2016 VLA Award Winners

The Virginia Library Association (VLA) is pleased to announce the 2016 winners of the VLA Donna G. Cote Librarian of the Year, Up and Comer Award, Public Library Innovator Award, Trustee Library Award, the George Mason Award, Friends of the Library Award, Trustee Library Award, and the George Mason Award. The awards will be presented at the VLA Annual Conference.

Join Us!

Join us as we celebrate these winners during our 25th Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26. Celebrate VLA’s 2016 Scholarship and Award Winners with a delicious sit-down dinner prepared in The Homestead’s award-winning kitchen. The cost is $55. All proceeds will be donated to the Scholarship Fund. It is not too late to buy a ticket, even if you have already registered and paid for the conference! Just log in to the Conference Registration Page and click the link under "Edit Your Previous Submission". To find out more about this year's conference, visit our Conference Portal.

Winners

Donna G. Cote Librarian of the Year

The Librarian of the Year Award recognizes exemplary achievement of a working Virginia librarian who has made a significant contribution(s) at any level of librarianship within the year of the award nomination period (Nomination period is calendar year 2015 for awards given in 2016.) The first person to win this award is Dr. Nan B. Carmack, Director of the Campbell County Public Library System. Carmack’s contribution to the profession has been evident on the local, state and national levels. Regionally, Carmack served as co-chair of the program committee for the Mid-Atlantic Library Association. On the state level, she served as the President of the Virginia Public Library Directors’ Association. Carmack was the past chair of the VLA Leadership Development Forum and the 2016 Virginia Library Leadership Academy Chairman (VALLA). She also served the American Library Association as a reference and management portfolio evaluator for the Library Support Staff Certificate program.

Up and Comer Award

The new Up and Comer Award will be presented annually to recognize a librarian who shows leadership early in his or her career. Due to the high caliber of nominees and difficulty in selecting only one winner, the Awards and Recognition Committee bestowed this honor to both James Giangregorio, Teen Services Coordinator for Virginia Beach Public Library and Joy Yaeger, a reference librarian at Tidewater Community College’s Chesapeake campus.
Giangregorio oversees and coordinates teen programs and services across all VBPL branches. He leads a system-wide Teen Services Team, working to ensure that teens have opportunities, programs, information and materials to help them meet lifelong learning, cultural and recreational goals. In July 2016, Giangregorio added two dedicated teen librarians to his staff in support of this effort. During his short tenure as Teen Services Coordinator, Giangregorio has innovated the service culture and expanded the breadth of teen services at Virginia Beach Public Library. Highlights include: Leading VBPL’s Teen Services Team in restructuring the Teen Summer Reading Challenge and nearly tripling participation from 2014 to 2015; championing the addition of a teen library card, removing barriers, such as requiring parental signature, which had impeded teens’ access to library materials; and generating astronomical teen attendance at branch programs and system-wide events; 300-plus teens attended just one lock-in.
Since Yaeger’s arrival at TCC, she has more than doubled the library instruction sessions being taught at the Chesapeake campus. Exhibiting a positive attitude and strong work ethic, Yaeger works with each individual faculty member and she tailors her library instruction sessions to meet the instructor’s respective classroom learning objectives. Yaeger has also greatly contributed to TCC with her involvement in committee work. During the past year, she has served as a member of the LibGuide and Web Advisory Committee, and she has worked with the Library Instruction and Assessment Committee. Yaeger also led the Open Educational Resources Committee for the library, and she closely works with faculty by instructing “Pathways,” which is an online instruction session for faculty who are interested in using open educational resources for their courses. Several TCC librarians are involved in “Pathways,” and Ms. Yaeger had the honor of being the first librarian to teach the course to TCC Faculty.

Public Library Innovator Award

This new award recognizes public librarians or public library project teams who have made an outstanding contribution to advance the mission of a public library in Virginia through an innovative project, program or service during the nomination period. (Nomination period is calendar year 2015 for awards given in 2016.) The first winner of this award is Donald Chris Glover. In the fall of 2015, Glover presented a session at the VLA Annual Conference called “The CRRL NetStation Project: Public Access Computing with Chrome OS.” He has since been contacted by other libraries in Virginia for consulting and information on the Chromebox process and setup. Glover and his team formally trained the staff through a series of workshops and NetStations were placed in staff lounges so employees could see for themselves how they operate. Glover’s idea of moving to Chromeboxes has saved the CRRL considerable money and allowed them to expand their public computer access.

Trustee Library Award

The Trustee Library Award is presented annually in recognition of distinguished service to a Library or Libraries in Virginia. This year’s winner is Mark Miller, Chair, Loudoun County Public Library Board of Trustees. Miller was instrumental in developing the unique public-private partnership and lease-purchase agreement that will enable the Library system to open its ninth branch — the 40,000-square-foot Brambleton Library — in 2018. He has successfully advocated for the expansion and relocation of the Sterling Library. The Sterling community, which includes many recent immigrants and families below the poverty line, will be the first in the County to benefit from extended Friday and Saturday library hours — a pioneering development championed by Chair Miller. Miller has guided the process of transferring responsibility for the County’s Law Library to the Loudoun County Public Library system, providing residents with expanded access to legal resources. He is also leading the development of a new STEM-focused public library, co-located with the public school system’s new STEM-oriented Academies of Loudoun.

Friends of the Library Award

George Mason Award

The George Mason Award may be presented to an individual librarian, a library, an individual or organization distinguished for advocacy of libraries and/or information access, or to an institution, business, or academic program whose activity has contributed to the development, growth, and extension of library and information services in the local community, the state, or the nation. This year’s winner is John Halliday, Director of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library for his overall excellent leadership, opening two new libraries: an 18,300 square foot library in Crozet and a 30,000 square foot library in Charlottesville, and his ability to operate a library system that covers four counties and a city. Both libraries have demonstrated impressive growth and usage by the public. For instance, the Crozet branch issued over 2,300 new library cards in the first year of operation and gained national attention for starting teen study nights (Exam Cram).

More Information

To celebrate the achievements of our winners, please join us at our 25th Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26. Celebrate VLA’s scholarship and award winners with a delicious sit-down dinner prepared in The Homestead’s award-winning kitchen. The cost is $55. All proceeds will be donated to the Scholarship Fund. You can buy a ticket even if you have already registered and paid for the conference. Just log in to the Conference Registration Page and click the link under "Edit Your Previous Submission".

For more information about the many ways the Virginia Library Association honors Virginia's libraries, staff and those who support both, visit our Awards & Honors Portal.