Lectern

A lectern is a librarian's job site block found in villages. It is used to hold books for multiple players to read in multiplayer.

Natural generation
Lecterns can generate in village libraries.

Breaking
Lecterns can be broken with any tool, but an axe mines it the fastest. Lecterns drop themselves and the book they are holding.

Usage
Lecterns hold a single book and quill or written book that other players can read at the same time. Right-clicking an empty one with a book and quill or written book places it. Right-clicking a lectern with a book already occupied opens an interface to read the book. Books occupying a lectern can be retrieved through the interface, punching the lectern or by destroying the lectern, even when /gamerule doTileDrops is false.

Redstone signal
Lecterns holding a book emit a redstone pulse that is one game tick long (0.5 redstone ticks) when a page is turned. A redstone comparator also records book reading and sends a signal, depending on what page the player is currently on. Because displays two pages of the book at once, the same signal strength increments require double the number of pages.

For Java Edition a book with only 1 page will give max signal strength, however page 1 always gives 1 signal strength no matter what if a book contains at least 2 pages.

Due to this, to calculate the signal strength of books with more than 1 page you should use the following formula:

Where   is the maximum number of pages the book on the lectern has, and   is the current page number the lectern is turned to.

This is most noticable when a book has 2 pages where the signal strength will either be 1 on page 1 or 15 on page 2.

To create a book which would step up or down in increments of 1 per page turned you would make a book 15 pages long.

For the formula is slightly different. Due to Bedrock showing 2 pages at once and only counting a change to the book's output if the highest even numbered page contains information, this means that a redstone comparator treats books with only 3 pages the same as those with only 1 or 2 pages of information or how Java would treat a book with only 1 page.

For 4 or more pages of information use the following formula to calculate signal strength.

In this case  is   and   would be

Rounding down is required to eliminate the discrepency caused by books containing an odd number of pages. For example, a book with 8 pages will give a signal strength of 15 when looking at pages 7-8. A book with 9 pages will have a signal strength of 15 when looking at either pages 7-8 and 9-10.

To create a book in which would step up or down in increments of 1 per page turned you would need to make sure to put information on page 30 and leave the book exactly 30 pages long.

Changing profession
If a village has a lectern that has not been claimed by a villager, any villager has a chance to change their profession into librarian if those villagers have not already chosen a job site block.

Fuel
Lecterns can be used as fuel in furnaces to smelt 1.5 items.

ID




Block entity
A lectern has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.