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x Foreword racism and Carnegie’s support of class stratification on our libraries.1 Instead of deleting their names, it is important to confront the realities they brought. We want the field not to erase and ignore but to confront and reform. What if, instead, John Dewey and his ideas of student-centered learning and edu- cation as a social function shaped learning as a concept in libraries? We know now that we do not teach but that people learn. We know that learning is an internal conversation, constantly seeking to scaffold new ideas with old, building a view of the world that is constantly evolving and chang- ing. The library can be a place like a functional family, where this learning is not only nurtured but where a zone of safety can be created for learners to engage dangerous and discordant ideas. However, libraries, like families, are not automatically such places. It takes deliberate and sustained effort to be a foundation for growth. Over the past years, many public libraries have taken the idea of proactive educational engagement seriously. These pages are full of examples and ideas that have emerged from putting learning and the family at the center of what we do. From makerspaces to media production to writing clubs to tutoring services to full high schools in the library, librarians have sought to chal- lenge the assumption of how libraries are learning places and instead sought to ensure that they truly are. Then, of course, the world changed. The coronavirus pandemic closed our buildings, and in a matter of days, public libraries became virtual. For too many horrible months in 2020—when the death count from the novel coro- navirus reached hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide when our cities erupted to protest for racial justice and equality after the murder of George Floyd by police, bringing a voice for change to the street in spite of the dan- ger of the pandemic when librarians wrestled with the risks of reopening and with ongoing issues of vocational awe2 that threatened to put the mis- sion of librarianship ahead of the wellness of library staff—the library became a truly virtual organization. In an instant, all our words about learn- ing and families and engagement were put to a very heavy test. How many of the services we built to welcome families and transform the lives of learners were tied to the concrete and steel of buildings instead, no matter our rhetoric of inclusion and relationship? How quickly did our edu- cational activities devolve into the lending of e-books? How many of our newly online engagements still served the rural child or the adult leaner who had struggled to make a living wage but was now out of work with no way to afford an internet connection? To be sure, as the weeks of “stay at home” orders and a shutdown economy went by, learning crept back into what we did. Online story hours were matched with online tutoring and a new digital relationship with online courses. Librarians regained their footing and began to look to create a new normal.