How to Make a Lectern in Minecraft

A lectern is a great decoration block that you can use to put a book on it or to use as a job site block to create librarian villagers. Besides those two functionalities, lecterns can also be used for building and decoration purposes, especially for medieval themes.

Let’s see how to make a lectern in Minecraft!

Three steps to Make a Lectern in Minecraft

#1 Obtain 4 Wooden Slabs (Any Wood Type)

You can use any wooden slabs in the game for this recipe, as long as you have a total of 4. They include oak, spruce, birch, jungle, acacia, dark oak, crimson, warped, and mangrove slabs.

To craft wooden slabs, you will need 3 planks of the corresponding slabs. Then put them in a row on the crafting table to get 6 slabs in return.

Besides crafting, wooden slabs can be found in the igloos, woodland mansions, pillager outposts, shipwrecks, and villages. Shipwrecks contain the most wooden slabs so looking for them is a good way!

#2 Obtain 1 Bookshelf

The bookshelf is quite expensive and hard to craft in the early game since it requires 6 planks and 3 books. To get planks, chopping trees is recommended. For crafting books, you will need to gather some leather and sugarcane for paper. To craft 3 books, you will need 3 leather and 9 sugarcanes.

When you have all the materials, follow the recipe below to craft a bookshelf.

Alternatively, you can find a lot of bookshelves spawn in the stronghold and the woodland mansion structure. Up to a few hundred bookshelves! Besides this, trading 9 emeralds with the librarian village for 1 bookshelf is also an option.

#3 Craft a Lectern

When you have 4 wooden slabs and a bookshelf, right-click the crafting table and put the bookshelf in the middle grid. Then put one line of wooden slab on top and the final slab right at the bottom of the bookshelf to craft 1 lectern.

Frequently Asked Questions

When were lecterns added to Minecraft?

A lectern was added in the Minecraft 1.14 Village & Pillage update in Java Edition. For Bedrock Edition, the lectern was added in the 1.10 version.

Can a lectern power a Redstone?

A lectern itself doesn’t give a Redstone signal. But when putting a book on it and turning the book’s page, the lectern will give a Redstone pulse depending on the progress of the player into that book.

How to use a lectern in Minecraft?

To use a lectern in Minecraft, put it in your hot bar and right-click on any ground block to put it down. Then you can put a book on it by right-clicking the lectern with a book in your hand. You can also put a lectern next to an unemployed villager to turn it into a librarian.