Chicago, IL, May 24, 2012— Winners of the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Awards will be honored at an open reception sponsored by EBSCO on Sun., June 24, 4:30 – 6:00 pm at the Sheraton Park Hotel-Tiffany Terrace and Patio, in Anaheim, during the ALA Annual Conference.
Eight libraries were selected for this year’s awards which recognize and honor outstanding achievement in library public relations. The John Cotton Dana (JCD) honor has been given continuously since 1946 and is sponsored by EBSCO, the H.W. Wilson Foundation and the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). It is considered to be the most prestigious of all library awards in the field of public relations.
For 2012, the JCD Award was revamped to judge applications based on budget categories. The application process was also improved by using online submissions and the amount of the award was increased to $10,000. The number of submissions grew from an average of 36 submissions to 108 submissions this year.
“This was a very interesting year,” said JCD committee chair, Kim Terry. “The quality was outstanding, and because of the huge increase of entries, we had a really hard time narrowing down to only eight winners despite the fact that the number of awards available nearly doubled from previous years. We had a variety of libraries —academic libraries to special libraries to school libraries —apply with fantastic campaigns.”
The eight libraries honored are: The Arlington (Texas) Public Library; Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Public Library; Contra Costa (Calif.) Public Library; The Cleve J. Fredricksen Library in Camp Hill (Pa.); King County (Wash.) Library System; The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT); The First Regional Library System’s Emily Jones Pointer Library in Como (Miss.); and Valley University Library in Orem (Utah).
About the Library Leadership and Management Association
The Library Leadership and Management Association (www.ala.org/llama) advances outstanding leadership and management practices in library and information services by encouraging and nurturing individual excellence in current and aspiring library leaders. LLAMA is a division of the American Library Association.
