Bogle-Pratt International Library Travel Fund winner announced

CHICAGO – Peggy Nzomo is the 2016 recipient of the American Library Association (ALA) International Relations Committee's "Bogle-Pratt International Library Travel Fund."

An award of $1,000 is given to an ALA member to attend their first international conference. The Bogle Memorial Fund and the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science will provide a $1,000 cash award for Ms. Nzomo to attend her first international conference in Columbus, Ohio.

The award is in recognition of Sarah Comly Norris Bogle, a prominent U.S. librarian who made notable contributions to children’s librarianship, international library service and library education.

Peggy Nzomo is an adjunct reference and instruction librarian at Kent State University, and a current liaison for Global Education. Ms. Nzomo’s responsibilities include to provide in-depth reference and instruction for students, faculty and staff; contribute to outreach and advancement initiatives and support for Global Education and Business entrepreneurship.

“I hope to present a paper entitled: "Multilingual Information Access: serving LEP (Limited English Proficient) users". This paper is a product of my PhD research which examined linguistic determinants in online information searching, and explored the information searching behavior of bi/multilingual academic users. The paper would reignite the discourse on language barriers in the online environment and raise awareness of some the MLIA tools that could be used to alleviate these barriers.”

Chair of the Bogle Pratt Committee, Marie Paiva explains “Ms. Nzomo is interested in dissipating language barriers found in online resources which would may alleviate some anxiety and problems in library research. This is a global topic of interest in the US with students learning the English language as well as researchers around the world which may help bridge the digital divide. Her conference attendance to IFLA will help Peggy network with presenters and librarians to further explore her interests.”

Peggy Nzomo was recognized during the International Librarians Reception at the 2016 American Library Association Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Related Links

Past Recipients of the Bogle Pratt Award