"Library Philosopher," the Center for Research in the Humanities of the New York Public Library was named after Vartan Gregorian.

New York Library Executive Director Anthony Marx called Gregorian the "savior" of the New York Library. Under Gregorian's leadership, the library was restored after a decade of financial instability. The president of the New York Carnegie Corporation, whose position Gregorian held from 1997 to 2021, said: "If you knew Vartan, you know that he loved libraries, like Andrew Carnegie before him. Vartan called them an oasis for the development of renewed imagination and thought, a necessity for every community".

The revival of the New York Public Library is the Gregorian’s contribution. He was the president of the library from 1981 to 1989, and it was then that it became a world-renowned educational institution. The Vartan Gregorian Center will provide research staff with offices, stipends, and study room access for researchers and writers whose work will benefit from the intensive use of the library's collections.

Gregorian's attention was always directed to libraries. In the 1990s, when Gregorian was the president of the Carnegie Corporation in New York, he provided financial support to the National Library of Armenia, the main Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and the YSU Library. With the support of the Carnegie Corporation, an academic conference of library workers from three countries of the South Caucasus was held in Yerevan in 2002. The library of the UWC Dilijan is also named after Vartan Gregorian. Once he said that libraries are a symbol of human care for children. "The work of establishing and maintaining a library is an investment not only in our lives but also in the lives of future generations. The library is a legacy, a mirror to the past, and a window to the future".

American-Armenian historian and co-founder of the "Aurora" international humanitarian award Vartan Gregorian was called an Armenian and global library philosopher and benefactor of libraries because of his special attitude and respect for libraries.

Gregorian wrote about his childhood spent in a poor district of a provincial town, school, American films, and insatiable reading in his memoir, which was published in Armenian by Newmag. In the book "The Road to Home" Gregorian tells how he ended up at Beirut Seminary, Stanford University, New York Public Library, Brown University, and the Carnegie Corporation. The exceptional success story of the Iranian-Armenian young man sums up Gregorian's life formula: to be open to knowledge and learn endlessly.