Three school librarians — in New Jersey, South Carolina and California — are among 10 winners of this year’s I Love My Librarian Award, selected for their expertise and dedication. The nonprofit American Library Association bestows the award every year to staff from academic, public and school libraries around the country who were nominated by their communities.
At Cranford High School, located southwest of Newark, New Jersey, Christine Szeluga increased circulation by 300% through the creation of a podcast studio, makerspace and history archive. Jenny Cox, who works at Georgetown Middle School in eastern South Carolina, spearheaded a $400,000 capital campaign to replace school library books across her county. Mia Gittlen reopened the shuttered library at Milpitas High School, near San Jose, California, and has since created a “hub of activity” for its 3,100 students and 200 staff members.
While the American Association of School Librarians recommends that there should be at least one full-time librarian in every school, in 2023-24, the U.S. had 39,450 full-time school librarians and 99,297 schools — .04 librarians per school, and one librarian for every 1,252 students. In recent years, school libraries have been the focus of heated debate around themes of sexuality, gender and race in the books on their shelves…