Hayden, Carla Diane

Library Director and Administrator Carla Hayden was born on August 10, 1952. She received her B.A. degree from Roosevelt University and began work as a library assistant at the Chicago Public Library in 1973. She later received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School.

She worked as library service coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Library and Information Science. In 1991, she returned to Chicago where she worked as the Chicago Public Library System's deputy commissioner and chief librarian. She is also the second African American to become the executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, one of the oldest free libraries in the United States. Hayden was elected president of the American Library Association in 2003. She succeeded in getting Attorney General John Ashcroft to declassify reports on the Act's provisions and eventually, through her efforts and the efforts of other civil liberties organizations, the section of the Act that allowed the F.B.I. to demand private individuals' library records was rescinded.

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