Contact: Kimberly Sanders
Sr. Administrative Assistant
312-280-3228
ksanders@ala.org
For Immediate Release
June 18, 2004
ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award winners for 2004
CHICAGO - The New Members Round Table (NMRT) and the American Library Association (ALA) Membership Committee are proud to announce that the UCLA Department of Information Studies ALA Student Chapter is the winner of the 2004 ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award. The runner-up of this year's award is the University of Hawaii at Manoa ALA Student Chapter.
The winning student chapter receives a $1,000 travel grant to help with the cost of conference attendance.
The Student Chapter of the Year Award Committee (SCOTYA) praised the UCLA ALA Student Chapter for its excellent programming, impressive increase in membership and its innovative fundraising activities. SCOTYA remarked that the chapter's activities and outreach at the local, university, state and national levels are noteworthy. The chapter worked with the UCLA Library, the ALA Office for Diversity and the UCLA Library Committee on Diversity to sponsor a fundraising event-the ALA Spectrum Scholarship celebration-to raise funds and awareness of the importance of diversity in the profession of librarianship. The chapter has coordinated efforts to provide service to local organizations such as Schools on Wheels, which provides supplemental educational services to children living in homeless shelters by organizing and purchasing small shelter libraries and providing computer and information literacy instruction to children. The chapter also provides leadership to the Reading Out and Reading Aloud program by reading to children in UCLA Hospital's pediatric waiting rooms.
"The student chapter has had a stellar year," said Beverly P. Lynch, professor, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. "The chapter established several new awards, designed and implemented creative and successful fundraising activities, used their exceptional networking skills to organize splendid programs of interest to students and faculty and continued their efforts to place the American Library Association at the forefront of every conversation about professional organizations."
Lynch also praised the chapter outreach between Library Information Science (LIS) professional associations at UCLA and California State University, San Jose (Fullerton Extension Program). She noted that the student associations at these two programs promoted events and activities that increased and strengthened professional development opportunities.
The runner-up of this year's award, the ALA Student Chapter of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is honored for revitalizing the chapter and its creative methods ensuring the continuation of quality leadership, which will help the transition of new officers to keep the organization running. SCOTYA members remarked that the chapter has made huge strides since its reorganization in 2002, which include revising the chapter constitution and bylaws, creating a new and highly informative newsletter, co-sponsoring the first LIS Job Fair and creating the first student service award.
The Student Chapter of the Year Award is presented to recognize a chapter's outstanding contributions to ALA, its school and the profession. The award's purpose is to increase student involvement in ALA through student chapters and to recognize the chapters' leaders. Official ALA Student Chapters are organizations formed by students at schools offering accredited programs of library and information studies.