Daily Sitka Sentinel

Blatchley Librarian Sagel Wins State Honor

By ABIGAIL BLISS
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Blatchley Middle School librarian Kari Sagel was awarded the Alaska Library Association’s 2018 Audrey P. Kolb Service Award at the AKLA conference in Anchorage last week.

Blatchley Middle School librarian Kari Sagel. (Sentinel Photo)

    The award was created in 1991 to recognize librarians and volunteers for their contributions to local libraries or libraries statewide, Karen Kresh, Public Libraries Roundtable chair, explained at the event.
    Kresh lauded Sagel for her decades of service to Blatchley students, her role as chair of the Friends of Sitka Public Library, and her championing of Sitka’s adult spelling bee, World Book Night, and “Love Your Library” social media campaign.
    “It is clear that she’s a tireless and enthusiastic library supporter,” Kresh said. “Her bottom line is ‘get those books into the hands of children and adults alike,’ which I think is a sentiment we can all get behind.”
    Sagel’s determination to get books into everyone’s hands started with a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, she said.
    “(I) started a little school library there – just a set of books on a shelf – and then decided that might be something I would like,” she said.
    She moved to Sitka in 1977 and assumed her post at Blatchley on arrival. Sagel said middle schoolers offer a singular, animated approach to education, distinct from the smallest students and often fading by the time they reach high school.
    “Kids at the middle school are very humorous,” she said. “They’re very funny. They do very unexpected things. You laugh every day with things you see in the hallway.”
    During her time in Sitka, however, Sagel’s efforts have often expanded well beyond her engagement with middle schoolers at Blatchley, Sarah Bell, former Sitka High School librarian, noted in her letter nominating Sagel for the award.
    “(Sagel) was exceptional in her support, not only for her own program, but for all things Library,” Bell wrote. “Whether it is through Battle of the Books, bringing authors into schools and local libraries, providing programming at the public library, cohosting the Library Show on the radio, (Sagel) is always there, sometimes in a supporting role, more often leading the charge.”   
    Andrew Murphy, Sitka Public Library Director, said it doesn’t take years of working side by side to recognize Sagel’s enthusiasm for and impact on local libraries.
    Murphy moved to Sitka six months ago, and already perceives Sagel as “immeasurably essential to the community of Sitka and especially so to Sitka Public Library,” he said. He pointed to a book sale Sagel organized on last year’s Alaska Day that raised $2,000 for the library, her “beautiful designs for event flyers,” and her leading role in the “Tender-Hearted Book Club” program in February as a few highlights of her contributions.
    It is this last initiative, the “Tender-Hearted Book Club” event, that stands out in Sagel’s mind as a high point of her tenure in Sitka.
    “(It was) just a one-time meeting of people who talk about books that they really enjoy, books that touch their hearts,” she said.
    She said that, in addition to appreciating books near and dear to their hearts, readers should seek out books with unfamiliar subjects or opinions that contradict their own.
    “I would recommend that people continue to read books that challenge them and help them think of something new or think of something in a new way,” Sagel said, adding that she herself had been reading about race in America.

    The students Sagel first welcomed into the Blatchley library are now adults themselves, and much has changed in terms of technology in library services since she first set foot in Sitka. The steadfast staples of libraries, however, have weathered the two decades unchanged.
    “The fundamentals are reading, and they’ll always be reading,” Sagel said.