Kristabelle Williams of Addey & Stanhope School, a voluntary aided state secondary in inner South East London, has been awarded the honour of School Librarian of the Year 2020/21 by the School Library Association (SLA).
Kristabelle is the school’s Learning Resource Centre Manager and received the award at the SLA’s online course on Leading School Libraries yesterday (11th June) after being announced as one of five librarians on the SLA’s 2020/21 Honour List last year. The final stage of the judging, in which a panel of experienced school librarians visit all the candidates in their workplaces, was delayed until earlier this year due to the pandemic.
Kristabelle runs her library single-handed and ensured its services continued during the pandemic by including books in lockdown care packages for families. She used BookTrust’s Bookbuzz programme and the Free Books Campaign to encourage book ownership.
She said in a recent article for Books for Keeps magazine: “Whether young people read or not is often due to cost, access and content… in a pandemic where the public faces further unemployment and child poverty crises, book gifting has, is and will continue to be an important part of what our school does.”
The award citation noted how Kristabelle used her experience of the pandemic to implement positive changes when school reopened—for example, by retaining a click-and-collect loan system and continuing remote community building.
ACHUKA sends Kristabelle warm congratulations.
You can follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/libthroughthis