Library workers never cease to amaze me, and that’s saying something because I’ve been in the field for quite some time. Toward the end of 2023, I joined the American Library Association (ALA) in a new capacity, as interim executive director, at a time when book bans were plaguing school and public libraries and when library workers were being threatened and attacked for defending the First Amendment freedom to read. The first thing I noticed was that so many libraries across the count