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Van Nuys Branch Librarian wins
New York Times
award
Young Adult Librarian at the
Van Nuys Branch of the
Los Angeles Public Library,
Peter Mann, has won the 2006
New York Times
Librarian Award for the western region of the
United States. One of 22 public library winners,
Mann received $2500 and a commemorative plaque at
an awards ceremony in the executive suite of the
Times
building in New York City December 13.
A committee of national library leaders selected the
award-winning librarians from nomination letters
extolling the librarians’ work within their local
communities. Mann won the
Times
award because he uses library service to change the
lives of Van Nuys’s homeless. “The library is a way
out,” Mann says. “People learn marketable skills,
such as how to set-up a website, by just being in
the library. They learn here, and then they teach
other people.”
In 2005, a group of girls from a Children of the
Night rescue school also nominated Mann for the
Times
award. In that year, Mann had done library outreach
at the school, acquiring institutional library cards
for the girls so they could use their library’s
services while studying for their GEDs.
Mann says he is deeply honored to have received the
award, but he is not alone in helping people at risk
in the Van Nuys community. “Many of my library
colleagues are as worthy as I am, if not more,” he
says. |
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