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I have watched Warehouse 13 and am now watching The librarians because the sci-fi meets history aspect is great. But I noticed the similarities: Storage facility for the supernatural and the history it has intertwined with the world history. Responsible for the safety of the world. and the guardians/servants of the facility are chosen by the facility and don't believe in the power but then get used to it. Secrets and magic and science and sarcasm.

Is there a book or movie that started the genre, or was The Librarian the first of the genre and Warehouse 13 picked up where the original movies fell flat.

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    Indiana Jones. Obs. – cde Mar 13 '17 at 18:50
  • But no, the trope of magical artifact collectors and science and g-men is as old as television. – cde Mar 13 '17 at 18:51
  • Huh. Never watched Indiana Jones. Blasphemy I'm sure lol. Is there a first? Maybe Like a Grimm's novel or something from history. – DJ. Aduvanchik Mar 13 '17 at 18:56
  • I'm sure there's probably something in Lovecrafts' writings about a group of people who monitor/guard against intrusions by Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. (Silver Twilight Lodge, perhaps? I only know it from the board game, not the stories it appeared in.) But I'm equally sure there were other books along these lines before Lovecraft. – Steve-O Mar 13 '17 at 21:31
  • This basic premise was also used in the 80's series "Friday the 13th". – Jason K Mar 14 '17 at 13:17
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The concept of <group/person/thing> that <protects/collects/defends/exploits> one or more <artifacts/books/spells> is fairly old. Heck, you could view the fellowship of the ring as a variant of this.

The Indiana Jones scene of the large warehouse full of forgotten secrets is probably the proximate inspiration for specifically warehouse 13 and its government mandate to keep this stuff secret.

Other ones off the top of my head would include The Invisible Library books by Genevieve Cogman, with the secret pan-dimensional librarians.

Plenty of mage colleges/societies whatever collect dangerous magical artifacts. Linsey Hall's Dragon Blood series includes three relic hunter mages who, since the author is an archaeologist, remove artifacts, safely disable their dangerous decaying magic, and then put them back where they belong.

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