LISNews: Librarian News

A Navajo Nation librarian was given top honors recently for his contributions to literacy on the 27,000-square-mile reservation.

Irving Nelson, who serves as library program supervisor of the Navajo Nation, was selected from a pool of more than 500 librarians worldwide for the title of Librarian of the Year for 2010.

Reader to Reader, a nonprofit organization based at Amherst College in Amherst, MA honored Nelson for his more than three decades of advocating for literacy on the reservation.

"Irving Nelson is an extraordinary individual," said David Mazor, executive director of Reader to Reader. "His dedication to his library and the citizens that use it is unsurpassed."

Nelson began his career driving a bookmobile on the reservation's rural roads. He also is credited with building an American Indian collection that includes 11,000 books, oral history tapes and land-claim records dating to 1675. Farmington NM Daily News reports.