Heather Ogilvie receives the 2020 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity

CHICAGO – Heather Ogilvie, outreach librarian, Bay County Public Library in Panama City, Florida, has been selected as the recipient of the 2020 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket, will present the award at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana in January 2021.  Ogilvie will receive a cash prize and an object from Handler’s private collection.

Ogilvie was working as the outreach librarian for Bay County Public Library’s three counties in the Florida Panhandle when Hurricane Michael hit on Oct. 10, 2018 as a Category 5 storm. Over 45,000 structures were damaged and more than 1,500 destroyed, and there was no time to evacuate. Residents of Bay County lost power, water, sewer services and telecommunication for weeks. Ogilvie herself had seven trees fall on her home and lost portions of her roof, and her car was crushed, but she grabbed the books, puzzles and games she could salvage and ventured back out into the community.

Many of her outreach sites, including a community center and mall, had been destroyed, so she wrote an Innovation Project Proposal with PLAN (Panhandle Library Access Network) and received funding to support books for outreach and distribution to help rebuild personal libraries destroyed in the storm and other materials to assist in community recovery.

She didn’t stop there. Ogilvie worked alongside AmeriCorps, FEMA, Red Cross and United Way to help organize a Volunteer Reception Center as part of the Bay County’s Emergency Operations Center to connect volunteers with opportunities to help in the recovery effort. When the library reopened, she was crucial in maintaining the volunteer center, matching volunteers to projects and connecting those in need with recovery services. As the area began its slow healing, residents who had been evacuated from a senior living center where she did outreach were returned, and many attested to the joy Ogilvie’s visits brought to those disoriented by the relocation. To this day, she continues to be a community champion and a beacon of hope for Bay County in the aftermath of the devastating natural disaster of Hurricane Michael.

“The tremendous way in which Heather retained and spread joy after personal and community devastation of Hurricane Michael in her role as Outreach Librarian doing disaster response is precisely the type of proactive positivity that this jury is proud to honor,” said Lemony Snicket jury Chair Becca Worthington. “She has been an extraordinary example of humility, integrity, and dignity in the face of adversity.”

In response to receiving the award, Ogilvie said, “With tearful humility and enormous, choking pride, on behalf of my community—bursting with heroes of all sorts—and my library of brilliant peers who staunch the leaks and tirelessly man the Fortress of Information, I accept this most marvelous award ever.” She continued, “To think that I, with a tiny car and a little red wagon of selected books and odd objects, a librarian out on the street, might come face to face with a literary hero of towering genius, Mr. Snicket himself. I am gob smacked, joy-stricken, and bursting with gratitude for the wonderful world of people who bring me laughter, madness, and unbridled enthusiasm every day, and for the wild path, glittery with happiness, which I call Outreach.”

Handler said, "Heather Ogilvie is a triumphant reminder of what a truly noble librarian can do in a situation in which so many of us cower and look away.  When I am next tempted to think more of myself and less for assisting others, I will say to myself, 'Ogilvie,' and snap into action.

"Every year, the winner of the Snicket prize is celebrated at ALA, at a party to which everyone is invited. Clearly, a global pandemic calls for something quieter, so this year’s party budget goes to First Book, in support of their COVID-19 activation network. Join us by raising a socially-distanced glass to Heather Ogilvie—and maybe by tossing a little money in to help brilliant educators everywhere get books into the hands of underserved children. We’re matching donations up to $5,000."

The Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity was established in 2014 by the American Library Association in partnership with Daniel Handler. The prize, which is administered by ALA’s Governance Office, annually recognizes and honors a librarian who has faced adversity with integrity and dignity intact. The prize is $10,000, a certificate and an odd, symbolic object. 

Ogilvie will be joining the most recent prize winners, Yvonne Cech, director of the Brookfield Library, in Brooklyn, Connecicut, and Diana Haneski, library media specialists at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, both of whom barricaded and protected students during shootings at their respective schools. Other esteemed past winners include 2017 winner Steven Woolfolk, who was honored for his defense of First Amendment rights in Kansas City, Missouri, 2016 winner Melanie Townsend Diggs, who was honored for her activism during civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland, 2015 winner Scott Bonner, who was honored for his work during the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and 2014 winner Laurence Copel, who was honored for bookmobiling through the hurricane-hit streets in the Lower Ninth Ward Street Library of New Orleans.

The 2020 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity four-member jury included: Jury Chair Becca Worthington, ImaginOn Children’s Librarian, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Charlotte, North Carolina; Darcell Graham, manager, Documents Unit, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland; Susan Hess, retired school librarian, Osprey, Florida; and Lavoris Martin, director of Library Technical Services, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Pine Bluff, Arkansas.