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View 2011 I Love My Librarian Award ceremony, interviews with award winners

A video of the 2011 Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award ceremony has been posted on Atyourlibrary.org. You can view remarks made by keynote speaker Caroline Kennedy and Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Also, video interviews with the 10 award winners have been posted. The ceremony, attended by 300 people, was hosted by The New York Times at The TimesCenter.

The event, which was part of the Carnegie Corporation’s Centennial Celebration, honored 10 librarians.  Nominations were open to librarians working in public, school, college, community college and university libraries.  Each winner received a $5,000 cash award. More than 1,700 library patrons in fifty states nominated a librarian. The American Library Association’s Campaign for America’s Libraries administers the Award program.

Molly Raphael, president, ALA, said, “It was a wonderful event, a true celebration of the best of our profession. Janet Robinson (CEO of The New York Times Company), Vartan Gregorian (President of the Carnegie Corporation) and special guest Caroline Kennedy all spoke in very moving and inspiring ways about librarians and libraries.”

The 10 award recipients are:

Venetia V. Demson
DC Public Library, Adaptive Services Division
Washington, D.C.

Martha Ferriby
Hackley Public Library
Muskegon, Mich.

Jennifer O. Keohane
The Simsbury Public Library
Simsbury, Conn.

Dr. Rhonda Allison Rios Kravitz
Sacramento City College
Sacramento, Calif.

Jennifer U. LaGarde
Myrtle Grove Middle School
Wilmington, N. C.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Long
Doby’s Mill Elementary School Media Center
Lugoff, S. C.

Michelle Luhtala
New Canaan High School Library
New Canaan, Conn.

Saundra Ross-Forrest
North Avondale Branch Library (Birmingham Public Library System)
Birmingham, Ala.

Rebecca Traub
Temple University Harrisburg
Harrisburg, Pa.

Barbara K. Weaver
Ivy Tech Community College Northwest
Gary, Ind.

“This award really recognizes people for the wonderful work they do,” said winner Rhonda Rios Kravitz of Sacramento City College in Sacramento, Calif.

“I’m really excited, because it makes me feel appreciated and needed by the people in my community,” said winner Saundra Ross-Forrest of the North Avondale Branch Library of the Birmingham (Ala.) Public Library System. “It’s just wonderful.”

Many winners expressed thanks for being recognized by the people they serve daily. Winner Jennifer U. LaGarde of Myrtle Grove Middle School in Wilmington, N.C. said, “This award, even if I wasn’t the one chosen, shows that libraries, librarians and most importantly, our patrons, are worth fighting for.”

For winner Jennifer O. Keohane of The Simsbury (Conn.) Public Library, the award serves as a call to action, “It makes you want to raise the bar even higher. It’s pretty hard to… not want to do even more,” she said.

Members of the 2011-2012 I Love My Librarian Award Committee are: Roberta A. Stevens, past president, American Library Association, (2011 – 2012 Committee Chair); Dr. Rookaya Bawa, program officer, Carnegie Corporation of New York; Dr. Nancy Everhart, past president, American Association of School Librarians; Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, past president, Association of College and Research Libraries; Diane McNulty, executive director, Community Affairs and Media Relations, The New York Times; Marcia A. Warner, president, Public Library Association.

Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic foundation created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to do “real and permanent good in this world.”

The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2010 revenues of $2.4 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 websites, including NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

The Campaign for America’s Libraries (www.ala.org/@yourlibrary) is ALA’s public awareness campaign that promotes the value of libraries and librarians. Thousands of libraries of all types – across the country and around the globe – use the Campaign’s @ your library® brand. The Campaign is made possible by ALA’s Library Champions, corporations and foundations.

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Libraries Are Stations of Hope: The 2011 I Love My Librarian Awards

Last week, 10 librarians were recognized for service to their communities, schools and campuses at the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony in New York City. The program is administered by ALA’s Campaign for America’s Libraries.  More than 1,700 library patrons nationwide nominated a librarian. The event also was part of the the Carnegie Corporation’s Centennial Celebration.  Speakers at the ceremony included Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. His remarks were as follows:

 

This is a special year for Carnegie Corporation of New York because it marks the 100th anniversary of the foundation Andrew Carnegie created to carry out his philanthropy during his lifetime and to carry it forward into the future. During our century of work, one of our proudest achievements is the part that Carnegie Corporation played in the first major cause that Andrew Carnegie supported, and the one that was always closest to his heart: helping to build public libraries. Mr. Carnegie believed that libraries are essential to the strength and progress of American society because there are three critical purposes they serve. They democratize access to information and knowledge. They empower local communities. But most importantly, they empower individuals to fulfill their aspirations and their potential.

Libraries are among the first and most important institutions in all of civilization to embody the concept of lifelong education. After all, nobody can graduate from a library—or wants to! Libraries do not give out diplomas. Libraries have no graduation ceremonies and they do not give exams. The only condition a library asks its users to honor is to do justice to their own imagination, their own curiosity and their own thirst for knowledge, and in the process, to achieve their own independence of mind and spirit.

Libraries are also bridges that link the past, the present and the future. How fortunate we are to have these remarkable, almost magical bridges that we can cross back and forth on as we explore the times that have passed and dream of the days ahead of us, in the years to come. These bridges are inviting enough for an individual to stroll across and yet sturdy enough to support whole societies, whole nations.

And in that connection, let me remind us all that in America, which truly is a nation of immigrants, libraries are among the most important links that immigrants have between their native country and the country they have chosen to join. Libraries are a place of acculturation, of civic integration, of learning how to be part of America without losing the part of yourself that will always remember the place where you were born. Hence, libraries are an invaluable source of the materials that help immigrants to steep themselves in their past while also building their future. Libraries enable immigrants to join in the life of our nation while allowing us all the chance to universalize ourselves. And for those who have become assimilated, libraries are a way to return again and again to the banquet of their culture and to have their children share in that banquet, as well.

For all of us, libraries are both the symbol and the living expression not only of culture and history and learning, but also of the heritage of humankind. Walk down the aisles of a library and you are traveling through the record of civilization, its triumphs and failures, its legacy of intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements. Hence, the library represents humanity’s collective memory. It is more than just a repository: it is truly an instrument of civilization. The library is a laboratory of human inspirations, a window to the future, a wellspring of action. The library is a source of self-renewal. It is the link between the solitary individual and collective mankind. It represents our community. The library is the university of universities, containing the source and unity of knowledge.

Almost everyone’s life has been enriched by what they learned in a library. But libraries would not be the wonderful teaching and learning places that they are without librarians. And that is why we are here tonight: to celebrate librarians, who are the true keepers of the flame of knowledge. Librarians are our guides to knowledge, the ones who classify and clarify, authenticate and actualize our desire to find the tools we need to educate ourselves and to become educated individuals. Even in the age of the Internet, librarians are the men and women who help us to find our way along the electronic highway, and there are no more intellectually rigorous, imaginative, and professional tour guides one could find, online or off.

Indeed, that is the business of librarians: to help us find where we are going in life. And perhaps to go even further than that, because they are also in the immortality business as well as the enlightenment business and the learning business and the democracy business. They are also in the equality business because everybody is always welcome to occupy a library!
The many branches of a library are like many stations of hope and imagination. At each station, there is always a librarian there to welcome you and to answer your questions. So tonight, we thank all librarians, and especially the ten men and women who are being honored with the I Love My Librarian award. They are extraordinary people with remarkable skills doing an irreplaceable job. We extend our gratitude to them, and offer our boundless congratulations.

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Kennedy is keynote speaker at Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony

Last week, Caroline Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony in New York City. The program is administered by ALA’s Campaign for America’s Libraries.  The event honored ten librarians who were recognized for service to their communities, schools and campuses. More than 1,700 library patrons nationwide nominated a librarian. The event also was part of the the Carnegie Corporation’s Centennial Celebration.  Here are Kennedy’s remarks:

 

Good Evening and thank you for inviting me to join you at this special celebration.

First, I would like to thank The New York Times for hosting us, and Janet Robinson for your continued commitment to schools and libraries. We all would like to have had you as a teacher.

Vartan GregorianI would also like to salute Vartan (Gregorian) whose passion for libraries and learning is unparalleled and contagious. You are a worthy heir to Andrew Carnegie and have been a wonderful friend to my mother, and my uncle Teddy.

And finally I would like to thank one of the educators I most admire, Barbara Stripling, the Director of Library Services at the NYC Department of Education. Barbara has transformed school libraries throughout this city. She is a generous friend, an inspirational leader and has made a real difference in the lives of the 1.1 million students in NYC public schools.

I am honored to join you tonight to celebrate ten outstanding librarians and the thousands more that you represent. This award is truly significant because the nominations received from across the country show that libraries continue to play a critical role in our democracy, and that librarians are once-again on the front lines of a battle that will shape the future of our country. It is a battle that is fought out of view and the heroes are people who didn’t seek a career of confrontation, but who live lives of principle and meaning – understanding that the gift of knowledge is the greatest gift we can give to each other.

One of the hallmarks of a great civilization is the preservation of and access to information- libraries. We all know that the library at Alexandria was one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. And we have all learned that our founding fathers believed that libraries were essential to the growth of America. Benjamin Franklin helped to found the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Thomas Jefferson‘s personal library became the library of Congress.

But this illustrious history doesn’t explain why libraries are a so often under attack — even in our own time. Why it is that Mao’s army destroyed Tibetan libraries? Why did the Germans target the medieval library in Louvain, Belgium and follow that with the sweeping destruction and confiscation of libraries throughout central Europe? Why did the Serbs burn the great multi-cultural Bosnian National Library? And here at home, why were nine people arrested in 1961 during the first “read-in” at a segregated public library in Jackson, Mississippi? And why did the Patriot Act seek to obtain the personal borrowing records of library patrons? Not only because libraries are important symbols of a civilized society, but because they are, in a sense, tabernacles of personal freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of opportunity and the true test of liberty – freedom to dissent.

In times of great political turmoil, libraries are a bastion of civil liberties, but in calmer times, they are integrated into every aspect of our lives. One of the most exciting rituals of childhood is getting your first library card, and last year , one-third of all Americans over the age of 15 , or 77 million people , used a public library .There could be no more compelling statistic yet once again, libraries are under attack, this time from an insidious adversary- indifference and lack of funds. New York, one of the more generous states, allocates only $6.25 per student for library books, not enough to buy even one book and Congress allocated ZERO to the Improving Literacy through School Libraries Office. When times are tough, access to knowledge is seen as a luxury not a necessity, though in a difficult economic climate, we know that people need and use libraries more than ever.

Libraries are no longer hushed reading rooms but busy social hubs for the exchange of life skills and information. They have become community centers in the very best sense- places where we build community and weave together lives and dreams. The unemployed come to find job training and job opportunities, new immigrants come to learn English, students use the library for college readiness and college access, and adolescents can explore difficult social and emotional issues in the safe space of a library.

I have seen this first –hand in my work with the NYC public schools. Classroom libraries play a vital role in student’s intellectual development, and school libraries fill a larger void in their lives. A great school library becomes the heart of the school and the center of the larger community. A great school librarian understands that kids can’t succeed without the support of parents, teachers, business partners and 21st century research and writing skills.

That is why we have made libraries a special focus of NYC school reform efforts. Under Barbara Stripling’s leadership, the DOE has created a new curriculum which is a national model , and trained an energized , creative , professional cadre of school librarians who understand that they have to power to make a difference , that they are no longer the person who just keeps the books in order , and tells everyone to be quiet, but that they are one of the most important teachers that the students have.

At the Fund for Public Schools we have learned that when a principal and a librarian work together to make literacy a real priority, a relatively small amount of money can make a huge difference in the culture of not just a school library but an entire school community. Over the past eight years we have given $8.5 million to schools in 225 small competitive grants to bring school libraries up-to-date technologically, support family literacy workshops, build collections for English Language learners, and provide comfy furniture where kids can hang out with a book. Now, as we move towards implementation of the Common Core standards, the role of the librarian is becoming even more important. We need visionary librarians who understand how to integrate technology into their curriculum and who can help students learn the higher-order critical thinking skills they will need to succeed.

The other library that I am part of is the Kennedy Library in Boston. In addition to preserving the documents and archival record of my father’s Presidency for scholars and researchers, thanks to my husband’s far-reaching vision, the Kennedy Library has broken free from its Boston home. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of my father’s Presidency, we embarked on a multi-year effort to digitize his papers, correspondence, memos, speeches, photos, and film holdings. The record of his Presidency is now available on-line to a world-wide audience in their own languages. We have also created a website for students – jfk50.org- with down-loadable curricula and exhibits – where users can also upload their own testimonials about service in the spirit of President Kennedy.

None of these efforts would have been possible without dedicated, committed and visionary librarians. Professionals who are excited about their changing role in a changing world – who are dedicated to serving others, who respect scholarship, and who understand that you are our guides on a life long journey of intellectual collaboration and collaborative composition.

Your work is truly life changing. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote so many years ago,” Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, “What will it do with you?” You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.”

Congratulations and thank you.

 

Tags: ALA News, Campaign for America's Libraries by admin
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Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award winners announced

Yesterday, 10 librarians were recognized for service to their communities, schools and campuses as winners of the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award.

More than 1,700 library patrons nationwide nominated a librarian. The 10 award recipients are:

Venetia V. Demson
DC Public Library, Adaptive Services Division
Washington, D.C.

Martha Ferriby
Hackley Public Library
Muskegon, Michigan

Jennifer O. Keohane
The Simsbury Public Library
Simsbury, Connecticut

Dr. Rhonda Allison Rios Kravitz
Sacramento City College
Sacramento, California

Jennifer U. LaGarde
Myrtle Grove Middle School
Wilmington, North Carolina

Elizabeth “Betsy” Long
Doby’s Mill Elementary School Media Center
Lugoff, South Carolina

Michelle Luhtala
New Canaan High School Library
New Canaan, Connecticut

Saundra Ross-Forrest
North Avondale Branch Library (Birmingham Public Library System)
Birmingham, Alabama

Rebecca Traub
Temple University Harrisburg
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Barbara K. Weaver
Ivy Tech Community College Northwest
Gary, Indiana

Each receives a $5,000 cash award and was honored at a ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by The New York Times, on Dec. 8.

In their nominations, library patrons told stories of how their librarians make a difference in their community. This year’s winners include a librarian who makes the library easier to use for people with disabilities, an innovator who integrates technology throughout her school for improved collaboration among students and teachers and a business outreach librarian who creates a space for the unemployed and local business community to learn new skills, network and collaborate.

Nominations were open to librarians working in public, school, college, community college and university libraries. Forty librarians nationwide have won the I Love My Librarian award since 2008. More information about the award recipients is available at www.atyourlibrary.org/ilovemylibrarian.

The award is a collaborative program of Carnegie Corporation of New York, The New York Times and the American Library Association.

Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic foundation created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to do “real and permanent good in this world.”

The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2010 revenues of $2.4 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

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Nation’s libraries celebrate largest National Gaming Day ever

The interest in gaming continues to increase, as evidenced by the growing popularity of National Gaming Day @ your library.

Recently, more than 27,700 people of all ages came together in their local communities to participate in gaming events at more than 760 U.S. libraries and 21 international libraries in 14 countries for National Gaming Day @ your library, Nov. 12, sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA).

Piscataway (N.J.) Public Library

Through a generous donation from FamilyandPartyGames.com, registered libraries across the country received 3,000 copies of their bestselling games, including Loaded Questions, Awkward Family Photos, The Greatest Day Ever Game and Loaded Questions Junior.

An estimated 39 libraries competed with one another in a National “Epic Super Smash Bros. Brawl” tournament. The Ann Arbor (Mich.) District Library came in first place, beating out the Phoenix Public Library.

“Libraries offer more than just books, and gaming is an example of how libraries provide social and cultural programs that encourage interaction,” said ALA President Molly Raphael. “Gaming is a family friendly activity that all ages can enjoy in the safe, non-commercialized space libraries offer.”

At many libraries, gaming proved to be intergenerational, with patrons of all ages participating in the festivities. For example, at the Plymouth (Minn.) Library, seniors and teens taught each other how to play Scrabble and Rock Band respectively, while the Citizens Library in Washington, Pa. saw adults try the Nintendo Wii for the first time, while younger kids and teens played the more traditional games the adults had grown up with.

“National Gaming Day was a tremendous opportunity to connect communities through the fun of board game play,” said Eric Poses, of FamilyandPartyGames.com. “Being able to contribute in this way, knowing it positively impacts kids and families across America, has been very rewarding.”

National Gaming Day @ your library encourages the public to connect with their libraries to enjoy the educational, recreational and social benefits of games.

National Gaming Day @ your library 2012 will take place on Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012.

For more information on National Gaming Day @ your library, please contact Jennifer Petersen, ALA PR coordinator, at (312) 280-5043 or jpetersen@ala.org.

Here is video of the Palatine Public Library’s celebration.

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