Most Kansans are long familiar with the 1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic tale “The Wizard of Oz.”

In one of the film’s final scenes, a curious Dorothy goes hunting for the source of the Wizard’s mysterious voice. In a panic, the enigmatic civic leader suggests that Dorothy “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” – a last-ditch attempt to maintain his aura of anonymity and omnipotence.

At the Louisburg Library, however, the staff isn’t just joining Dorothy in the search, they’re pulling back the curtain themselves; metaphorically speaking, of course.
“We just get a lot of people who want to meet authors,” said Gillogly, the library’s adult services coordinator. “They want to talk to them, and maybe they want to write a book, or maybe they know someone who has. There’s a wide variety.”

Bringing authors in to meet the public is something the Louisburg Library has long placed an emphasis on, she noted, as a way to give interested residents a more in-depth look at what exactly goes into writing, and publishing, a book.

For obvious reasons, most visiting authors typically hail from the region. On Nov. 14, for example, the library hosted Louisburg resident Jack Kline, to discuss his book “Blowing Carbon: Short Fiction and Essays.” They quickly followed Kline’s visit up with another, this time from Linn Valley’s Hugh Monahan.