Welcome to our guide on one of Minecraft’s versatile and fascinating blocks, the Lectern. With a range of uses from interacting with villagers to being an integral part of Redstone circuits, the Minecraft Lectern has a lot to offer. Read on to discover the many possibilities this unique block provides and how to get your hands on a Lectern.
How to Craft Lectern
Creating your very own Minecraft Lectern is a simple task, only requiring some basic crafting materials. To craft a Lectern, you will need wooden slabs and a bookshelf. Combine these items using the crafting table interface, and voilà, you’ve created a Lectern! However, you should know that even though any tool can break a Lectern, an axe is the quickest way to do it.
How to Use Lectern
Interaction with Librarian Villagers
The Minecraft Lectern is not just for decoration; it plays an essential role as a jobsite block for librarian villagers. Even though librarians don’t physically interact with the Lectern, they have a tendency to gaze at it while working. It’s important to note that for a librarian to claim it or replenish their trades, they need access to the Lectern.
Trading with librarians is a fruitful activity. You can exchange a variety of items, such as emeralds, paper, books, ink sacs, and book and quills. You’ll find paper especially useful when trading with librarians to level them up. But remember, you can also use emeralds to further level them up and unlock Master Level traits.
Librarians, in return, offer items like enchanted books, bookshelves, lanterns, glass, clocks, compasses, and even name tags. Do note that name tags are quite rare, as they can only be acquired from librarians or chest loot, and they cannot be crafted. The enchanted books are quite valuable, offering almost any enchantment, save for the Swift Sneak and Soul Speed enchantments. To get specific enchantment books from villagers, keep breaking the Lectern until the desired trade appears at the first level.
Lecterns as Book Holders
One of the common uses of the Minecraft Lectern is to hold a book and quill or a written book. This feature is particularly useful in multiplayer games, allowing several players to read the same book at once. Right-clicking on the Lectern will allow you to place a written book or book and quill on it.
In the Java Edition, you can take the book off the Lectern through the interface by clicking the “Take Book” button. However, in the Bedrock Edition, you need to punch the Lectern to retrieve the book. Do note that Lecterns cannot hold normal or enchanted books.
Crafting a book and quill is quite simple; all you need is a book, an ink sac, and a feather. But remember, you can only write in the book and quill when it’s in your hotbar or inventory, not when it’s on the Lectern.
Lecterns in Redstone Circuits
What makes the Minecraft Lectern stand out is its ability to emit a Redstone pulse, which lasts for approximately 0.05 seconds. You can measure this pulse by using a Redstone comparator facing the Lectern. This comparator can output a signal based on the page the player is on and the total number of pages in the book.
Interestingly, the strength of the signal relies on both the number of pages in the book and the player’s current page. By turning to different pages in a written book on the Lectern, you can output specific signal strengths. This makes the Lectern a vital component for creating complex mechanisms in your Minecraft world.