Short Takes

For years, Anne Robinson (right), who was named recently as the best school librarian in Britain, was anxious to meet her namesake—Anne Robinson, the caustic host of the TV game-show The Weakest Link. Robinson got her wish on May 2, when “the other” Anne Robinson presented her with the first School Library Association Award on the set of The Weakest Link. The librarian Robinson, a 20-year veteran of the field, is now running the library at the Nicholas Chamberlaine Technology College, a school for students ages 11 to 18 in Bedworth, England.

After a 16-year-old Memphis high school student’s successful fund-raising event for Memphis, TN, school libraries, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously May 23 for a resolution that would fully fund libraries in all county schools. Shruti Shah (left), a student at White Station High School who says she wants to be a politician someday, raised $19,000 from private sources for the city’s school libraries by holding a 5K race. “I asked my principal, Dr. Winnette, what schools needed the most,” Shah explains. “She told me many libraries lacked books,” which prompted Shah’s fund-raising effort.