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ACRL honors the 2008 award winners, Part 2: A recognition of professional achievementC&RL News, April 2008 by Megan Griffin ACRL presents WSS Significant Achievement Award Ragains wins IS Ilene F. Rockman Publication of the Year award
“Although the work is aimed at librarians who teach distinct user groups and subject areas, academic library instruction programs must embrace and provide service to all of these groups, be they college freshmen, students in specific disciplines or distance learning students. “Contributions are provided from 18 leading experts around the country; however, Ragains knits together their chapters and provides the essential framework so that instruction librarians can take this work to both integrate information literacy standards into their respective curricula and to establish firm pedagogical foundations within their programs.” Hazard Community and Technical College wins CJCLS Program Award A citation and $500, donated by EBSCO Information Services, will be presented to the staff of the Hazard Community and Technical College during the CJCLS Awards Breakfast, Sunday, June 29, at 8:00 a.m. Hazard Community and Technical College hosts an annual regional conference in Southeastern Kentucky, which brings together academic, public, and school librarians. The program includes trainers from Hazard Community and Technical College, the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, the University of Kentucky, Morehead State University, and local artists. The program has grown to include 15 counties. “Hazard Community and Technical College addressed the need for staff development and training for librarians who may not have the resources or personnel to acquire the skills needed for their jobs,” said award committee chair Matt Burrell, librarian at Gulf Coast Community College. Susan Sharpless Smith wins IS Innovation award
“Susan Sharpless Smith’s pioneering efforts to ensure the success of Wake Forest University’s Embedded Librarian Project illustrates the innovative application of a “Library Without Walls,” both in the context of how technology has allowed the library to transcend its traditional physical confines and also in the project’s outreach efforts to include the community in a faculty-library partnership initiative,” said Susan Beck, IS awards committee chair and collection development coordinator at the New Mexico State University Library. The Embedded Instruction program, launched by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, was a true partnership between teaching faculty and librarians in providing the resources and technologies needed to teach a nontraditional, service learning course called “Social Stratification in the Deep South.” Students enrolled in this sociology course spent two weeks traveling on a bus throughout the South, studying the most pressing current social issues found in that region. Smith, the “embedded librarian” of the Embedded Instruction project, created community by immersing herself in the experience, literally traveling with students and faculty on the bus. She set up, taught, and moderated the use of the collaborative Web site. She helped students to use the Web site to communicate with parents, the local press, and others at home. “The fact that the course faculty consulted with [the] library regarding [the] program’s technology needs was both commendable and a tribute to the high esteem Wake Forest University faculty hold for the library and its staff,” said Beck. “This library-academic partnership project demonstrates how librarians can make a positive and dramatic impact on a program. “The Embedded Instruction program from Wake Forest University serves as a model for true collaboration between librarians and faculty. Susan was a necessary component of the program and her participation allowed for community building as well as provided a means for documenting and sharing the learning that took place.” ACRL announces RBMS Leab Exhibition award winners • Division One (expensive), the winner is Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros’ Eragny Press, 1894-1914: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Books, Prints & Drawings Related to the Work of the Press, submitted by The Grolier Club. “Illustrating the Good Life is best characterized as a beautifully composed catalog, one that does its very good best to complement, as a sympathetically designed book, the books printed at the Eragny Press,” said Richard Noble, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee and rare books cataloger at Brown University. “Alice Beckwith’s text in the general introduction and in the individual commentaries is intended at every point to recall the reader, as a member of “the book-loving public,” to a consciousness of process, not simply as a set of isolated techniques, but, in this case particularly, as a lived aesthetic. The designer has assembled and styled the printed text and the images with something of the same feel as the work of the press without imitating the full density of its typography, but with sensitivity to its sense of color. “Above all, this is an informative catalog, a worthy contribution to the history of the Eragny Press in its historical moment, starting with the books that influenced it, proceeding through its own work, and ending with an account of its influence on the work of others, with the valuable addition of an extensive bibliography and an index.” • Division Two (moderately expensive), the winner is the Chicago Public Library, Special Collections and Preservation Division, for their piece entitled One Book, Many Interpretations. “This little catalog—little by design, but well packed—is the outcome of what one might think to be as ‘general collections’ a project as a public library could undertake: to encourage, by way of the reading of the same book by many people, a ‘culture of reading,’” said Noble. “It was an inspired idea to take the One Book, One Chicago reading program and extend it to the creation of a small but rich collection of forty-seven interpretive fine bindings (and one bonus binding by the exhibit curator). “The book is decidedly designed. Even the cover design, with the die-cut circle giving us the One Book program device ‘before letters,’ adds to the fun. We are particularly happy to make this award to a public library building on the culture of reading to advance the culture of the book.” • Division Three (inexpensive), the winner is Mapping America: 500 Years of Cartographic Depictions, submitted by Vassar College. Noble commented, “It might be taken as a sign of what this catalog is, that it was entered under the name Vassar College, rather than Vassar College Libraries. It does include a checklist of an exhibition held in the Vassar College Library, consisting of materials held by the Vassar College Libraries; but the work as a whole is about the pedagogical underpinnings of the process that brought it into being. The basic theme is stated by Ronald Patkus, in his introductory essay. While conceding that ‘the holdings here do not have the breadth or depth of collections in larger institutions,’ he goes on to say, ‘Viewed as a whole, the collection of atlases and maps that has been assembled by the library is a valuable resource that continues the Vassar tradition of learning by ‘going to the source.’” Moreover, “A special aspect of ‘Mapping America’ is that students—not only librarians—have played an important role in its creation. “The catalog has been well designed and produced, at relatively little cost, and represents one ideal of the exhibition catalog, as a permanent contribution to the institution’s own resources for making the best use of its collections and as a signpost for others.” • Division Four (brochures), the winner is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University’s brochure entitled “Collecting an Empire: The East India Company (1600–1900).” Noble noted, “The various elements by which this committee judges brochures are here of the highest quality. Ayesha Ramachandran’s 1,000-word essay, which might well serve to introduce a comprehensive history of the EIC, is a model of scholarly concision that orients—and, we might say, occidents—an intelligent reader to the historical background and material scope of this exhibition, which drew on a number of Beinecke collections. “The text is also an example of straightforward good typography. The six color illustrations represent the exhibition’s wide variety of documents and graphics, with captions that succinctly identify and place them. The tri-fold format has been well used: the formal front cover title and back cover facsimile exemplify, when opened to face each other, the contrasting modes of cultural confrontation that inform the exhibition as a whole; and the interior is a well balanced triptych of printed and facsimile text. The brochure is of handy size, printed on heavy matte stock, the ideal, non-glossy medium for fine-grained graphics. In none of these things is it startlingly innovative: its business is to stay out of its own way and let its excellent contents through.” • Division Five (electronic exhibition), the winner is the North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center for B. W. Wells, Pioneer Ecologist, www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/wells/. “This online exhibition is the most publicly accessible node of a system of exhibition, catalog, and online resources devoted to the life and work of B. W. Wells, an interesting but little known pioneer of the movement in natural science from botanical description to the systems approach known as ecology,” said Noble. “All the elements of this archival ecology, so to call it, are consistent in design, and allow the viewer/reader the opportunity to follow a narrative, or to branch out to image and sound resources that go well beyond the boundaries of the exhibition proper, yet allow one to backtrack and set out in other directions without the confusion that may sometimes be observed in other sites that attempt the same sort of multiple linkings. “Taken together, it is an exemplary exercise in telling a story using archival materials of many kinds, of which the online exhibition is the real linchpin.” Certificates will be presented to each winner at the conclusion of RBMS Program on Sunday, June 29, at 1:30 p.m. Emanuel named WESS Coutts Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant Winner
Emanuel will receive her plaque and $3,000 award check at the WESS general membership meeting on Monday, June 30, at 8:00 a.m. Emanuel’s proposal aims to survey major film libraries in the Paris region in order to analyze and evaluate the collections and services provided to visiting scholars, with some particular focus on the films of Francis Veber. “The growing importance of film studies in many academic fields, as well as the challenges of identifying and accessing a full range of relevant primary and secondary research materials, suggest that Ms. Emanuel’s timely survey of Parisian resource centers will provide valuable guidance for librarians and for the students and faculty they serve,” said award committee chair Bryan Skib, collection development officer at the University of Michigan Libraries. Dolores Fidishun wins WSS Career Achievement Award A cash prize of $1,000 and a plaque will be presented to Fidishun at the WSS Program on Monday, June 30, at 8:00 a.m. “Dolores epitomizes what the ACRL Women’s Studies Section is all about,” said Kelly Barrick, chair of the WSS award committee and coordinator, reference and instruction, librarian for gay and lesbian studies and women’s studies at Yale University. “She actively engages in issues involving the practices of women’s studies librarianship and the politics of feminist librarians; she is a pioneering researcher in the study of adult learners, women, and technology and she is an extraordinary mentor to librarians in all fields of the profession. One nominator wrote that Ms. Fidishun has an ‘unselfish spirit to serve and assist others.’ I couldn’t agree more.”
Megan Griffin is ACRL program coordinator, e-mail: mgriffin@ala.org
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| ACRL is a division of the American Library Association |
| © 2008 American Library Association. Copyright Statement Last Revised: May 21, 2007 |
This annual award honors Ilene F. Rockman’s professional contributions to academic librarianship in the area of information literacy. The award recognizes an outstanding publication related to instruction in a library environment published in the preceding two years. 
A prize of $3,000 and a plaque will be presented to Smith during the IS program on Sunday, June 29, at 1:30 p.m. 
This grant, sponsored by Coutts Information Services, covers airfare to and from Europe, transportation in Europe, and lodging and board for up to 14 days. The primary criterion for awarding the grant is the significance and utility of the proposed project as a contribution to the study of the acquisition, organization, or use of library materials from or relating to Western Europe. 
Dolores Fidishun, head librarian at the Pennsylvania State Great Valley Library, has been selected as the winner of the Women’s Studies Section (WSS) Career Achievement Award. The award, sponsored by Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., honors significant long-standing contributions to women’s studies in the field of librarianship over the course of a career.