As the protector and administrator of acquired knowledge, the librarian is among the oldest vocations known to humanity. Although in antiquity it was often slaves, and in the middle ages primarily monks, who tended the libraries, after the invention of the printing press the task increasingly became a bourgeois profession. Among others, renowned intellectuals such as Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the Brothers Grimm worked as librarians. A first true vocational training programme was instituted in Munich in 1884, and was formally institutionalised in Prussia in 1909. Today there are different librarian career tracks and service levels. Acquisition, cataloguing and use of media are the three main fields of activity.

In spite of their cultural-historical contributions, the specific conditions of library work have led to a public stereotype of librarians as schoolmarmish or eccentric. The clichés of an eccentric, aloof bookworm or mousy woman with horn-rimmed spectacles and tied-up hair have become staples of literature and film. They are rooted in the hermetic solitude of the librarian's vocation in earlier times, in the role of the librarian as the guardian of the knowledge of past eras and in its association with the supposedly insensate sphere of the intellect. In contrast to this is a more positive self-image of librarians who, against the backdrop of the drastic changes to the profession of recent years, now see themselves as modern service providers.