Bob Richardson Memorial Award
The Bob Richardson Memorial Award was established by the Executive Board in 1999 in recognition of Bob Richardson’s dedicated service to the Georgia Library Association. It honors those who have given outstanding service to the Georgia Library Association.
This year’s winner is Virginia Feher, Head Librarian of the Oconee Campus of the University of North Georgia.
Virginia has been actively involved Georgia Library Quarterly for almost a decade, beginning as an Associate Editor and Peer-Review Coordinator, becoming the editor soon after. In that time, she has been responsible for the direction and consistent delivery of GLA’s official publication. She has also been actively involved as an officer in the Interlibrary Loan Interest Group and Government Information Interest Group as well as serving as a past judge of the Academic Library Division’s paper competition and an Atlanta Emerging Librarian Coordinator. As editor of GLQ, Virginia has been an active and vocal ex-officio member of the GLA Executive Board, providing valuable institutional memory and an engaged perspective on the continuing issues facing the association.
GLA Team Award
The GLA Team Award was established by the Executive Board in 2012. This award honors a team that has excelled in the past year by offering innovative programming or services, performing or acting on assessment activities, undertaking a successful outreach or promotion effort, or providing outstanding support of an individual Georgia library or Georgia libraries as a whole.
This year’s winners are the Adult Programming Palooza Team: Angela Glowcheski, Deputy Director of Sequoyah Regional Library, and Tracy Walker, Programming Manager at Forsyth County Public Library!
Angela and Tracy joined forces to create a platform for people to share their ideas, success stories, and tips for improvement around adult programming. Not finding what they were looking for in already existing structures, they created Adult Programming Palooza to fill a hole in Georgia’s library landscape. This work has served to save countless staff hours and to help libraries boost both their programming and outreach capabilities. Since its beginning in December 2018, they have sought to host Adult Programming Palooza twice a year to foster conversations and share best practices. They have also reinvigorated the GPLS reference listserv, providing it a new focus on community services and programming. Their efforts have shone a light on a service area that is traditionally overlooked, and their work continues to be a model for others in Georgia and throughout the national library landscape.
