People

Appointments & Retirements

Burns, Trish

Bay County (Mich.) Library System recently appointed Trish Burns as director.
Alcantara-Antoine, Sonia

December 7 Sonia Alcantara-Antoine joined Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library as public services manager.
Bell, Valerie

March 15 Valerie Bell became regional director of Athens (Ga.) Regional Library System.
Cabana, Mia

Mia Cabana recently became children’s librarian at Orange (Mass.) Public Libraries’ Wheeler Memorial Library.
Higgerson, Rebecca

January 5 Rebecca Higgerson started as director of Brandon Township (Mich.) Public Library.

At ALA

Cooper, Ilene

Ilene Cooper retired as senior editor of Booklist April 10.
Kristanto, Felicia

January 5 Felicia Kristanto became accounting manager, accounts payable and payroll.
Plagman, Emily

Emily Plagman joined the Public Library Association as project manager for PLA’s performance measurement initiative January 12.
Washington, Michelle

Michelle Harrell Washington, director of the ALA Office for Diversity and Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, left ALA March 13.
Stewart, Megan

March 28 Megan Stewart became program coordinator for the Public Library Association.

Cited

Pierce, Lonna

Lonna Pierce, librarian at MacArthur and Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools in Binghamton, N.Y., was named an American Graduate Champion by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in February in recognition of her efforts to improve educational outcomes for students.
Jones, Charles

Charles E. Jones, Tombros librarian for classics and humanities at Penn State University Libraries in University Park, has received the 2015 Digital Humanities Award for Best Digital Humanities Blog Post or Series of Blog Posts for his work on AWOL: The Ancient World Online.
Norman, Annie

The Delaware Commission for Women inducted State Librarian Annie Norman into the Hall of Fame of Delaware Women in March.
Izenstark, Amanda

Amanda Izenstark, reference and instructional design librarian at the University of Rhode Island, received the Rhode Island Library Association’s Outstanding Librarian Award May 26.
Rosheim, Angela

Lewis and Clark Elementary School in Liberty, Missouri, has been named a Model School by the International Center for Leadership in recognition of a transformation in its teaching and learning sparked by school librarian Angela Rosheim’s creation of a school makerspace.

Obituaries

Anen, Mary

Mary Anen, 80, assistant librarian for more than 25 years at the Lake Hiawatha (N.J.) branch of Parsippany-Troy Hills Public Library System, died March 6.
Finnigan, Claire

Claire M. Finnigan, 91, a teacher and librarian for 45 years in the Peekskill (N.Y.) City School District, died January 3.
Jeffers, Louise

Louise Catherine Jeffers, 86, a librarian in Guernsey, Wyoming, for more than 20 years, died December 20.
Johnson, Nancy

Nancy Johnson, 65, who served as head law librarian, associate dean for library and information services and professor of law at Georgia State University in Atlanta between 1980 and 2012, died December 13 of ovarian cancer. She was instrumental in building the Georgia State Law Library collection and was inducted into the American Association of Law Libraries Hall of Fame in 2011.
Junek, Carol

Carol Davis Junek, 88, librarian at Sturgis (S. Dak.) Public Library from 1959 to 1986 and then a reference librarian at Rapid City Regional Hospital until her 1996 retirement, died February 18. Junek was named South Dakota’s Librarian of the Year in 1974.

Latest Library Links

9h

Just a few years ago the Madison (Wis.) Public Library was collection-focused, with high circulation but a low capacity for making connections with its community. Michael Spelman, library manager at the MPL’s Central Library, and with community engagement librarians Laura Damon-Moore and Kylee Stoor, explained one key initiative in the process of reorienting the library toward community-led initiatives.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
9h

An impromptu musical performance took place at the “Out and Proud: LGBTQ Literature” program on Saturday, prompting one panelist to declare the gathering an “extreme gay act.” During their talk at the 2017 ALA Annual Conference, the four authors on the panel—Joseph Cassara, Sophie Yanow, Rakesh Satyal, and Eileen Myles—talked about protest, AIDS during the 1980s, and culture.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
9h

LLAMA’s Technology Committee of Practice held a session on Sunday morning that addressed the overdue question: “To Fine, or Not to Fine?” Four panelists of varying backgrounds explained how their libraries ultimately chose to do away with fines for overdue materials and how the policy was put into place. Kara Kohn of the Plainfield (Ill.) Public Library District described the fine-free initiative that some libraries in Illinois have adopted.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
9h

“Why not low tech?” asked Tiffany Baglier, education librarian at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She was speaking about gaming and library instruction on Sunday. Baglier and her colleague, associate university librarian Michelle Leonard, have developed a simple card game called Keywords to Mastery to help their students connect the right keywords to topics and find appropriate library resources. This interactive session, sponsored by the ALA Games and Gaming Round Table, introduced Keywords to Mastery to attendees, who were broken up into groups of six to play.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
9h

Dover (Del.) Public Library’s path to constructing a new building was a winding one. “Our project actually began in 1998,” says Director Margery Cyr. Instead of expanding its original facility, the library determined in 2003 that it would be “wiser” to build a new structure in a different area of Delaware’s capital. What followed was a failed referendum, the process of getting city advocates on board, narrowing location options from a list of 26 to one final city-owned site, shelving a joint-use concept in favor of moving to a county library system, and securing mixed methods of funding.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
13h

Differentiating between a legitimate news story and one that has been generated to mislead and contains biases or errors can be difficult, especially in an era where social media and news outlets inundate readers with content at ever-increasing rates. What can be trusted, and how can we be responsible news consumers? Joanna Burkhardt began the session “Helping Library Users Navigate Fake News” by documenting infamous instances of fake news from the past.

AL: The Scoop, June 25
13h

Athina Livanos-Propst writes: “There are days when all the plans work. I love those days. This was pointedly not one of them. I had carefully planned out sessions that I wanted to get to today. It was a lovely mix of things that would have been helpful for my own particular niche library. However, when I went to check the meeting room for my first session of the day, I learned that it was not at the conference center, but one of the satellite hotels instead.”

AL: The Scoop, June 25