How to make a Lectern in Minecraft

- Four Wooden Slabs

- One Bookshelf

- Crafting Table

You can use any wooden slab for the lectern in Minecraft. The type of wood does not matter and you can mix and match different slabs for this recipe.

The hardest part of making a lectern is making a bookshelf. The bookshelf is relatively cheap, but it can be a pain if there are no cows nearby.

To make a lectern you will need the 3x3 crafting menu of a crafting table.

In a Nutshell:

To make a lectern in Minecraft, open the crafting area made up of the 3x3 grid. Fill the entirety of the 1st row with 3 wooden slabs, then place a bookshelf in the center of the second row, and finally one more wooden slab directly underneath it. Now simply click the Lectern and drag it into your inventory.

Step-by-Step Guide(with Pictures):

Here is the step-by-step pictorial guide you need to follow to make a Lectern in Minecraft:

First start by locating some cows. You will need the leather dropped by cows to craft books which you will need to craft a bookshelf. To make a bookshelf you will need three books so hunt down cows until you find three leather.

Cows can commonly be found on grassland and will not always drop leather. Keep looking for cows until you get all the leather you need.

Next you will need paper. To make paper you will have to find sugarcane. Look around riverbeds and next to water source blocks for sugarcane.

Sugarcane will only grow on dirt or sand. Paper requires three sugarcane to make. Every three sugarcane will make three pieces of paper and you will need nine total pieces of paper for the books you need to make a lectern. Find nine sugarcane or grow it yourself to get the sugarcane you need.

Lastly you will need to chop down a tree to get the slabs you need. Turn the logs into planks and those planks into slabs.

Put your slabs aside and turn your sugarcane into paper. Arrange three sugarcane in a row to craft paper.

With your paper made you can use your leather and paper to make a book. The recipe for books is forgiving, you can place the leather and the paper anywhere in the crafting table to make a book. Each book requires one leather and three pieces of paper. Place them in your crafting table to make books.

With your three books place them in the middle row of your crafting table. Surround those books with wooden planks to make a bookshelf.

A bookshelf on its own is a nice piece of furniture, but it is also used to make our lectern. Place a bookshelf in the middle of the crafting menu and a row of slabs above it, and one slab underneath it. It does not matter what kind of slab you use to make the lectern. It will not change its appearance and you can mix and match the type of slab in the crafting recipe.

That’s all you need to make a lectern!

A lectern is primarily used as a job block for villagers. Any unassigned villager will seek out a nearby job block and the lectern will assign the librarian profession to a villager. Librarians will turn a regular book into an enchanted book. You can refresh the librarians inventory as long as they are level one and have not conducted a trade. This means you can refresh a librarian's inventory until they sell the one enchanted book you are looking for. A very valuable enchanted book is mending as these books can only be found and cannot be enchanted regularly.

Lecterns can also hold a book and quill. This makes for a nice piece of furniture for any room in your house. You can read the book and quill from your lectern by right-clicking on it. However, you cannot make edits while it is on the lectern.

Lecterns also have an interesting use where they will emit a Redstone pulse if a book and quill is placed on one. This pulse will occur anytime someone right clicks on the lectern and will also occur if you turn the pages of the book and quill on the lectern.

If you are looking to get an “infinite” supply of an enchanted book, the lectern is how you go about it. Refreshing a librarian’s stock of enchanted books one at a time can be a long and frustrating process, but it can save you a lot of time when needing specific enchantments for your tools or armor. Lecterns are also simply a decorative block. There are not many ways you can craft a podium into your room and a lectern is a quick and easy fix in the game.