The American Library Association's (ALA) Library History Roundtable (LHRT) Justin Winsor Award Committee is pleased to announce the winner of this year's essay award. The recipient of this year's award is Alex Poole for the essay ""If I'm fighting for myself, it is so that whoever stands on my shoulders can go further than I": The Intellectual Community of Black Women Children's Librarians in the mid-Twentieth Century United States." The runner up was Olivia Radbill with the essay "Settler Narratives: Colonial Genocide, Westward Expansion, the Feminization of Librarianship, and the Appointment of City Librarian Nellie Keith."
Alex Poole is an Associate Professor at Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics, Dr. Alex H. Poole studies history; diversity, equity, and inclusion; social justice; archives and records management; information work, behavior, and practices; digital curation; digital humanities; and pedagogy. His scholarship has earned awards from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), the American Library Association (ALA), the iSchools, and the Society of American Archivists (SAA).
Alex Poole's essay skillfully draws on original archival sources to pull together the lives of three Black women children's librarians from the mid-twentieth century. He explores each librarian's work in the field as community intellectuals and how they worked to "uplift" all. Readers of Poole's essay will learn that African American librarians not only combatted harmful stereotypes through their librarianship for children; they also were overlooked activists in the Civil Rights movement.
The Justin Winsor Library History Award is given annually to recognize the best essay written in English on library history. The award is named in honor of the distinguished nineteenth-century librarian, historian, and bibliographer who was also ALA's first president. It consists of a certificate and a $500 cash award, as well as an invitation to have the winner's essay considered for publication in Libraries: Culture, History, and Society.
Congratulations to Alex!
LHRT Justin Winsor Award Committee
Leah DiCiesare, Chair
Stacy Hisle-Chaudri
Dr. Carol Leibiger
Dr. Maxie Schreiber
Dr. Catherine Arnott Smith
Rachel Trnka
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Leah DiCiesare
STEM and Open Science Librarian
University of Maryland
leahd@umd.edu------------------------------