Tammi Moe, director of Octavia Fellin Public Library (OFPL) in Gallup, New Mexico, has worked to broaden OFPL’s programming and service reach beyond the library’s walls to reach Gallup's majority Indigenous American population. By forging strong partnerships with other city departments and community organizations, Moe has facilitated a library presence at festivals, health fairs, career days, and other local events, and as a result, OFPL program attendance increased. These efforts and more led Moe’s colleagues and OFPL patrons to nominate her for an I Love My Librarian (ILML) Award this year—which she won along with nine other librarians from across the U.S.
OFPL has focused its programming on socially relevant issues, generational experiences, and opportunities for open dialogue under Moe’s tutelage. Programs have addressed a range of historically sensitive topics for the community, notably the involuntary sterilization of Indigenous women and the incarceration and murder of indigenous activists. As one of Moe’s award nominators noted:
“Confronting our historical and current, very real issues is exactly what [she] has inaugurated, in an unbelievably effective series of instructive installations, displays, and programs. The public library has become a center for deeply probing our own history, our own conflicts, and our own individual and collective roles in those conflicts.”
Moe’s leadership at OFPL has had an impact both inside and outside of the library. "Tammi’s leadership is kind, supportive, engaged, and thoughtful,” an award nominator wrote. “She has dissolved the walls of the library, creating a community platform for healing and cultural understanding through shared experiences.”
Watch Moe's remarks at the 2022 ILML Award ceremony at LibLearnX below:
Moe and the other ILML Award winners each receive a $5,000 cash prize, a $750 donation to their library, and complimentary registration to the American Library Association’s LibLearnX. Since the ILML Award’s inception in 2008, library users have shared more than 20,000 nominations detailing how librarians have gone above and beyond to promote literacy, expand access to technology, and support diversity and inclusion in their communities. Learn more about previous award winners.
Nominations for the 2023 ILML Awards are now open. Nominate your favorite librarian!
