There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything. Jorge Luis Borges
About This Quote

The quote above is about an official searching for documents, but I’m not sure what it would be used for. Surely, the idea that someone will be tired from their journey is an exaggeration. The quote could also be used to describe people who are searching for information about finding out who’s done something wrong or what’s going on in the world. It’s odd that the example given is the “librarian of galleries and stairs” because I can think of no library full of stairs.

This particular library should probably have books on the subject, or it would just be a boring place. If this text was about an employee at a company who was searching for something that would help them do their job better, it might be more appropriate to use “the librarian of archives and records.”

Source: The Library Of Babel

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