Ten Honorees receive prestigious I Love My Librarian Award for Outstanding Public Service

Claire Dannenbaum

Lane Community College, Eugene, Oregon

Supporting a diverse population of approximately 15,000 students at Lane Community College, Claire Dannenbaum is making lifelong impacts through her engagement with students’ challenging research projects. Propelled by a passion for art and creativity, she helped develop the library’s makerspace, created an exhibit space featuring rotating displays, and has mentored numerous students who have gone on to pursue advanced degrees after graduation.

Fred Gitner

Queens Public Library, Jamaica, New York

At Queens Public Library in the nation’s most ethnically and culturally diverse county, Fred Gitner has been helping new Americans find support for nearly three decades. His work in the library’s New Americans Program connects immigrants and asylum seekers to education opportunities and resources, including stations inside library branches filled with materials, workshops and programs in other languages, and live phone interpretation service in more than 240 languages.

Clare Graham

Malvern-Hot Spring County Library, Malvern, Arkansas

Clare Graham is building a strong future for the Malvern-Hot Spring County Library and its community by expanding the library’s geographic reach throughout the county’s rural landscape. Leveraging help from the library’s Friends group, she has converted coin-fed newspaper racks into Little Free Libraries and created the state’s first book kiosk in Bismarck—a town more than 20 miles from Malvern—to offer books, movies, and more. She has also been central in efforts to build a new library annex and park in Bismarck, helping secure six acres of land and coordinate the library’s construction.

Gabriel Graña

R.D. & Euzelle Smith Middle School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Gabriel Graña has given students at R.D. & Euzelle Smith Middle School command of the library space, a strategy he employs to keep literacy and the library as the school’s focal point and to give students an outlet to express themselves. Students contribute to book displays and programs, set individualized reading goals, and explore new technologies and build new skills in the library’s makerspace. Guided by their input, Graña recataloged the entire library collection by genre to improve discoverability—a seismic project completed over the summer with support from students and parents.

Diana Haneski

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida

In the aftermath of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, library media specialist and survivor Diana Haneski has been working to heal and navigate her community through the trauma. She took on the responsibility of adopting River, a trained therapy dog that provides critical emotional support for students and staff, has become certified in mind-body medicine, and created a dedicated Zen room in the library. Beyond her mental health support, Haneski is creating a culture of reading at the school, hosting restaurant-style “book tastings” and training high school reading mentors in the ReadSquad program.

Gladys E. López-Soto

University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Gladys López-Soto is helping inventors and entrepreneurs at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez and beyond turn ideas into reality with her deep knowledge of intellectual property. She has brought numerous educational opportunities to the university community and general public, including an annual virtual conference attended by hundreds, and has created a robust website designed to help Spanish language speakers understand intellectual property rights and how to protect them. López-Soto is also facilitating global cultural experiences with the Mi Museo, Nuestros Museos (My Museum, Our Museums) program, which connects students from different countries in a collective virtual experience.

Ted Quiballo

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

At Northwestern University, Ted Quiballo is engaging vulnerable populations with learning opportunities and supporting the research needs of incarcerated students. Through a summer program facilitated by World Relief Chicago—a Christian humanitarian resettlement organization—he introduces refugee and asylum-seeking youth to new technologies and STEM skills while training student workers and high school interns to lead activities, including video production and 3D printing. And as part of the university’s prison education program, Quiballo has provided research support and information literacy instruction to incarcerated students in Illinois.

Mychal Threets

Solano County Library, Fairfield, California

Mychal Threets has become one of the most recognizable librarians on social media with his viral videos of heartwarming library stories. Speaking from Solano County Library to his hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram and TikTok, he uses his megaphone to share words of encouragement to readers or those struggling with mental health, muses about his love of books, and spreads awareness about the positive impact of libraries on their communities. Off camera, Threets has been instrumental in promoting mental health best practices, helping install mental health kiosks in the library and its branches that connect patrons with a variety of mental and emotional health services.

Curt Witcher

Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana

The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, draws thousands of visitors each year thanks to the genealogy expertise of Allen County Public Library’s Curt Witcher. His decades of work in African American and Jewish genealogy, Native American research, and more have helped cultivate one of the largest genealogy collections in the country and positioned it as an international destination for researchers. Witcher has supported the founding of other local genealogy societies, forged partnerships with FamilySearch and the Internet Archive to make public domain portions of the center’s collection accessible online, and collaborated with an Indiana Tech professor to build a literature and genealogy course.