Goucher's Julia Rogers Library Wins John Cotton Dana Award

The Julia Rogers Library at Goucher College was recently honored with the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in library public relations projects. Of nine libraries honored, Goucher’s was the only academic facility.

The Julia Rogers Library earned the award for 25 Years of Jane Austen, a series of promotional pieces celebrating the college’s 25th year housing the large collection of memorabilia donated by Austen enthusiasts Alberta and Henry Burke. After submitting a written application, members of the library staff and Goucher’s Office of Communications worked together to assemble an oversized marble composition notebook containing photographs, print pieces, and press releases illustrating the public relations process. The notebook was meant to resemble those in which Alberta Burke collected newspaper clippings, correspondence, and other sundries about her favorite author.

The H.W. Wilson Company and the Library Administration and Management Association, a division of the American Library Association, jointly sponsor the prize, which has been continuously awarded since 1946. Other libraries honored were: Guernsey Memorial Library, Norwich, N.Y.; Halifax Regional Library, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada; the Library System of Lancaster County, Pa.; the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District; Saint Paul (Minn.) Public Library; the Sarasota County Library System, Sarasota, Fl.; and Toronto Public Library.

The John Cotton Dana Award was inaugurated at the 1946 annual conference of the American Library Association. It was named after a librarian whose career began in Denver in 1889 and ended in Newark, N.J., in 1929. Dana believed that the main challenge for libraries was to educate the public about citizenship. To do so required public affairs programs energetically developed by libraries to inform the public and increase the quality of the relationship between the two. The John Cotton Dana Award recognizes libraries that still adhere to these innovative principles.

Release Date: January 30, 2003