The country has embraced the winners of the I Love My Librarian Awards! It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or browse a news site online without seeing all the love that the 2024 honorees have been receiving since the awards were announced in December.
- Mychal Threets, supervising librarian at Solano County (Calif.) Library, has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Marin Independent Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and WBUR Radio.
- Ted Quiballo, instructional technologies Librarian at Northwestern University, appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
- Clare Graham, library director at Malvern-Hot Spring County (Ark.) Library, popped up in the Malvern Daily Record.
- Curt Witcher, genealogy center manager and director of special collections at Allen County (Ind.) Public Library, got kudos from 21 Alive News and WBCL Radio.
- Fred Gitner, assistant director of new initiatives and partnership liaison, New Americans Program at Queens (N.Y.) Public Library, was profiled in The New York Times and QNS.
- Melissa Corey, library media specialist at Robidoux Middle School in St. Joseph, Missouri, was a guest on the School Librarians United podcast.
The 2024 award winners include three academic librarians, four public librarians, and three school librarians who were nominated by library patrons nationwide for their expertise, dedication, and profound impact on the people in their communities. The American Library Association (ALA) received nearly 1,400 nominations from library users for this year’s award, demonstrating the breadth of impact of librarians across the country. The honorees will each receive a $5,000 cash prize as well as complimentary registration and a $750 travel stipend to attend ALA’s LibLearnX event in Baltimore this weekend.
The I Love My Librarian Award ceremony will take place during the LibLearnX welcome reception at 6:00 p.m. ET on Friday, January 19. If you can’t join us in person for the ceremony, you can stream it live on ALA’s Youtube channel! The red-carpet ceremony is a joyous, happy, and often emotional affair, featuring speeches from all of the award winners, library and ALA leaders, and more. Dubbed "The Oscars for the Library World," it's one of our favorite events of the year. We hope to see you there!
