Narcan, rare books and citizenship: How L.A.'s chief librarian is meeting the city's needs

The sparrows fled the courtyard. It was quiet amid the classics. John Szabo stepped out of the elevator and walked through the sunlit atrium of the Central Library. He passed a slumbering homeless man and, with the efficiency of a spy, disappeared into stacks of bound archives, hundreds of thousands of relevant and obscure pages -- including the 1991 "Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan." A tall man with sparks of gray in his goatee, Szabo, the city librarian, oversees 72 branches, a $241.8 million budget, 17,000 restaurant menus, 64 ukuleles, a Shakespeare volume from 1685, and lockers of puppets for a children's theater. He stopped at a shelf holding years of "Family Handyman" magazines. Founded in 1951 for those who grout tile and hang cabinets, the periodical was no match for Prince Harry's memoir or a Stephen King novel.