Another business day is just beginning, and, deep in the South Loop, Mary Dempsey is in her tenth-floor office in the imposing Batcave that is the nation's largest municipal library, the Harold Washington Library Center... and she's thinking about diapers. No, the Chicago Public Library Commissioner and her husband of seven years, über-attorney Philip Corboy (perhaps you've seen his honorary street sign) aren't expecting a new addition. Dempsey is contemplating yet another wacky question thrown at her from a listener of the National Public Radio program "Rewind."

Last month, Dempsey was named the new "In-House Librarian" on the Seattle-produced show's "Ask the Librarian" segment (formerly known as "Ask Helen," for Mary's predecessor, Helen Gutierrez of Seattle Public Library). Got a weird question? Ask Dempsey, and she'll get her crack team of CPL reference librarians on the case (she adamantly insists that, while she fields the questions on the air, it is a team effort when it comes to tracking down the answers).

So some curious George wants to know the history of diapers, and Dempsey is more than obliged to help. If it's not diapers, then someone wants to know what happens to toothpaste after its expiration date.

"The opportunity for the Chicago Public Library to gain more exposure through my participation in 'Rewind' is terrific," says Dempsey.

Agreed. But, uh, just what does happen to toothpaste after it expires? Does it skunk?

"The chemicals become unstable and less effective," the commissioner reports.

So, while Dempsey, Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library since 1994, takes her job as a member of Mayor Richard M. Daley's cabinet quite seriously, she admits to getting a charge out of all the oddball questions she fields each week. She also adds, with a laugh, that she is a very popular teammate when the Trivial Pursuit board gets dusted off at parties.

Of course, getting asked weird questions is part of any good librarian's job description.

"When I was a young librarian," she says, "at night you would get these phone calls from bars. You would be settling bar bets! It was hilarious. And that's great. That's a reference librarian's job."

Quick: what do you think of when you hear the word... "librarian"?

If notions of hair buns, cat's-eye glasses and stern wooden-ruler-to the-palm-scoldings come to mind (and, in fact, there is a whole porno genre devoted just to the fetishization of this image), think again. As CPL Commissioner, Dempsey has quietly transformed her athenaeum into one lean, mean, high-tech machine. This updated incarnation of the CPL has seventy-eight locations housing more than nine million books, documents and reference materials. You can watch classic movies at some branches; check out fishing poles at others. On average, 135,000 individual users sign onto CPL's snappy Website every month for information and to access the vast catalog and databases.

So just how does a girl from the Austin neighborhood on Chicago's West Side grow up to become a power broker at the largest public library in the United States?

"When I was 14," says Dempsey, "my mother asked me if I wanted to go to college. I said 'Yes... ,' and she said, 'Great—you need to go to work now.'"

Dempsey went out and got a part-time job at her local library, sowing the bookworm seed. After earning a bachelor's from St. Mary's University in Minnesota, she went on to graduate school, pursuing a master's degree in library sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, eventually marching into the trenches, serving as a public librarian in the western suburbs. Later, she continued her educational crusade and earned a law degree from DePaul, checking out of the library and into a practice for twelve years. It was during this time that the offer came Dempsey's way from the Mayor's office; initially, however, she wasn't interested—that is, not until her husband guilted her into considering the job. "I had this lovely private life, and wasn't sure I wanted the job," she recounts. But, after she turned down the position three times, Corboy stepped in for some major arm-twisting.

"First he said, 'What would it hurt to go and talk to them?'" she recalls. "'They asked you, you didn't ask them. You'd do a good job.' And then he gave the ultimate Irish-Catholic kicker: 'Think of the good you could do for the children.' It was a totally low blow."

Six and a half years later, Mary Dempsey oversees 1,500 CPL employees and manages an annual budget of $80 million.

"Libraries are the heartbeat and anchor of communities across Chicago," says Mayor Richard M. Daley. "Since I appointed Mary Dempsey as Library Commissioner in 1994, she has worked tirelessly to ensure that every person in Chicago has not only access to a public library that is near their home, but also access to the best services, innovative technology and the most up-to-date library collections as possible."

No red-faced political hyberbole that. During Dempsey's tenure, the CPL has constructed and opened twenty-five new or fully renovated neighborhood branch libraries—the largest library building campaign in the world. She has added computers and Internet access to all seventy-eight library locations. The library serves forty different foreign languages. To date, there are two million active library cards. And the coolest thing? Her husband was right—she [ital]has[endital] done good for the kids of Chicago.

As she strolls into the childrens' library within the massive Harold Washington complex, she greets dozens of kids visiting on a field trip. She quickly—and proudly—admits to reading all three of the Harry Potter books. But if you were looking for Mary Dempsey in the ten-story library where she works, you might want to wander to the fiction stacks and seek out "C"—for Willa Cather, Dempsey's all-time favorite writer.

Then again, she could be in a reference section, unearthing the history of diapers.

"Ask the Librarian" airs every Sunday at 3pm on WBEZ-FM, 91.5.

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