Peggy Sullivan

In 2008, Sullivan was named an honorary member of the American Library Association. She was nominated in recognition of over 50 years of dedicated librarianship during which she wrote the definitive scholarly history of the tenure of Carl Milam (ALA secretary 1920-1946) and the growth of the American Library Association to an international organization."

In 2004, Sullivan established the Sullivan Award for Public Library Administrators. This award is presented annually to an individual who has shown exceptional understanding and support of public library service to children while having general management/supervisory/administrative responsibility that has included public library service to children in its scope. She also presented the Sullivan Award to a faculty member in the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences (formerly the College of Professional Studies, where she was dean) for achievement in research. It is presented every fall on the NIU campus.

Sullivan was the 1991 recipient of ALA’s Joseph W. Lippincott Award, and was an alumnus of the University of Chicago, Catholic University and Clarke College.

Highlights of Sullivan’s career include being President of ALA’s Children’s Services Division (now the Association for Library Services to Children – ALSC) (1976–1977), Chair Centennial Celebration of the American Library Association (1976), assistant commissioner for extension services at the Chicago Public Library (1977–1981), ALA president (1980–1981), ALA executive director (1992–1994), Dean of the LIS Program at Rosary College (now Dominican University), Dean of the College of Professional Studies at Northern Illinois University, and numerous university teaching positions. Sullivan served as director of the Knapp School Libraries Project (1963–1968). This project had great national impact on convincing the public of the need for high quality school library media programs.

Sullivan was the only honorary member to have a giant image of her book on a parking garage in the Kansas City Library District. The facade includes her 1956 children’s book, The O’Donnells, as a title on the Community Bookshelf.

From 1952 to 1977, Sullivan held positions of increasing responsibility in public and school libraries. She directed the national Knapp School Libraries Project for the American Association of School Librarians (1963–1968) which had received $1,130,000 to raise the standards of school libraries. She served on the faculties of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago Graduate Library School. She also taught on part-time, summer or interim bases at six other library education programs (the University of Maryland, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Syracuse University, the Catholic University of America, Drexel University, and Rosary College) and directed the American Library Association’s Office for Library Personnel Resources.

Peggy Sullivan (August 12, 1929 - April 13, 2020) was an American librarian and educator. She was elected president of the American Library Association and was a scholar of the history of librarianship.