Norma Blake is Library Journals’s Librarian of the Year 2008
The New Jersey State Library is proud to announce that Norma Blake has been named “Librarian of the Year” by Library Journal.
Below is an excerpt from the article written by John N. Berry III, in Library Journal. For the complete article, click here.
“Librarians and officials in education and government all recount the leadership and creativity brought to library service in New Jersey by State Librarian Norma Blake. She has sparked proactive, collaborative initiatives that have taken libraries of all types “out of their comfort zone,” as she puts it, and into working partnerships and relationships with educational and corporate institutions as well as the state’s economic development and commercial players, from small businesses to the huge biotech industry.
Under Blake, the New Jersey State Library (NJSL) supports everyone in New Jersey with a new kind of library service while it works to put the state’s libraries into the trenches in the highly competitive battles to bring jobs and business to the Garden State. NJSL also helps workers in the state, including those in libraries, grow and develop their expertise and talents for a more demanding future.
Rarely has LJ been blitzed with as much impressive evidence of the contribution of one librarian to innovation that converts formerly skeptical citizens, politicians, and other public servants to the view that strong libraries are central to the future of their states. For that leadership and more, Norma Blake has been chosen LJ’s 2008 Librarian of the Year.”
Norma Blake will accept this prestigious award January 11, 2008, during the American Library Association’s Midwinter conference in Philadelphia, PA.