In America is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan describes his good fortune at landing a job in a library where he could be close to books: “I was beginning to understand what was going on around me, and the darkness that had covered my present life was lifting.” Ursula Le Guin writes of a library’s sacredness: “its accessibility, its publicness.” She calls the public library a public trust, and continues: “A great library is freedom,.” We’re honored to be joined in conversation with Emily Drabinski, past president of the American Library Association, and a brilliant and intrepid defender of the public square.