SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
2024 PTPL Scholarshop Recipients:
The 2024 Winners of the annual PTPL scholarship will be honored at the year's PTPL Annual Meeting, to be held November 15, 2024 at the Montclair Library in Dumfries, VA.
Rebecca Kurylo
Rebecca “Becky” Gray Kurylo is a current student at Catholic University’s Master’s of Science in Library and Information Science program. She is currently employed by the National Gallery of Art’s Library as a Student Assistant Library Technician in Technical Services. Becky previously worked for Fairfax, Prince William, and Arlington County Public Libraries. Becky also volunteered at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library. She also worked for Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library when she was an undergraduate student there. Becky hopes to be a cataloger for an art library one day. She enjoys spending her free time with her one year old daughter (Callie), husband (Stephen), and two dogs, (Cosmo and Daisy) at home in Falls Church, Virginia.
Kayla O'LearyKayla O'Leary is a 2024 graduate of the Master of Science, Information Science program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She graduated from the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University (St. Joseph, MN) in 2022 with a BA in History and English (Creative Writing concentration), where she discovered her passion for library work and research. During her Masters program, she gained an interest in reparative metadata, facilitating discoverability, and universal cataloging/metadata standards through internships with the University of Richmond and the Library of Congress. She also worked as a research assistant with UTK, analyzing data science courses in LIS programs in North America. Currently, Kayla works at Randolph-Macon College's McGraw-Page Library in Ashland, Virginia as the Circulation and Resource Sharing Manager. In her free time, she loves watching movies/TV, reading fantasy books, and doing puzzles.
The 2024 Winners of the annual PTPL scholarship will be honored at the year's PTPL Annual Meeting, to be held November 15, 2024 at the Montclair Library in Dumfries, VA.
2023 PTPL Scholarship Recipient:
Megan Goldfarb (she/her) is in her second year of the online MSLIS program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is pursuing a pathway in information organization and management. She holds a BFA in Painting & Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, and has remained at VCU as a Collections Specialist at James Branch Cabell Library. Upon graduation, Megan aims to pursue opportunities in cataloging and metadata. She hopes to use metadata to support the intersections between materials, their subjects, and their users through a community-oriented lens that prioritizes accessibility and social justice. Megan is also interested in the ability of libraries and archives to support communities of artists and creators whose work might otherwise not be preserved and shared.
2022 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Emily Bradford is in her final year of the Master of Information program at Rutgers University (concentration in Library & Information Science). She holds a BA in Music/Rhetoric & Communication Studies from University of Richmond, where she also currently works as a Resource Sharing Specialist at Boatwright Memorial Library. She has an affinity for metadata and through her Masters program developed an interest in coding and database management. After graduation Emily hopes to find technical processing-related work in the digital libraries or electronic resources field. A passionate musician, she has a particular interest in audio-visual recordings as cultural heritage and would love an opportunity to work with those materials.
Brittany Smith (pronouns: she/her) is currently enrolled in the Master of Library and Information Sciences program at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and plans to complete her studies by 2024. She is a Metadata Specialist at the George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library where she processes new materials and manages the institutional repository, The Health Sciences Research Commons. She earned a BA in Political Science & Italian from the University of Virginia and a MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of New Hampshire. Upon graduation, she hopes to find a position that allows her to explore diversity and inclusion within academic librarianship, the use of digital collections as storytelling vehicles and the development of sustainable professional mentorships to draw in Black, Indigenous and People of Color early career librarians and library professionals. When she’s not working or attending classes, Brittany likes to paint with watercolors, hike on local trails, spend quality time with her friends and family, and write as well as edit speculative fiction stories.
2021 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
2020 PTPL Scholarship Recipient:
Robert Pleshar
Aaron Wilson
2019 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Bonnie Shaw
Allison Jenning-Roche
2018 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Ivy Donnell
Jamileh Kouhestani
2017 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Lisa Hilleary
Leigh Ann Martin
2016 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Jessica Robertson
Audrey Shenk
2015 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Lisa HillearyAbbey Walker
Rebecca Reeves
Alexander Salopek
Sue Graves
Fanuel Chirombo
Brityn Willis Bennett
Allie Feras
Mark Winek
Jennifer HamiltonPachara Yongvongpaibul
David Anderson
Mimi Games
2008 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Michael Kardos
Robert Reeves
2007 PTPL Scholarship Recipients:
Donald Woodward
Ping Wu