Related

Library Journal apologizes for the pain we caused and failed to address in announcing the Library of the Year. While we stand by the award, we commit to taking the following action steps.

When we announced The Seattle Public Library (SPL) as the 2020 Gale/LJ Library of the Year yesterday, many librarians protested our celebrating a library that had allowed the Women’s Liberation Front, an anti-trans group, to rent a meeting room for an event in February. We hear the anger and disappointment and take these concerns seriously. We understand why SPL’s board of trustees made the decision it did, but we wish that the library had not allowed that event to go forward. Nonetheless, Library Journal stands by the award, and we want to explain why.

The Seattle Public Library has turned its attention outward, actively listening to community needs and transforming its work to make equity a top priority, earning it the 2020 Gale/LJ Library of the Year award.

The 2020 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on YouTube on Monday, May 4, by Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy.  Here, this year’s poetry winner talks about reading what’s on the page and a love for verse that started in the library.

As a homeschooled kid in Gurnee, IL, Eddie Kristan found his lifeline at the Warren-Newport Public Library (WNPL). "The library provided me with books and a safe place to read and watch media," he says, recalling how he read all seven banned-at-home Harry Potter books there. But even more importantly, the library gave him the human contact he craved.

Nearly half of Los Angeles’s four million people are Latinx, from more than 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries. As multilingual collections manager of Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), Anna Avalos selects Spanish-language materials for all 73 branches, as well as offering collection assessments and recommendations to branches that don’t have Spanish-speaking staff. In the nearly three years she’s been in the position, she’s quadrupled the Spanish collection. She also acquires Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Thai content.

Thanks to Stephanie Katz, what started as a zero-dollar budget proposal is now an international arts magazine with 20 online issues—including annual teen issues—and a print anthology. Katz, assistant supervisor of technical services at Manatee County Public Library System (MCPLS), founded 805 Lit + Art, or simply 805, in 2015 and has since made a name for herself as a grassroots library-based publisher. 805 has published 188 writers and 135 artists from Florida and beyond, about ten percent of whom are international.

Glenna Godinsky’s mother spent the last four years of her life living with Godinsky, her husband, and their three kids after she developed Lewy Body dementia. Says Godinsky, "we learned by doing, and that skill set has helped me, daily, in my role at the library."

When Pang Yang realized there were not enough children’s books written in Karen in the Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL), she partnered with community members to publish two bilingual picture books for the city’s growing Burmese refugee community. More than 5,000 copies were distributed throughout the city and to some schools.

In 2019 Lesley Mason, then library director at Caldwell County Public Library, NC, wanted a Black History Month program that would resonate with the county’s largely white rural farming community. Post-recession, many families had turned to gardening, so she reached out to the local chapter of the NAACP and the State Extension’s Master Gardeners to bring in Rev. Richard Joyner, whose community garden at the Conetoe Family Life Center, NC, helped transform his town. The library also hosted an exhibit of photography by John Francis Ficara, titled Distant Echoes—Black Farmers in America, from the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, MD. More than 50 people attended Joyner’s talk and another 500 viewed him on a Facebook live stream. Circulation jumped up by 3,000 items that month, Mason says.

Library Journal is rolling out the 2020 class of Movers & Shakers! You can find them all here, as well as past Movers by category, year, and location.

It is my great pleasure to congratulate and welcome the 2020 Movers & Shakers. They join a distinguished group that is now nearly 1,000 strong. Reading any of these profiles will surely bring a little light into our COVID-19–quarantined days.

In 2013, as the Affordable Care Act was being implemented, the Obama administration asked librarians across the United States to help patrons find health insurance through the healthcare marketplace. Aileen Luppert, managing librarian of Spokane County Library District (SCLD), "was one of the first to answer the call," says colleague Amber Williams (a 2019 Mover & Shaker), managing librarian of strategic initiatives.

For Nancy Liliana Godoy, archives that engage equitably with people and organizations in traditionally marginalized communities can aid in the building of collective memory, transform lives, and heal historical erasure and trauma. Godoy is the steward for the largest Chicano/a research collection and the largest LGBT collection in Arizona. She co-established the Arizona LGBT History Project to preserve local history and make archival material accessible to future generations, including working with a team to digitize parts of the Bj Bud Memorial Archives, Arizona’s largest LGBTQ collection.

As a single mom juggling three part-time jobs from 2010–14 while working on an undergraduate degree, Shauna Edson also faced the barriers created by the lack of internet in her apartment. "To turn in assignments, access readings, and do everything else students need to do online, I had to go to a public computer lab," Edson says.

"I like to introduce myself by telling others that I teach in the largest classroom in the school: the library!" says Tamara Cox. In 2010, as Cox completed her library degree and moved from the classroom to a school library, South Carolina was making drastic cuts to school funding. The resulting loss of library staff and gutted library budgets sparked Cox to get involved as the legislative committee chair of the South Carolina Association for School Librarians (SCASL). Now there is "no greater advocate for public education and school libraries" than Cox, says nominator Jane Harrison, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in Cox’s school district, Anderson One.

Matthew Bollerman is not only a tenacious steward of his own library but of libraries everywhere. As director of Westhampton Free Library, NY, during construction of its LEED Gold facility, Bollerman saw how a building project could impact the surrounding environment. When he and Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Mid-Hudson Library System executive director (and LJ columnist and 2010 Mover & Shaker) attended the 2013 U.S. Green Building Council conference, both wondered why libraries weren’t stepping up their sustainability game.

In 2018, when Jessica Ralli, coordinator of early literacy programs for Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), learned about the federal family separation policies at the southwest border, she reached out to the legal organizations representing separated and unaccompanied kids. Some were as young as three and "had to endure long wait times in difficult court proceedings, often resulting in stress and trauma," she says.

When disability and accessibility advocate JJ Pionke arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014, he found the literal environment unwelcoming: he not only had difficulty finding a bathroom in the library building to accommodate a person of his size, but also encountered poor wayfinding and signage, a ramp without a handrail, etc.

Maisam Nouh has done a bit of everything for the Ferguson Library, in Stamford, CT. In high school, shortly after her family emigrated to Connecticut, she began volunteering for the library’s summer reading program. Later, she took a part-time job as a page. Then came a stint at the circulation desk, an internship, and ongoing side gigs. Now, as IT supervisor, Nouh oversees all aspects of Ferguson’s tech infrastructure, including its Sierra library services platform.

"I was surrounded by data, the product of a decade of digitization" at Michigan State University, says Thomas Padilla, who was digital scholarship librarian there from 2014–16. He began to wonder how cultural heritage institutions could start to ethically engage with the data they generate and use it to begin to think about their collections as data. 

Michael Hibben led the technology initiative that brought Pepper, a humanoid robot, to Roanoke County, making Roanoke County Public Library (RCPL) the first public library in the United States to recruit an AI robot. He worked with RobotLAB to code Pepper for library use and also added Vector, a smaller robot produced by Anki, to the RCPL team.

While earning her PhD in English, Emily Sherwood found herself drawn to "collaborative environments and interdisciplinary projects [rather than] to the solitary and focused scholarship more common in literary studies." This interest led to her current position at the Digital Scholarship Lab, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester (UR).

Social science research involves a lot of non-numerical data, including interviews, images, videos, and speech transcripts. But once results are published, these are often discarded. Nic Weber is working to change that by making such datasets easier to store, discover, and access.

Roslyn Dean’s team at Broward County Library (BCL) needed an innovative way to bridge the language barrier between staff and the vast number of non-English- and limited English-speaking customers BCL serves, so she turned to a popular device, Amazon’s Echo Dot. Utilizing voice assistance apps and devices, BCL installed Echo Dots at service points in each of its 36 branches, enabling a quick, easy, and cost-effective option to assist staff with translation. 

When the University of Oklahoma (OU) welcomed a new data-driven president to campus, interim Dean of Libraries Carl Grant knew "we were going to need metrics that showed strong community engagement" for the library’s exhibit services. Tim Smith, OU’s head of web services and artificial intelligence, was just the curious expert to rethink the library’s exhibit engagement metrics.

When María Fernanda Pardo arrived in the United States from Colombia with a business degree more than 33 years ago, she quickly realized that studying English did not offer enough fluency to function, much less reach her full potential. A supportive family helped her overcome the challenge.

"For many of our students, the library is the only place on campus they feel truly free," says teacher librarian Julia Torres. Close to 2,000 students attend the five middle and high schools on the Montbello Campus in northeast Denver, where an unstaffed, frequently shuttered school library suffered eight years of neglect. In its place now is a vibrant, student-focused media center, thanks to Torres. 

Young people too often grow up without a sense of what’s possible. As a teen and technology librarian for the Dakota County Library in Minnesota, Tom Jorgenson is making sure that doesn’t happen.

When Kristin Grabarek noticed that traditional story time activities at her branch of Denver Public Library  weren’t drawing the community’s many immigrant families, she created a new learning experience that didn’t require English language skills to participate. These half-hour Saturday morning sessions (called Little University) are built around play and exploration, and each also targets a social-emotional skill. An add-on, Little University for Grown-Ups, is aimed at caregivers.

Maggie Murphy is known for her expansive collaborative creativity when it comes to transforming information literacy instruction at the University of North Carolina Greensboro libraries and across the country. Says Murphy, "I really want students in all disciplines to think about art and visual media as sources of information alongside textual information sources," she says.

Both a librarian and a lawyer, Will Cross says he "work[s] at the intersection of copyright education and open culture" as director of copyright and digital scholarship at North Carolina State University (NCSU). His leadership at NCSU and across the region is building support and a model for adoption of open educational resources (OER), transforming pedagogy, and impacting scholarly communications, says nominator Greg Raschke, senior vice provost and director of libraries at NCSU.

After the 2016 presidential election, Haley Samuelson and Nate Gass found themselves fielding questions from worried patrons at the Cook Memorial Public Library District, IL, wondering if the stories they were hearing on the news and reading on social media were true. "We became on-the-fly political fact-checkers," says Gass.

It is important to take a moment, even in the midst of crisis, to honor this year’s Movers & Shakers. It is a waypost, a signifier of normalcy in a year from which so many landmarks are missing. But it’s also a reminder that we still need people moving us forward and shaking up our thinking—perhaps never more so than when we feel shaken by forces outside our control.

When South Carolina State Library created a new position to focus solely on diversity and inclusion, agency leaders actively recruited J. Caroline Smith, who had learned Spanish using Mango Languages so she could develop partnerships with community members and groups to better serve Spanish speakers in Charleston County, SC.

Her job description involves curating and preserving African American history in the Austin area, but kYmberly Keeton goes well beyond that. She leads genealogy workshops to help African Americans trace their roots and organizes public forums that bring African American history to life for area residents and connect them with a sense of identity.

As a former middle school English and social studies teacher in Wilmington, NC, Christy James learned just what a powerful impact a school librarian could have from her influential colleague Jennifer LaGarde, aka Library Girl (a 2012 Mover & Shaker). "After working with her, who wouldn’t want to be a librarian?" James says.

Since he was young, reading and food have been Ron Block’s passions. "Nothing brings people together like food," Block says.

Brian Mortimore has always been drawn to human resources (HR)—matching the right employee to the right job and ensuring they’re taken care of once they sign on. He worked in medicine and higher ed before bringing his high ideals to Kent District Library (KDL) in 2003.

In 2016, Nashville Maplewood High School English teacher Jarred Amato read an article with his class about book deserts, neighborhoods with limited access to books. “We were outraged,” he says. “We thought: ‘What can we do together to solve this problem?’”

As an attorney for six years, Leslie Cartier found herself seeking out opportunities to teach and realized that education—specifically, school librarianship—was her true calling.

In five years as a school librarian, Samuel Northern has worked to give meaningful experiences to students, as well as to seize learning opportunities himself. As a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow for Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic, he participated in a 14-day voyage to Antarctica. He gained real-world research experience as Teacher at Sea for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And in 2018, he earned a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching grant to study project-based learning in Finland.

As part of a military family, Janet Damon grew up all over the United States and the world. "My dad always anchored me to my new home by taking me to the library. It has been my safe space…both figuratively and literally," she says. So when she became library services specialist in the Denver school district in 2016 and discovered that Montbello Career and Technical High School in Denver had no library, she brought one.

When Haley Holmes moved to San Antonio, TX, she got one job offer—to shelve books at the public library. Fifteen years and seven positions later, she’s still at the library, and in each job, she’s found new ways to get patrons to come to the library, too.

When Fobazi Ettarh became a librarian, the way her peers talked about work—"rhetoric about callings and spending your whole life dedicated to one thing"— sounded familiar. "I’m a pastor’s kid," she explains. At one conference, a panelist "point blank said that librarianship was their ‘sacred duty.’" Ettarh was uncomfortable with that extreme statement and how many agreed with it.

Dorothy Berry learned about her family’s history growing up on the farm in the Missouri Ozarks homesteaded by her ancestors post-emancipation. Later, her father shared their family archive from 2003–2013 at his storefront Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum. This formative experience taught her that the history of black people in the Ozarks had been largely erased. "The more we researched the topic, the clearer it became to me that history, and especially Black history, can be willfully forgotten, but also willfully remembered," Berry says.

With a background in educational theory and practice, Rebecca Millerjohn is able to make connections between the unscripted learning that happens in Maker spaces and the standards-based curricula that educators need to meet. Millerjohn, youth services librarian at Madison Public Library (MPL), has developed ways to analyze and track learning through Maker spaces by identifying learning indicators, creating observational assessment tools, and training facilitators to look for those indicators in students. She is currently creating a digital observation tool, an app where educators can oversee Maker activities, log photos, and record indicators to tell better, stronger stories about what’s happening in Maker spaces.

As digital scholarship librarian at Columbia University Libraries and codirector of its collaborative digital space Studio@Butler, Alex Gil works with faculty, students, and colleagues to create digital interpretations of their work, including interactive maps, visualizations, editions, and online exhibitions.

The 2020 Hugo Awards finalists were recently announced, and several titles were previously covered in LJ and SLJ. The following list offers plenty of inspiration for sff reading. 

Though the National Book Critics Circle shut down its awards ceremony owing to the coronavirus, the voting went out, producing provocative winners. 

Library Journal’s reception at PLA celebrated Sacramento Public Library, the inaugural winner of the $250,000 Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize, for the many ways it is deeply embedded in its community. Director Rivkah Sass brought some 16 SPL staff members—all color-coordinated in purple and gray “#1” team jerseys—as well as Sacramento City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Angelique Ashby to join the party.

The Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize, developed in partnership between the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation and Library Journal, was created in 2019 to recognize the public library as a vital community asset. When libraries, civic entities, organizations, and the people they serve become close partners, their communities thrive. One winning library will receive $250,000 in unfettered monies from the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation, and will be profiled in the November issue of Library Journal and online.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America today announced the finalists for the 55th Annual Nebula Awards, which will be presented in Woodland Hills, CA, on May 30th.

Christian Zabriskie and Lauren Comito have partnered to make Urban Librarians Unite a powerful grassroots organization, while serving as a model for how teamwork can get things done—earning them the shared title of LJ's 2020 Librarian of the Year.

The White House recently honored the bestselling author for his work supporting citizens’ engagement with literature. Patterson has committed extensive philanthropic support to literacy, public libraries, teachers, and bookstores. He has also developed programming nationwide to improve literacy and education among Americans, and to support all citizens’ love of reading. LJ asked Patterson about the books he loves, how he feels about winning, and what libraries can do collectively to support literacy and create stronger readers.

On November 20, the National Book Foundation offered five book awards and two lifetime achievement awards in an evening that celebrated what books can accomplish.

Folio: has announced its annual Eddie and Ozzie awards. LJ and its sister publication, School Library Journal (SLJ), were honored in several categories for B2B, Education publications.

Sacramento Public Library enriches its community in a way that’s vital locally and imperative in today’s divided times. The winner of the inaugural Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize, developed in partnership with the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation, exemplifies the singular power of the public library to be a fully integrated and critically valuable community asset.

The editors of Library Journal need your help identifying the emerging leaders in the library world. Movers & Shakers profiles 50 or more up-and-coming, innovative, creative individuals from around the world--both great leaders and behind-the-scenes contributors--who are providing inspiration and model programs for others. From librarians and non-degreed library workers to publishers, vendors, coders, entrepreneurs, reviewers, and others who impact the library field, Movers & Shakers 2020 will celebrate those people who are moving all types of libraries ahead. Learn more and submit your nominations.

To pass an essential funding measure, Palatine Public Library District’s marketing team made the case with transparency, community feedback, and streamlined messaging—earning it LJ's 2019 Marketer of the Year Award.

When the St. Paul Public Library, MN, went fine-free, the marketing and communication team's successful campaign to get the word out helped earn it an Honorable Mention for LJ's 2019 Marketer of the Year Award.

During the week of September 16, the National Book Foundation rolled out the longlists for its National Book (NBA) in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Fresh faces and newly nominated publishers help shape the list. 

Honey Grove Library & Learning Center, TX, is one of the two finalists for LJ's Best Small Library in America. The library has been named a finalist before, in 2014; a lot has changed since then.

Whitehall Public Library is one of the two finalists for LJ's Best Small Library in America. When social service agencies began to resettle refugees in Whitehall, in the Pittsburgh, PA, suburbs, the library started building bridges between refugees and long-term residents.

Taking strategic advantage of an eclectic community mix to deliver innovative library service where it’s most needed helped the Copper Queen Library in Bisbee, AZ, win LJ’s 2019 Best Small Library in America, sponsored by Baker & Taylor.

On a recent August day, Ran Walker, winner of the 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award, stopped by the LJ offices to talk about writing and teaching creative fiction and poetry, his coining of a new subgenre term, and winning several high-profile awards for his self-published novel, Daykeeper.

The 38th annual RITA® Awards were presented on July 26 at the New York Marriott Marquis during the Romance Writers of America® (RWA) annual conference, held July 24-27, in midtown Manhattan. 

The eighth annual Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction ceremony and reception, held during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, at the Renaissance Hotel, celebrated winning authors Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers, Viking) and Kiese Laymon (Heavy: An American Memoir, Scribner).

In the 1970s, the celebrated cartoonist and tireless comics advocate Will Eisner (1917–2005) stood before the Library of Congress and asked that comics be shelved in the library, believing its acceptance of the medium would lead libraries across America to follow suit. Some 20 years later, in 1997, DC Comics became the first comics publisher to exhibit at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual conference.

LJ has launched a new award to promote community advancement through public libraries, the Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize. Developed in partnership with the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation, this award was created to recognize the public library as a community asset. One winning library will receive $250,000 from the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation and will be showcased in LJ’s November 2019 issue and online.

Connecting directly with customers to find out what they want and need; training staff to focus on equity and to recognize and eliminate hidden biases; developing programs and services for underserved and marginalized populations; and seeking out public sector and private partners made LA County Library a model for the future of libraries and the Gale/LJ Library of the Year.

The 2019 Pulitzer Prizes demonstrate a commitment to recognizing the pressing issues of our times.

The 84th annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards reflect the founder's goal of honoring books that confront racism and celebrate diversity.

On March 6, the 15th annual Story Prize, awarded to the top short story collection of the year, went to Lauren Groff for Florida (Riverhead). Groff takes home the $20,000 first prize, as well as an engraved silver bowl, for the collection, which was also short-listed for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. The two runners-up—debut author Jamel Brinkley, whose A Lucky Man (Graywolf) won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner Deborah Eisenberg for Your Duck Is My Duck (Ecco), her fifth collection—received $5,000 each. The $1,000 Spotlight Award, for a collection of exceptional merit, went to Akil Kumarasamy for her debut collection Half Gods (Farrar).

Library Journal ’s latest round of the New Landmark Library series, which celebrates projects that set new standards for library design, is now accepting submissions. The award is open to any public library in the United States (including U.S. territories) and Canada that completed new construction, expansion, or significant renovations between January 2016 and March 1, 2019.

National Book Critics Circle winners for titles published in 2018 include Anna Burns, Steve Coll, and Zadie Smith. 

Millennials like public libraries. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center study, 53 percent of them visited a public library in the previous year—higher than Gen Xers (45 percent) or Boomers (43 percent). But that doesn’t mean they’re participating in library governance at a comparable rate. To find out, Lina Bertinelli, Madeline Jarvis, Kathy Kosinski, and Tess Wilson, selected as Emerging Leaders by the American Library Association (ALA), conducted a national survey about identifying barriers to serving on a library board under the mentorship of United for Libraries board members David Paige and Veronda Pitchford (a 2005 Mover & Shaker).

It takes two hours by boat to get to Rotuma, an isolated island at the very tip of Fiji, the South Pacific island nation. Opeta Alefaio and his team from Fiji’s National Archives (NAF) made the trip during a government outreach event in 2015 to bring a bevy of archival material, including land and genealogical records, photos, and historical audiovisual footage. This was the first time the islanders had seen these records, says Alefaio, and they formed a huge line outside the tent housing the documents.

Days after Amber Alexander became library director at Presque Isle District Library (PIDL), she was given a highly unusual task for a library: stewardship of the cherished 1937 Rogers City Theater, donated by a community member to prevent its closing. Undaunted, Alexander jumped in, hired a manager for the 280-seat venue, navigated tax laws, and facilitated a diversity of programs, from first-run films, speakers on local history, and authors’ presentations to arts and cultural programming through the Michigan Arts and Humanities Touring Directory.

Skye Corey was still in library school in 2014 when she attended an Ontario Library Association Conference and saw a presentation by staff from the Toronto Public Library about their Middle Childhood Framework. It focuses on developing innovative programs, services, and collections for six- to 12-year-olds through intimate spaces that draw kids in and inspire them.

Lindsey Dorfman spent several years traveling and working in high-end restaurants before earning her MLIS and joining Kent District Library (KDL), Michigan’s second-largest public library. She says working in the hospitality industry, with its focus on providing gracious, professional service, has helped her shape KDL’s service model and address Michigan’s third grade literacy issue.

In 2011, when Tonia Burton became children’s services consultant at the Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County, the Children’s Center was in trouble. It had little programming and a limited collection, and few families used it. The library board considered closing it—unless Burton could turn it around.

When Kate Lasky became director of what was then Oregon’s Josephine Community Libraries (now the Josephine Community Library District) in 2010, she knew she had a hard road ahead. All four of the county’s libraries had shut down in 2007 from lack of public funding, and a group of concerned citizens had raised $600,000 to reopen them 18 months later as a nonprofit.

Amber Williams must be a superhero to stay on top of all the initiatives she brings to life at the Spokane County Library District (SCLD). Whether it’s feeding hungry children, bringing rebirth to a dilapidated park, heading up a countywide poetry slam, launching a video creation studio, or hosting teen book talks that consistently have a waiting list, Williams sees her role in simple terms: “I build community.”

“Fair, just, and fearless.” That’s how New York Library Association (NYLA) Sustainability Initiative’s (SI) Rebekkah Smith Aldrich describes her cochair, Claudia Depkin. It’s not surprising that Depkin, raised by parents who were actively involved with their local library, sees this institution as a conduit for addressing climate change.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated much of coastal New Jersey. Libraries became a refuge for residents, who showed up in droves to check in with relatives, power up their devices, file insurance claims, fill out Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) forms, or simply get warm. Libraries were a mix of safe haven, recovery center, technology and information hub, and HQ for local volunteer groups.

Courtney Dean is an archivist and community convener who oversees the Center for Primary Research and Training (CPRT) at UCLA Library’s Special Collections, an innovative fellowship program providing hands-on training in archival methodology to graduate students. Matching students’ skills and interests to archival collections, Dean has proven herself an attentive mentor and creative catalyst for engaging in critical archival work with programs such as Activating the Archive.

Julia Maddox joined the River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester in 2016 as the founder and director of the iZone, a space for “Imagination, Ideas, Innovation.” Maddox had just under two years to begin developing the service that would activate the 12,000 square foot, $3 million project. “Since our physical space would take a year to design and build, we dubbed it our ‘prototyping phase’ and embarked on a period of fast and furious experimentation and iteration,” Maddox says.

Fangmin Wang didn’t start his career as an innovator. “I liked learning and I liked doing research,” he says. But when Wang joined Ryerson University Library, he found a tradition of thinking outside the box and a library culture that valued experimentation. That, along with mentorship, jump-started his journey to find and fill gaps across his campus with library resources, expertise, and support.

As manager at the West Toledo Branch, Toledo Lucas County Public Library, Andrea Francis noticed one particular impact of the nation’s opioid epidemic on her customers: more children being raised by grandparents. “Ten percent of Ohio households have grandparents filling the role of primary caregiver,” says branch services manager Susan Skitowski.

“If it doesn’t work out, just learn from it,” says Craig Arthur of his approach to Digging in the Crates. A community-driven program hosted at Virginia Tech’s (VTU) Newman Library, it features hip-hop study hours, a monthly seminar series, open studio hours, media literacy workshops, and partner-created events. Combining his skills as a librarian and DJ, Arthur’s programs “draw students and community members who may never have attended library events and open up doorways to conversation and art that library users may never have encountered,” says Lisa Becksford, a VTU colleague.

The five months that Nicholas Alexander Brown spent in 2011 as a White House intern for Michelle Obama in the Office of the First Lady changed his life. “I [saw] the intersection between the arts, events, politics, and cultural diplomacy in action,” he says. “I was hooked and decided to explore opportunities for combining my passion for the arts and public service.”

Adam Watts didn’t realize he was on a path to librarianship when he became a shelver while pursuing a degree in 3-D animation in college. Zack Weaver was a PhD student studying Maker Education when he imagined creating a free and open school for Makers. Janet Hollingsworth, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)–accredited structural engineer, didn’t think she’d apply her craft in a public library. Yet together, they comanage BLDG 61 at the Boulder Public Library (BPL). Opened in 2016, the 1,500 square foot Maker space has hosted more than 1,500 events, nurtured 60 local businesses, and partnered with 40 community organizations.

In 2012, a blind man came into the Nakusp Public Library in rural British Columbia, where Sabina Iseli-Otto was then library director. He wanted a digital audio version of Robert J. Sawyer’s sf novel Hominids, in DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) format. Her library had only ten DAISY CDs, and none of them were sf. “It took two weeks to order another book—not the one he wanted, but another one that was okay,” Iseli-Otto says. “I’ll always remember that emptiness at, for the very first time, not having something for someone to read.”

Like many college-aged youth, students at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman can get intimidated by the library. That is heightened for MSU’s 650 Native American students, who make up four percent of the nearly 17,000-member student body. Enter Scott Young. As the library’s user experience (UX) point person, he’s motivated to improve the experience for everyone but “especially those library users who historically have been underconsidered,” he says.

“It is important for…libraries that own [a] one-of-a-kind collection to make such a collection available and accessible to the world,” says Azusa Tanaka, Japanese studies librarian at the University of Washington. That was the impetus for her to develop an online, searchable compilation of finding aids for 156 multivolume Japanese-language sets held in academic libraries around the United States. Each of the Japanese Multi-Volume Sets Discoverability Improvement Project editions contains between two and 100 books and covers myriad topics, many unique to their institutions.

Anita Cellucci is on a crusade to support the emotional life of her students at Westborough High School. A 2016 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year finalist, she is certified in mental health first aid through the National Alliance on Mental Health and has worked to spread the training to other area educators. After securing a two-year Library Services and Technology Act grant in 2015, she developed a mental wellness curriculum, prioritizing the library as a stigma-free space.

After an inner-city middle schooler participated in an after-school library program called HackHealth, her mother reported dramatic changes in the family’s grocery shopping. “She’s telling me ‘No, mommy, I want to drink water instead of this.... You shouldn’t be doing that.... Did you look at the sodium content?’ ”