I Love My Librarian Awards 2009

December 16, 2009

On December 3, 10 librarians were recognized for their outstanding service as the 2009 winners of the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian award.

Each of the 10 award winners receives a $5,000 cash award and will be honored at a ceremony and reception at TheTimesCenter in New York and hosted by The New York Times. Nominations were open to librarians working in public, school, college, community college and university libraries.

The award, which began as The New York Times Librarian Awards in 2001, is now a collaborative program of Carnegie Corporation of New York, The New York Times, and the American Library Association. The Award will continue through 2012.

Visit ALA on Flickr for more photos.

Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, speaks at the I Love My Librarian Awards ceremony.

Yasmin Namini, senior vice president of marketing and circulation for The New York Times.

Jim Rettig, ALA immediate past president, and winner Carolyn Wheeler, media specialist at the Conant Elementary School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and youth services librarian at the Rochester Hills Public Library Rochester, Michigan.

Jim Rettig, ALA immediate past president, and winner Dana Thomas, media specialist at Cypress Lake Middle School in Fort Myers, Florida.

Jim Rettig, ALA immediate past president, and winner Dwight McInvaill, director, Georgetown (S.C.) County Library

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens and winner Alice K. Juda, reference librarian, U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens and winner Lucy Hansen, lead librarian, South Texas Independent School District, Biblioteca Las Américas, Mercedes, Texas.

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens and winner Laura Grunwerg, director of Youth and Young Adult Services, River Edge (N.J.) Public Library.

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens and winner Sol A. Gómez, branch manager, Pima County (Ariz.) Public Library, Sam Lena-South Tucson Branch.

Jim Rettig, ALA immediate past president, and winner Oceana Wilson, director of library and information services, Crossett Library, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont.

Jim Rettig, ALA immediate past president, and winner Séamus Ó’Scanláin, librarian and assistant professor, Center for Worker Education Library, The City College of New York, New York City.

ALA President-elect Roberta Stevens and winner Karen E. Martines, department head, Public Administration Library Department, Cleveland (Ohio) Public Library.

Winners of the 2009 Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award.

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1d

Charles Q. Choi writes: “Artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT and other applications powered by large language models have found widespread use, but are infamously unreliable. A common assumption is that scaling up the models driving these applications will improve their reliability—for instance, by increasing the amount of data they are trained on, or the number of parameters they use to process information. However, more recent and larger versions of these language models have actually become more unreliable, not less, according to a new study,” largely because recent models are less likely to acknowledge if they don’t know an answer for certain.

IEEE Spectrum, Oct. 3; Nature, Sept. 25
1d

Charlie Barlow writes: “Roger Schonfeld’s latest piece in Scholarly Kitchen, ‘Lessons Learned from a Fair Use Defeat,’ feels unnecessarily defeatist in assessing libraries’ controlled digital lending (CDL) efforts. From my perspective, CDL has significant potential. The recent Second Circuit Court ruling against the Internet Archive marked a setback for one interpretation of CDL, but as the Authors Alliance explains, it does not prohibit CDL universally. It leaves room for future implementations that could better meet fair use standards, especially given the lack of a digital first-sale doctrine.”

Library Futures, Oct. 7; Scholarly Kitchen, Sept. 30; Authors Alliance, Sept. 5
2d

Jeannette Boner writes: “After eight years, Teton County (Wyo.) Library has been forced to cancel its free Harry Potter-inspired programming for children and adults. This year’s events—A Night at Hogwarts, Harry Potter Trivia for Adults, and Harry Potter Family Day—had all been scheduled for later this month. The library said in a press release October 3 that it acted in response to a cease-and-desist letter from legal representatives of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., the owner of copyright and other intellectual property rights related to the films featuring child wizard Harry Potter.”

Jackson Hole News & Guide, Oct. 4
2d

Sonny Albarado writes: “A federal judge on September 30 ordered Crawford County (Ark.) officials to stop placing certain library materials, mostly on LGBTQ+ themes, in a separate section with color labels. US District Judge P.K. Holmes III ordered the defendants to move the materials in those sections to ‘appropriate sections in general circulation without consideration of whether they approve or agree with the viewpoints expressed in such materials, and without consideration of whether the viewpoints expressed in such materials are unpopular or controversial.’” County parents filed the lawsuit regarding the books’ relocation in May 2023.

Arkansas Advocate, Oct. 1; May 26, 2023
3d

Michelle N. Amponsah and Joyce E. Kim write: “More than 12 pro-Palestine student protesters were banned from entering Widener Library for two weeks after they staged a silent ‘study-in’ protest. Roughly 30 activists staged an ‘emergency study-in’ at Widener on September 21 to protest the Israeli military’s airstrikes in Lebanon. For an hour, students donned keffiyehs and studied with posters taped to their computers. The demonstration was silent, and other students in the Widener reading room continued to study alongside the protesters. During the study-in, library staff passed out sheets of paper stating that libraries are not permissible spaces for student protests.”

Harvard Crimson, Oct. 3, Sept. 23
3d

ALA President Cindy Hohl participated in an October 8 discussion with White House officials and national leaders about efforts to save lives from overdose. ALA is one of more than 250 organizations and businesses that have committed to the White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose. The Challenge, launched earlier this year, is a nationwide call-to-action to increase training on, and access to, life-saving opioid overdose reversal medications like naloxone. ALA, led by its Public Library Association division, has developed resources to help libraries respond to the overdose crisis.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, Oct. 8
4d

“The 25 Finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature were announced with the New York Times October 1. The five finalists in each category were selected by a distinguished panel of judges, and were advanced from the longlists announced in September with The New Yorker. Winners will be announced November 20 and broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, and the Foundation’s website.”

National Book Foundation, Oct. 1; The New Yorker, Sept. 13

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I Love My Librarian Awards 2009

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