Building Community Partnerships and Inclusive Opportunities: ALA's 2023 Peggy Barber Tribute Grant Winners
Gill Memorial Library (N.J.) and Mount Kisco (N.Y.) Public Library were two of the recipients of the 2023 Peggy Barber Tribute Grant, an annual grant of the American Library Association (ALA) that recognizes, promotes, and supports meaningful programs in libraries that have limited and/or no access to budgetary support for programming. Gill Memorial Library used the Peggy Barber Tribute Grant to expand upon its partnership with local schools’ Life Skills classes. The library was able to host 18 educational field trips where students and teachers could check out books and participate in fun librarian-crafted activities to teach various "life skills", such as collaboration, research, skill-building, and writing.
Mount Kisco Public Library was able to fund monthly day trips to the library for developmentally disabled adults, offered in collaboration with a partner organization, The Manzi Center. Residents of The Manzi Center, as part of the center's "Choices Program" were able to add the library as a formal day-trip destination. During the grant period, eleven participants arrived at the library for a monthly program that provided a variety of leisure and learning activities designed to help enhance social skills and music appreciation.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:
- Learn how to collaborate effectively on programming with a community partner
- Learn how to organize an ongoing monthly program series
- Learn how to engage local schools in library programming
- Learn how to design programming for adults with disabilities
Accommodations:
This webinar will be presented online via Zoom. Closed captions will be enabled during the presentation, and we will share a copy of the presenter's slideshow at least 24 hours in advance. If you need other reasonable accommodations, please reach out to us by January 29, 2025 via email at publicprograms@ala.org or by calling 312-280-5045.
Martha Iwan was born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents who arrived in the U.S. after World War II. Both her parents were highly educated and her mother, who trained as a teacher, was very persistent in nurturing a love of reading and learning. Her local neighborhood library became a sanctuary since both of her parents worked and she felt estranged by her peers who treated her as a foreigner. Libraries were a mainstay during Iwan’s years in higher education and a place to bond with the community. It seemed like a natural progression to become an “Information Specialist” with a Masters in Special Libraries earned at the University of Toronto. After working in business libraries for several years, Iwan gravitated to the public library system and earned a Librarian II position at the Mount Kisco Public Library. She has worked for MTK since 2001 in a variety of positions including Interim Director. In a small suburban library, one gets experience working on a variety of projects, programming being a large part of the daily routine.
Antoinette Ruta received a master’s in library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh. She worked at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh before moving to Philadelphia. As a Librarian for Strayer University at the Center City Campus, she was an advocate of Diversity and Inclusion within the student community, where she served as a member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Scholarly activities and the use of library resources for students and patrons are of primary importance to Antoinette. Her role as Library Manager has always been to ensure that library resources are accessible and user-friendly; and that the quality of all materials encourages the next generation of creative thinkers. As Library Director of the Gill Memorial Library in Paulsboro, New Jersey, the importance of community is reflected in the historical archives and local history which shares equal importance in the learning process.