91´«Ã½

Jillian Rudes has been named the 2022 winner of 91´«Ã½’s Scholastic Library Publishing Award. This award of $1,000 and certificate of achievement, sponsored by the Scholastic Library Publishing Company, recognizes a librarian whose unusual contribution to the stimulation and guidance of reading by children and young people exemplifies outstanding achievement in the profession.

Rudes is being honored for the expertise, enthusiasm, and excitement that she brings to her students, school, national and international library communities. She is the solo librarian in a public school that supports one of the most culturally diverse groups of students in NYC. She is the President of the NYC School Librarians’ Association, the Japanese Culture and Manga special collections librarian for the NYC Department of Education, and the founder and host of Manga in Libraries, an international webinar series.

Rudes received a BA and MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MLS in School Media from the City University of New York at Queens College. She has been the school librarian at the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School (MELS) since 2014. She is a member of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½). She has presented at local and international conferences, written for AASL Knowledge Quest, and helped curate content for librarians and educators for New York Comic Con, a pop culture event for the more than one hundred thousand in attendance. She received the prestigious Lucille C. Thomas Outstanding Future School Librarian Award (2011) from Queens College, was an 91´«Ã½ Emerging Leader (2014), and recipient of two AASL Awards, the Inspire Special Event Grant (2017) and the AASL Collaborative School Library Award (2020.)

When Jillian was hired as a school librarian at MELS in 2014, very few manga titles were on the library shelves. Going forward, she now houses the Japanese Culture and Manga special collection, circulates materials in both print and digital formats to NYC students, publishes articles and provides professional development opportunities through her Manga in Libraries webinars and panel discussions.

As Rudes’ principals, Damon McCord and Patrick Finley, stated, “From building an extensive and thoughtful manga collection, to hosting an annual MELS Comic Con, to facilitating a Manga Club, to organizing a trip to Japan, to teaching a 12th grade literature course about Japanese Visual Storytelling, she has completely transformed the culture of our school. By engaging students and teachers in authentic learning experiences, she celebrates the love of reading and provides programming that supports the needs of all students.”

Jillian Rudes personifies the essence of this award. She is “a librarian whose unusual contribution to the stimulation of guidance of young people exemplifies outstanding achievement in the profession.”