Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

After being with Suffolk Public Libraries for 36 years, Tamra Bagley was awarded the 2024 Pattie Johnston Outreach Award, which she said was a big surprise and she’s “still in shock.”

The Pattie Johnston Outreach Award is granted by the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services to “a bookmobile or outreach support staff member who has provided exemplary service to their community through bookmobile and outreach services,” according to its website. 

“To win an award like that, it means a lot,” Bagley said. 

Megan Mulvey, SPL community engagement manager, and Sarah Townsend, assistant director of libraries, nominated Bagley for the award.

“She has a genuine passion for helping others, and she has been at the heart of innovation when it comes to serving the public in ways that are highly accessible and relevant to the needs that they might be encountering,” Mulvey said.

Townsend made similar remarks, calling Bagley the “foundation of library outreach in Suffolk.” 

“She really embodies the spirit of doing whatever possible to get people what they need in terms of library resources and going to where people are,” she continued.

Bagley ran the bookmobile from 1991 to 2016. Now, she said she focuses her outreach efforts toward seniors, which is one of her proudest accomplishments with SPL, Bagley said. 

She said she noticed, particularly during COVID, how many resources the library provides to families and young children and she felt like the senior population was being overlooked.

Seniors are a large and growing population in Suffolk, Townsend said, so it’s important the library finds ways to benefit them. 

“One of our missions in public libraries is to seek out people who maybe don’t have the same access that everyone else does to resources, and that can look like a lot of different things,” she said. “But with seniors, it can often mean there’s transportation issues or health issues that just don’t allow them to always access the same things that others can, so that’s a mission of public libraries, that we try and fill in those gaps in our community.”

Bagley was the one who really “championed” making senior to-go activity kits and coordinating how to get them to those communities, Mulvey said. Since COVID, Mulvey said Bagley has distributed thousands of senior kits. 

Some activities in the kits include making pressed flower bookmarks, terrariums and window decorations.

What makes these kits so special, Mulvey said, is that Bagley considers how fine motor skills can deteriorate with age, and she’s created activities to take that into account.

Bagley has also provided outreach services for at-risk teens, incarcerated adults and their families, and adults with cognitive disabilities. She also participates in the National Night Out, takes care of SPL little free libraries, and helps provide food for the mobile food pantry.  

“She works with everybody, but seniors are where her heart is,” Mulvey said.

Library outreach is an area that doesn’t usually get much attention and sometimes makes a “quiet impact,” Townsend said, but it is extremely valuable to the community. 

“I know that she has mentored dozens of dozens of library staff members, opened their eyes to the work that we do isn’t really just confined to our buildings, that we can do it anywhere,” Townsend said. “So it was that spirit, I think that made us really want to highlight her outreach work in libraries. It can be sort of invisible in a lot of ways because they’re not in our buildings, so it was really special to be able to highlight her for the work that she’s really done for decades and how it’s impacted the community, but also so many of us that have worked with her.”