Lear receives library association honor

Bernadette Lear

Bernadette Lear, associate librarian at Penn State Harrisburg, received the Pennsylvania Library Association’s (PaLA’s) Certificate of Merit for her work reviewing, updating, and organizing the PaLA archives. One of PaLA’s highest honors, the Certificate of Merit annually recognizes an individual’s outstanding contributions to the Commonwealth libraries.

Since 2007, Lear has chaired PaLA’s Archives Committee and organized and catalogued the association’s archival records. Also, Lear added items of lasting importance to the archives, solicited materials from PaLA’s past and present officers to record recent actions and activities and helped several chapters around the state research their history.

“Bernadette’s love for libraries and for history makes her an appropriate and a deserving awardee… It’s likely that Bernadette knows more about PaLA’s history than anyone else since she has devoted untold time, energy, and expertise toward the monumental effort to review, organize, and archive the association’s long history” the association noted in the award’s citation.