I love award ceremonies

I love award ceremonies. I love to attend them and I especially love to speak at them. Last night I got to present the Friends of the Library award to Stephanie Frontz, art librarian extraordinaire. Here is my text.

I have a big long list of accomplishments for Stephanie:

Stephanie has been an Art Librarian since 1973;
she currently manages the Art/Music Library ;
for many years she was also in charge of the Multimedia Center in Rush Rhees Library;
she managed the Library at the Memorial Art Gallery for a ten years;
she was a member of the College Teaching, Learning, Technology Roundtable;
she is also a long-standing member of the Friends of the University of Rochester Libraries Executive Committee;
she has been very active in the planning of the annual Book Sale and Holiday Reading;
Stephanie is a member of the Art Libraries Society of North America;
she has written articles and given presentations at national meetings;
she created an annual student art prize on the River Campus;
she is a member of the Gleason Library Art Committee;
and she has served on zillions of library committees over the years

But the list doesn’t really tell you why we chose Stephanie for this award.

Stephanie is passionate – she is passionate about art, about libraries, about librarians, about her students and her faculty.

Stephanie never cuts corners – Everything she does – from arranging flowers for orientation breakfast to teaching a class for graduate students – is done to perfection.

Stephanie sets the bar very high for herself and for everyone around her.

When Stephanie is on a project –everyone wants to be part of it – because they know the end result will be amazing and they will have tons of fun working on it.

Stephanie accomplishes more in a day than the rest of use do in a week. She is the original energizer bunny. And she doesn’t carry around piles of paper or even a big notebook. She carries a tiny, black calendar with her everywhere she goes and jots microscopic notes in it. Stephanie never forgets a detail or drops the ball.

Stephanie represents the very best of what being a reference librarian is about. She knows her subject and her users and her collection and works tirelessly to bring them together. I think that all of us who have worked with Stephanie over the years consider ourselves very, very lucky.

I know I consider myself privileged to have worked with Stephanie and would like to be the first to congratulate her on winning this award.