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In honor of Black History Month, all February, this podcast will be dedicated to featuring African Americans whose voices and perspectives you need to hear.

We'll have a new episode every Tuesday.

But if you're a fan of the podcast, you know we feature prominent black voices all year long.

So we've chosen a few older episodes to republish

every Thursday to reacquaint you with some of them. This week, Dr. Carla Hayden, the first African

American and first woman to lead the Library of Congress. Dr. Hayden, thank you very much for

doing this, for having us here.

I think I told you before when we were at a wonderful museum setting that the Library of Congress is one of the best kept secrets, but we don't want to be a secret.

Right, and we're going to get to the part that's not a secret in a minute.

But the reason why I wanted to come here and talk to you and get a look around this place is that it's palpable even just right now that you love your job. And not just being librarian of Congress, but being a librarian. How did that happen? How did you get this love of books and

libraries and research and history? I'm the product of two classically trained musicians.

And my earliest memories are being in a practice room, my dad on the violin, my mom at the piano,

and them putting me under the piano with toys and then books.

And as I was listening to music, I was associating that with text.

And by the time I was 12, though, it was clear that I didn't have the talent that they had the musical talent not a bit and they didn't pressure me but we all agreed that where they would look at notes and be able to hear music I could look at text and hear words. And later I found out

there's a profession that allows you to combine your love of reading and books with helping

other people. So then how do you become a librarian? And certainly, how do you rise up to the

ranks to being, what, the most important librarian in the world?

What has happened to me is I call myself an accidental librarian.

I didn't know you could go and get a master's degree in library science.

...