Minecraft Librarian Villager Trades
Workstation: Lectern · Java Edition 1.21
Full list of Librarian villager trades by level, with exact emerald prices. Most players come here for Emerald. Want to search across every profession instead? Use the trade finder.
What a Librarian sells
What a Librarian buys (sell these for emeralds)
Getting a Librarian: the Lectern
The lectern is crafted from four wooden slabs and one bookshelf, so you need three books (and therefore nine sugar cane plus three leather) before your first librarian. Lecterns also generate inside village houses, which is why most villages already have one or two librarians.
How to reroll and lock Librarian trades
Librarians are the profession people reroll most. Put an unemployed villager in a one-block cell, place the lectern, open the trade screen and check the enchanted book. If it isn't the book you want, break the lectern and place it again — the villager loses and regains the job and rolls a fresh offer. The moment you buy or sell anything, the book is locked forever, so trade a single piece of paper to lock a Mending or Unbreaking III librarian immediately.
Best Librarian trades by level
- Novice — 24 paper for 1 emerald — Sugar cane is the easiest crop to automate and three cane make three paper, so this is the cheapest steady emerald income in the game.
- Novice — enchanted book (5–19 emeralds + book) — The only rerollable trade for treasure enchants like Mending, which you can't get from an enchanting table.
- Expert — compass and clock for 1 emerald each — A clock normally costs 4 gold; buying one is a cheap way to make Woodland Mansion maps with a cartographer too.
- Master — Name Tag for 20 emeralds — Name tags otherwise only come from fishing, chests and wandering luck; naming a mob is the only way to stop it despawning.
Librarian emerald farm idea
Build a trading hall of 6–10 librarians, each locked to a different book (Mending, Efficiency V, Protection IV, Sharpness V, Feather Falling IV, Silk Touch, Fortune III, Looting III). Feed them paper from a zero-tick-free observer sugar cane farm and you can buy every endgame book on demand.
Java vs Bedrock Librarian trades
On Bedrock, librarians follow the same reroll rule, but a level-up can add a second enchanted book offer, so a master Bedrock librarian often carries more book trades than its Java counterpart. In Java 1.21 there is also an optional Villager Trade Rebalance experiment where a librarian's books depend on the village biome; with it off (the default) any book can roll anywhere.
FAQ
What workstation makes a villager a Librarian?
Place a Lectern next to an unemployed villager and it will take the Librarian profession.
What does a Librarian sell?
A Librarian sells Enchanted Book, Lantern, Enchanted Book, Glass, and more for emeralds.
How do I reset a Librarian's trades?
Before trading with it for the first time, break and replace its Lectern to reroll all offers. After the first trade, its offers are locked.
Can a librarian sell Mending?
Yes. Mending is a treasure enchantment that can't come from an enchanting table, but librarians can offer it as a level I book. Reroll the lectern until it appears, then trade once to lock it.
Why won't my librarian's book change when I break the lectern?
You already traded with it. Any completed trade locks the profession and all current offers. Breaking the lectern after that does nothing, so the only fix is a fresh unemployed villager.
What is the cheapest price a Mending book can have?
The base cost scales with level, so Mending (level I) starts at 10–22 emeralds plus a book. Curing the librarian from a zombie villager can drop that to a single emerald.