Carrie Banks

Carrie Banks has been the in charge of Brooklyn Public Library's (BPL) Inclusive Services (formerly known as The Child's Place for Children and Teens with Special Needs) since 1997 and an Assistant Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute since 2013. She has been served in many positions in ALSC and ASCLA, including as the ALSC representative to ASCLA, and as a past chair of the Service to Special Population Children and their Caregivers Committee. She is currently the Designated Director for Special Populations on the ASCLA Board of Directors. She is a past chair of the Schneider Family Book Award committee and served on the Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audio Production committee. Ms. Banks has helped draft national guidelines and toolkits for serving people with disabilities in public libraries. She has been published in Children and Libraries, and InterFace She also wrote a chapter about Inclusive Services for the book From Outreach to Equity and another on working with volunteers with disabilities in the upcoming book Volunteers in the Library, edited by Carol Smallwood. She substantially revised Inclusion Families of Children with Special Needs: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians (ALA Editions, 2014). She has conducted inclusion training for libraries in Connecticut, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and for cultural institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the New York Aquarium and America Reads, among others. Her extensive background in children with special needs began in high school and has included working with children with dyslexia, pediatric psychiatric diagnoses, histories of abuse, and craniofacial differences. In 2000 she received New York University's Samuel and May Rudin Award for Community Service for her work with the disability community. In 2010 she received the Sloan Public Service Award and was named a "Mover & Shaker" by Library Journal in 2012. She has twice received an Oscar from the Brooklyn Family Support Services Council for her services to people with developmental disabilities and their families. Ms. Banks received her Master of Library Science from Queens College in 1990 and her Bachelor of Science in Developmental Psychology from Oberlin College in 1982.