H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant Award recipient named

For Immediate Release
Tue, 04/17/2018

Contact:

Cheryl Malden

Program Officer

Governance

American Library Association

312-280-3247

cmalden@ala.org

CHICAGO — The Western Maryland Regional Library’s Service, Safety, and Security in Western Maryland” is the 2018 winner of the prestigious H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant. The award is presented annually to a library organization whose application demonstrates greatest merit for a program of staff development designed to further the goals and objectives of the library organization.

Service, Safety, and Security in Western Maryland” is planning a workshop for staff members in the libraries it serves in Washington, Garrett, and Allegany counties to increase library service, safety, and security while maintaining excellence in customer service.  This will be accomplished by identifying primary security issues and empowering staff to handle challenging issues through practicing defined resolutions and the implementation of an incident response plan.

The jury was impressed by the regional library’s understanding of the needs of their member libraries to address difficult situations library staffs find themselves in, such as drug usage, mental illness, and homelessness, without negatively impacting other services. The close focus of this workshop provides a greater opportunity to relay in-depth information aligned with the goals of service, safety, and security.  The program has an outcome based emphasis as participants will be asked to apply strategies learned in hypothetical situations.  Additionally, the proposal incorporated a substantive evaluation methodology that includes a six-month follow up survey that will ask participants to assess how learning at the workshop contributed to their library’s efforts.  

Members of the 2018 H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant jury were Susan Henricks, Chair, Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Iowa; Paul Anderson, Retired Librarian, Newark, Delaware; Holly Van Puymbroeck, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; Min Tong, University of Central Florida, and Jon Walker, Pueblo Center County Library District, Colorado.

The H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant will be presented at the ALA Award Ceremony and Reception on Sunday, June 24, 2018 at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

The deadline for submissions of applications for the 2019 H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant is Feb. 2019.