Guardians of Lore

Knowledge-Keepers, Libraries, and the Moral Work of Information in Genre Fiction

Abstract

Genre fiction often turns to librarians, archivists, and knowledge institutions when information becomes unstable and ethically charged. Drawing on a curated corpus of fiction across fantasy, science fiction, horror, dystopian, and historical traditions, this thematic critical review uses close reading and interpretive synthesis to show how knowledge-keepers stage conflicts over access, censorship, preservation, authority, and collective memory. Informed by LIS scholarship, it argues that these figures emerge at narrative crisis points, are increasingly cast as heroes of access, expose the dangers of gatekeeping and concentrated informational power, and position libraries as liminal threshold spaces for moral testing and transformation.