The I Love My Librarian Award is a prestigious award for American librarians. See who won it last year and why!
Libraries and librarians are so important to their communities, and too often they go overlooked and underfunded. Sometimes, though, they get the respect and attention they deserve.
One way that librarians are respected in the US is through the ‘I Love My Librarian Award’. Announced toward the end of the year, 10 hard-working, trail-blazing librarians are nominated for the awards.
In 2024’s awards, one of those librarians, Fred Gitner, made a real splash.
What is the ‘I Love My Librarian’ Award?
The I Love My Librarian Award was started way back in 2008. It’s run by the American Library Association and sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The idea is that people across the United States of America can nominate a librarian in their area who is going above and beyond the remit of a ‘normal’ librarian. People who are making a ‘profound impact on people in their communities’ through their work.
Each year, people are nominated, and 10 librarians are chosen to win the award. The winners of the I Love My Librarian Award get $5,000 and a $740 travel stipend to attend the American Library Association’s LibLearnX Conference.
Since its conception, over 160 librarians have now received the award and more than 23,000 nominations have been received detailing how librarians have made every effort possible to improve the lives of those in their area.
Who Is Fred Gitner?
Fred Gitner was employed by the Queens Public Library in the 1990s. Back then, the users of the library were Queens born and bred, and Russian immigrants. Ever since joining the library team, Gitner has made an effort to help those who were new to the area or to the country.
In fact, he has worked in programs to assist migrants in some way or another at the Queens Public Library for 28 years in total. He’s even the Assistant Director of the Queens Library’s New Americans Program. The program was set up to help coordinate informational workshops on immigration law, parenting and tenant’s rights.
The head of the Queens Library has said on the record that he views Fred Gitner as the library’s ‘international ambassador’, and that Fred has a real sensitivity to asylum seekers. He went on to say that the work that Fred has done to help asylum seekers, immigrants, and refugees with his team is simply ‘off the charts’.
None of Fred Gitner’s acts of kindness come as a surprise to anyone who knows him. Not only has he been doing this work within the library for almost 30 years, but in 2001 and again in 2013 he edited books on all the ways libraries can help immigrants.
In the present, Fred is going out of his way to make sure that everyone can benefit from the library. Through his work with the New Americans Program, he’s ensuring that there are resources for speakers of Spanish, French, and even languages less common, like Wolof and Fulani, which he has recently established are cropping up in the local area.
He’s figured out who in the team speaks what, establishing that the library team collectively knows 50 languages, and has set up translation services that are easy to call (on a toll-free number) from the library.
The Queens Library New Americans Program
The New Americans program has been designed to celebrate Queens’ residents’ mixed cultures and to help new Americans understand life in the United States.
The program is part of the Adult Learning division, which provides coordinated education, training, information, and support to help library users develop the skills they might need to succeed. These skills might be beneficial for work, business, education, or life as a whole.
The Queens Library New Americans Program’s webpage alone allows users to find collections in their language (with over 30 languages available), immigration assistance, different ways to learn English, and programs in multiple languages.
Who Else Has Received This Award?
10 people win the I Love My Librarian award each year, and Fred Gitner won in 2024 (nominated in 2023). So who else has won the award, and what for?
In the same year as Fred Gitner, the following 9 librarians won: Melissa Corey, a middle school librarian; Claire Dannenbaum, a community college librarian; Clare Graham, library director at Malvern Hot-Spring County; Gabriel Gara, a middle school librarian; Diana Haneski, a high school librarian; Gladys E. Lopez-Soto, a university librarian; Ted Quiballo, a university librarian; Mychal Threets, supervising librarian at Solano County; Curt Witcher, Genealogy Center Manager and Director of Special Collections at Allen County Public Library.
These librarians were nominated for everything from healing their community after a shooting (Diana Haneski) to advocating for mental health on TikTok (Mycah Threets).
How to Nominate a Librarian
If your local library team works tirelessly to provide your local community with the resources they need, why not nominate one of them?
You can nominate a librarian for I Love My Librarian through the I Love My Librarian website, and give them the chance to win $5,000 and the recognition we all know that they deserve!
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Millie Ramm
Millie has been writing since she was a child, and has spent more time with her nose in books than anywhere else. She has been ghostwriting novels and editing for the past few years, and when not working she is curled up with her cats, looking for her next read.
