Libraries were a solace in the Depression. They were warm and dry and useful and free; they provided a place for people to be together in a desolate time. You could feel prosperous at the library. There was so much there, such an abundance, when everything else felt scant and ravaged, and you could take any of it home with you for free. Or you could just sit at a reading table and take it all in. Or you might come to the library and something remarkable would happen, like, say, the day in 1938 when poet Carl Sandburg dropped by the children’s story hour and played guitar and talked about Paul
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