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A few years ago, I was preparing a web site for the first semester of studies in Library and Information Science. For fun, I almost included a list of some fictional materials -- books and films, mainly -- that the new student's could have a look at over the summer if they wanted some (entertaining) input on the role of the librarian. Particularly, the genres of science fiction and fantasy seem to provide multiple amusing and thought-provoking examples of librarians and information systems. The list of suggestions never made it into the web site, but the thought has remained, so here's a beginning of a list that can be added to and updated by and by. I will gladly accept suggestions for other fictional librarians to add to the list.

• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, the librarian at the Unseen University illustrates the benefits to a practicing librarian of being an orang-utan. (See e.g. The Light Fantastic or Sourcery.)
• The wonderfully literary world of literatech detective Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book and sequals features the Cat (formerly known as the Cheshire Cat until they changed the county borders and he became the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat) as librarian of The Great Library.
• China Miéville's novels include several settings of interest to information science. In Perdido Street Station is mentioned Palgolak, a pleasant god of knowledge, whose interests are clearly focused on the collection, cataloguing, and dissemination of information. In The Scar, the protagonist Bellis Coldwine makes her living on Armada as a librarian at Grand Gears Library.
• Jo Dereske has written a series of detective novels featuring Miss Zukas, who solves crime and puzzles by engaging stereotypical librarian precision and meticulousness.
• The female star, Evie, in blockbuster The Mummy (Stephen Sommers, 1999), is a researcher and librarian, obviously cut out to be an action heroine.
• Speaking of movies, Kathrine Hepburn plays a brisk librarian at a TV station research department fighting computerisation in Desk Set (Walter Lang, 1957). Spencer Tracy is the consultant trying to convince her computerisation is a good thing... (thanks to Jutta for the tip!)

Thanks to Stefan and Karen for suggestions and discussions!