Carla Hayden

BORN: AUGUST 10, 1952, TALLAHASSEE, FL

Librarians are a cornerstone of democracy–where information is free and equally available to everyone.

Carla Hayden stepped alongside four-year-old Daliyah Marie Arana and congratulated her on reading more than a thousand books. As she encouraged Daliyah, the 2017 Library of Congress “Librarian for a Day,” Carla reflected on her own journey as a historian, a public children’s librarian, a college professor, the CEO of the Baltimore library system, and the fourteenth United States Librarian of Congress, the first woman and the first African American to serve in this prestigious position, and the first professionally trained librarian to be appointed to lead the Library of Congress in over sixty years.

Carla calls herself the “accidental librarian,” because she took what she thought was a temporary job at a small storefront branch library in Chicago. After graduate studies at the University of Chicago, Carla earned influential positions at several leading libraries, including the Chicago Public Library, where she first met Barack and Michelle Obama; the University of Pittsburgh, where she served as an assistant professor for Library and Information Science; the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was named only the second African American CEO; and, finally, achieved the position of librarian-in-chief, overseeing the entire operation of the Library of Congress, with more than 3,149 full-time employees, 838 miles of shelving, and 167 million volumes of books, manuscripts, photos, maps, sheet music, recordings, and book-related items. She is the leader of the nation’s and the world’s largest library.

She often mentions her favorite childhood book, Bright April, written by Marguerite de Angeli in 1946, about a young African American Brownie scout who turns a racist encounter into an opportunity for friendship. It meant so much for Carla to read a book about a girl who looked like her. Carla’s early passion for reading would later develop into a mission for libraries to serve as gateways to information and to keep libraries relevant by using technology to make books accessible to the widest possible audience of readers. The first Librarian of Congress to use Twitter, Carla is actively involved in creating the “libraries of the future” by utilizing strategic digital planning, online engagement, podcasts, increased digital access to special collections, live-streaming, mobile apps, and programs such as Ask a Librarian.