed: the Novice tier opens immediately with 3 offers, 10 more trade-XP points unlock Apprentice (3 offers), 60 more trade-XP points unlock Journeyman (3 offers), 80 more trade-XP points unlock Expert (4 offers), and 100 more trade-XP points unlock Master (1 offer). The full price list for every rank is laid out below; emerald costs marked as a range roll randomly within that band each time the trade is generated or restocked.
Tier 1 · Novice
3 trades · available from the startSell to villager: 24 papers for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: bookshelf for 9 emeralds and enchanted book for 5-64 emeralds.
Tier 2 · Apprentice
3 trades · 10 cumulative XPSell to villager: 4 books for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: enchanted book for 5-64 emeralds and lantern for 1 emerald.
Tier 3 · Journeyman
3 trades · 70 cumulative XPSell to villager: 5 ink sacs for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: enchanted book for 5-64 emeralds and 4 glass for 1 emerald.
Tier 4 · Expert
4 trades · 150 cumulative XPSell to villager: 2 book and quills for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: enchanted book for 5-64 emeralds, clock for 10 emeralds, and compass for 2 emeralds.
Tier 5 · Master
1 trade · 250 cumulative XPBuy from villager: name tag for 20 emeralds.
Librarian trading tips
- Fastest emerald income: stockpile book and quill and sell it in stacks of 2. This Librarian buy slot can be used 12 times before it locks, so a single villager returns up to 12 emeralds per cycle before you must wait for it to work its lectern and restock (which it does up to twice a day).
- Best-value purchase: the cheapest thing this villager sells is lantern for 1 emerald at the Apprentice tier — a reliable sink for spare emeralds.
- Save the diamonds for Master: the headline trade is enchanted book for 5-64 emeralds, so it pays to level this villager all the way to Master before spending big.
- Re-roll the enchantment: the enchanted gear this villager offers is rolled randomly. Until you complete a single trade with it the offers stay unlocked, so you can break and replace the lectern on an unemployed, never-traded villager to reshuffle what it sells. Browse every possible enchantment at enchantments.astroworldmc.com.
- Cure for permanent discounts: let a zombie infect this Librarian on Hard difficulty (guaranteed), trap it safely, hit it with a Splash Potion of Weakness, then feed it a Golden Apple. After the 3-5 minute cure every price drops sharply — often to a single emerald even for its priciest goods. See the full method in our zombie-villager discount guide.
- Leveling up: trading is the only way a Librarian earns career XP. It needs 10 XP to leave Novice, 70 to reach Journeyman, 150 for Expert, and 250 for Master; a green badge becomes a gold one as it ranks up. The villager must be able to reach its lectern to restock and gain XP.
- Locking and resetting: the very first completed trade locks this villager's offers for good. If you want to reset them, do it while it is still Novice and untraded — remove the lectern so it forgets the job, then give it back to generate a new Novice list. Our villager rolling guide walks through it.