Charlotte Chung
Library Media Specialist
Suncrest Elementary School
Morgantown, West Virginia
Fifty-three native languages are spoken in the classrooms of Monongalia County School District in Morgantown, West Virginia. From her library at Suncrest Elementary School, library media specialist Charlotte Chung is on a mission to make sure every student in the district has access to reading materials that will turn them into motivated readers.
Chung has secured significant grant funding to help make it all happen. In 2023, she received grants from both the American Association of School Librarians and Your Community Foundation of North Central West Virginia to support literacy development for students learning English, purchasing books and audiobooks in students’ native languages and making them available across the district to access via an interlibrary loan system.
In 2024, she was awarded a $50,000 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the West Virginia Public Education Collaborative to fund her Building Bridges to Literacy project. Developed entirely by Chung, the project aims to enhance book selection and engage reluctant readers by helping develop a library collection and resources specifically geared toward students’ needs and interests, with the goal of increasing reading motivation. The project also brings in outside partners, including students at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information to help develop materials, and the Morgantown Public Library to collaborate on book selection.
“Students adore her, and staff members look to her as a resource,” her nominators wrote. “She has created a welcoming, supportive library environment. Thanks to Mrs. Chung, the library has truly become the heart of our school.”
Chung was selected from nearly 1,300 nominations from library users nationwide for the 2025 award. As part of her award, she will receive a $5,000 cash prize as well as complimentary registration and a travel stipend to attend ALA's LibLearnX event in Phoenix.
The I Love My Librarian Award is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, with additional support from the New York Public Library, and is administered by the American Library Association. Since 2008, library users have shared more than 24,000 nominations detailing how librarians have gone above and beyond to promote literacy, expand access to technology, and support diversity and inclusion in their communities.