Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award to Brian E. C. Schottlaender

CHICAGO—Brian Schottlaender, university librarian at the University of California, San Diego Libraries, is the recipient of the 2007 Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award. This new award is sponsored by EBSCO Information Services and honors the recipient with $3,000 and a citation.

The Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award honors the memory of Ross Atkinson, a distinguished library leader, author, and scholar whose extraordinary service to ALCTS and the library community at-large serves as a model for those in the field.

Schottlaender’s contributions to the profession and to ALCTS consist of a wide variety of leadership roles including president of ALCTS and the Association of Research Libraries. He led both organizations through a strategic planning process that positioned them for a stronger future. He has contributed to the advancement of cataloging through his role in the formation of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging and, through his dedication and leadership; he has played a critical role in moving the cataloging code into the 21st century. His contributions have been recognized by the Margaret Mann Citation and the Best of Cataloging & Classification award.

Schottlaender’s professional career began after he completed a master’s of library science at Indiana University in 1980. That year he joined the cataloging staff of Indiana University moving to a position in the Cataloging Department at the University of Arizona in 1981. He moved to California in 1984 and until 1999, held several positions at the University of California, Los Angeles including assistant head of the Cataloging Division and associate university librarian Collections and Technical Services. In 1999, he left UCLA to become the university librarian at the University of California, San Diego. Over the more than 20 years he has held posts at UCLA and UC San Diego, he has established himself and the University of California as leaders in cooperative collections projects.

As a writer and thinker, Schottlaender’s publications range from the management and administration of libraries, to library collections and cataloging theory. His professional interests are broad, far ranging and often provocative. His work on the future of the catalog, including his edited volume, “The Future of the Descriptive Cataloging Rules: Proceedings of the AACR 2000 Pre-conference,” is valued by the cataloging community. Cooperative collection development has been significantly shaped by his work, from “The Development of National Principles to Guide Librarians in Licensing Electronic Resources” in Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory to notably “You Say You Want an Evolution��� The Emerging UC Libraries Shared Collection Concept” in Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services. Schottlaender’s work combines the practical with ideas that challenge conventional thinking in a way that is transformative.

The awards will be presented on Sunday, June 24, 2007, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) meeting in Washington, DC.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.