Miriam Braverman

Miriam Ruth Gutman Braverman (1920-2002) was an American librarian.[1] She attended library school at Pratt Institute.[1] She was part of the socialist movement in the 1940s and 1950s.[1] In the 1960s she set up libraries in Freedom Schools in Mississippi, and she worked at the Brooklyn Public Library beginning in 1964.[1] She was also one of the founders of the American Library Association's Social Responsibilities Round Table, which was founded in 1969.[2][1] She wrote a history of young adult services at three public libraries, titled Youth, Society and the Public Library (1979).[3] She was a leader in the fight which led to the American Library Association condemning the Vietnam War.[4] She taught at the School of Library Services of Columbia University (from which she earned her doctorate) until 1982.[1] In 1982 she conducted a study which led to the creation of the Langston Hughes Library and Cultural Center in Queens.[1] She was a member of the Progressive Librarians Guild, and joined their Coordinating Committee during the last year she was alive.[1]

The Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize is named after her.[5]

On Friday, December 8, 2006 Major Owens of New York praised her on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.[4] Owens referred to her as a “Great Point-of-Light for all Americans…a great humanitarian as well as a Librarian…, who understood that the power of information was continually escalating… as an advocate in the classroom and a fighter on the street.”[6]