Friends of the Edmonds Library awards annual graduate-level scholarship for 2019-2020

Today the Friends of the Edmonds Library announced Magenta Loera as the 2019-2020 recipient of its $4,000 University of Washington iSchool Scholarship. The annual scholarship, now in its 26th year, is intended for a second-year graduate student who is a resident of Washington State and focusing their studies on public librarianship. 

Magenta Loera

“Community engagement through libraries synthesizes my primary interests in leadership, social responsibility and advocacy work, and I believe it is at the heart of what makes libraries transformative institutions,” Ms. Loera said. 

“As a future Outreach-Community Engagement Librarian, I plan to continue brainstorming new ways of reaching more remote and underrepresented communities through creative oral knowledge projects and with the help of digital technologies. Receiving the Friends of the Edmonds Library Scholarship will allow me to continue to devote time and attention towards my current academic and professional responsibilities as well as my future goals within the library field.” 

The scholarship is one part of the Friends’ investments into education. 

“Starting in 2019 in addition to our scholarship and significant investments into the Edmonds Library, we’ve also started a Community and Education Grants program with an initial $1,500 budget to support education and literacy in our Edmonds community,” noted Friends President Luke Distelhorst. 

“This year we’ll support the Edmonds Library with over $30,000 for free public programming, equipment upgrades, and general amenities that all library customers can enjoy, and we’re looking forward to branching out and supporting new initiatives in our city.”  

Stay tuned as we will have Magenta attend an upcoming FEL program in fall 2019!