Overview
From a celebrated librarian and public historian, a memoir about the promise of public libraries in a fractured world.
When Dorothy Lazard became a public librarian, she returned to the building that had shaped her life from childhood. At the flagship branch ("the Main") of the Oakland Public Library, she connected with her hometown at a level that few people experience. Helping her fellow community members and ultimately becoming the keeper of Oakland's public history archives, she witnessed the joys and crises that shape one of the most diverse cities in the US. In Behind the Desk at the Main, Lazard takes readers through the day-to-day life of library work with love, wit, and candor. As the cracks in American society grow and our public institutions are strained to the breaking point, libraries remain the cherished containers of our ideals: They are places of curiosity, imagination, memory, and togetherness. Lazard reveals the pressure that library workers face as they seek to uphold these ideals in a fractured world, and the passion that guides them. Filled with humor and urgency, Behind the Desk at the Main is a testament to the power of books and community in a time of division.
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