2004 GODORT Award and Scholarship Recipients

James Bennett Childs Award

Recipient:
Robert A. Walter
Dean of the Leonard H. Axe Library, Pittsburg State University

Robert A. Walter, Dean of the Leonard H. Axe Library at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, is the 2004 recipient of the James Bennett Childs Award. This award is a tribute to an individual who has made a lifetime and significant contribution to the field of documents librarianship.

This award is being presented to Bob for his distinguished and sustained contributions to documents librarianship. During his career of 25 years he has played an active part within GODORT. Most of this work has been concerned with the legislative activities of the organization. He has been both a member and chair of the GODORT Legislation Committee for over half of his 25-year career. Within ALA he has represented GODORT by being a member of the ALA Committee on Legislation, the ALA Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Government Information and the ALA Legislation Assembly. Bob not only served more than one term on these committees, but he also chaired these committees. He also was appointed as GODORT's representative to the Inter-Association Working Group on Government Information Policy. As one of his letters stated "Bob is one of those rare individuals who can contribute on so many levels - as a passionate and articulate spokesperson of an issue, as a behind the scenes crafter of resolution language, as an organizing leader or strategy facilitator - and make it all seem so effortless in the process."

Bob also has supported the government depository library program by serving on the Depository Library Council from 1984-1987. A former chair of the Council noted that "Bob was a major contributor to the writing of Council recommendations and served as a facilitator during lively and contentious meetings with the Superintendent of Documents and the government documents librarians representing the depositories across the country."

Within the state of Kansas, Bob has been very active. He has promoted documents and their use during his tenure as Documents Librarian at Pittsburg State University and has continued this after his appointment to Director and then Dean of the library. In the Kansas Library Association (KLA) he has worked hard within its GODORT chapter since he arrived in the state in 1981. During 1983/84 he served as chair of KLA/GODORT and as a reward for his work he either volunteered or was volunteered to help develop and write the state plan for the state. Bob has just finished his term of president of KLA, which in Kansas requires one to agree to a three-year commitment. In the years between the above-mentioned positions, he agreed to serve as the KLA Parliamentarian. He has held this position for 12 years. This would have been 15 years but he took off three years when he won the election to serve as President. Outside of KLA he has represented librarianship by accepting governor appointed positions on the Kansas Library Network Board (1998-2004) and the Kansas State Library Advisory Commission (1987-1995). During his tenure he agreed to chair both organizations. Previous to his appointment to the Kansas Library Network Board, he served on that Board's Committee on Preservation (1990-1993).

LexisNexis/GODORT/ALA "Documents to the People" Award

Recipient:
Counting California
http://countingcalifornia.cdlib.org/
Represented by Rosalie Lack

Counting California, a web-based system providing open access to economic and social data on California, has been chosen as the 2004 recipient of the LexisNexis/GODORT/ALA "Documents to the People" Award. This award is a tribute to an individual, library, institution, or other non-commercial group that has most effectively encouraged the use of government documents in support of library service; Counting California, a project spearheaded by the California Digital Library, has most certainly succeeded in this regard.

Counting California is intended to integrate data from all levels of government in that it is a collection of disparate data from multiple agencies, integrated into a single collection and format that can be easily accessed by a variety of end users. Users are frequently unfamiliar with government agency organization; consequently, Counting California provides a subject-based approach to its organization. Researchers and the public can discover and interact with current and historical census data, almanac-style statistics, county business data, and a range of education, crime election, and demographic information from nearly a dozen different sources.

The communities served by Counting California are extremely diverse, including students, faculty and researchers, as well as all citizens - not only from the State of California - but across the entire country.

The success of Counting California in making it easy for users to get statistical information is just the beginning of the story, however. Counting California provides a production model for the future of government information in libraries, including:

• It is built with shared resources. Projects such as this are expensive to develop and maintain. Counting California drew upon the infrastructure of the shared resources of the California Digital Library and the talents of staff from several libraries.
• It is built to be scalable, with open standards. By using the Data Documentation Initiative metadata standard for social science data, an open and flexible format for describing numeric data, and by building a system that is flexible, Counting California is a model of a system that can be scaled to add new data easily and can migrate over time into new computing platforms and new software when that becomes necessary.
• It is a model of the role libraries have the potential to play in the digital world. Counting California shows that the traditional roles of libraries of selecting, acquiring, organizing, preserving, and providing access to information are as important in the digital world as they were in the analog.

To those requiring access to statistical data on California, Counting California has not only made life easier, but it is ensuring the preservation of usable electronic statistical data files for the future. It indeed effectively encourages the use of government documents in support of library service in a most unique and successful manner.

NewsBank/Readex/GODORT/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Research Grant Award

Recipient:
Dr. Kristin R. Eschenfelder
Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Kristin R. Eschenfelder, Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the 2004 recipient of the NewsBank/Readex/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Award. Kristin teaches and conducts research in the areas of information technology, information policy, and libraries. Among her teaching responsibilities is a government documents course. Her research focuses on the information published on official government web sites and how agencies manage the creation, approval, management, and retention of this information. This research has resulted in several publications and presentations at scholarly conferences and professional organizations. A colleague notes that, "Her work in this area is groundbreaking and has been well-received by the practicing government documents community in Wisconsin and within the academic research community."

Kristin will use the Reynolds Award funds to hire primarily library school students to gather data and provide computer support for an extensive content analysis of 30 to 40 state bureau or program level agency web sites. This will enable her to complete her research project on the organizational factors affecting the characteristics of government information published by state agencies on their web sites. Kristin will examine variables such as the quantity, quality, origins (e.g. drawn from paper publications), and frequency of change of web content. With this award, Kristin will further her efforts as an academic researcher in the important and emerging field of electronic government information---an area of interest and import to all government information professionals.

Bernadine Abbott Hoduski Founders Award

Recipient:
Melody S. Kelly
Associate Dean of Libraries at the University of North Texas

The 2004 Bernadine Abbott Hoduski Founders Award is presented to Melody S. Kelly, Associate Dean of Libraries at the University of North Texas (UNT). This award is presented to Melody for her almost 30 years of leadership that strongly affected the depository library community in Texas. She spent many years as a documents librarian before finally agreeing to leave the documents department for her promotion to Associate Dean of Libraries in 2001. During her years as documents librarian and department head for the Government Documents Department, she insisted that service for patrons be the primary focus of the department, resulting in a glowing reputation on campus as the place to go for help with really difficult research. However, Melody's personal contributions to the field of government information extended beyond the walls of her own library.

Since 1987, Melody has taught the government information course for the School of Library and Information Sciences (SLIS) at the University of North Texas. Her lively personality and insightful wit make her classes as entertaining as they are educational. As one former student stated, "I walked into class to begin my study of what had to be the most boring possible area of librarianship, Government Documents. By the end of that first 3-hour class, my opinion had changed radically. If Ms. Kelly was an evangelist for Government Documents Librarianship, she had gained another convert to the fold." She clearly imparts to her students her own passion for free, open access to government information. A number of currently practicing documents librarians received a thorough and practical grounding, and a passion for the topic, through one of Melody's courses. In 2002, to recognize her contributions to the profession, she was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award by the UNT SLIS.

Melody's membership in the Texas Library Association (TLA) extends back to the early 1970s. She was a founding member of the TLA GODORT and a tireless supporter of no-fee access to government information. She is regarded as a mentor and role model by many of the GODORT members, and her depth of understanding regarding public policy issues affecting the Depository Library Program has made her an indispensable asset to the round table and to TLA. Many TLA resolutions related to government information policy were written by Melody through the past 30 years. She served in many of the TLA GODORT offices and on most of the committees and represented GODORT on the TLA Council. To honor her contributions, she was the first recipient of the TLAGODORT/ Marcive/ Knowledge is Power Award. She now serves on the TLA Executive Board.

Melody is also recognized for her effort to focus attention on the value of government information to the K-12 classroom. She is a frequent speaker on the topic to school librarians and educators, and she published two books on the subject: Using Government Documents: A How-To-Do-It Manual for School and Public Librarians, and Uncle Sam's Net of Knowledge for Schools (Neal-Schuman, publisher). She also authored numerous articles for education-related journals and magazines on the topic. Additionally, her extensive Web-based guide to K-12 materials forms a significant and ongoing resource for librarians and educators.

As one supporter of her nomination stated, "She is unofficially known as the 'dean' of government information librarians in the state of Texas." All who know her well are confident that whatever administrative position she takes in libraries, Melody will remain a documents librarian at heart.

W. David Rozkuszka Scholarship

Recipient:
Mark Phillips

The 2004 recipient of the W. David Rozkuszka Scholarship is Mark Phillips. He received his library science degree from the University of North Texas (UNT) in May 2004 and will become the Digital Projects Lab Manager starting in the fall 2004.

While in school, Mark worked as the Digital Project Department Lab Manager for the University of North Texas Willis Library. As a digital librarian, Mark feels strongly that this new technology will provide better access to government information and also help to preserve documents. At North Texas he has been involved in designing standards for digital projects, worked with other departments to develop new digital projects, and managed projects in the Digital Lab. Recently they have digitized their collection of World War II posters as well as documents pertaining to the Annexation of Texas. Mark also worked with the Portal to Texas History, a web portal to information about Texas.

It seems very fitting that Mark should win the Rozkuszka Award. He is the son of two long time documents librarians both who have not only served as Regional Documents Librarians at Oklahoma State University but who have also been very active participants in GODORT, the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer, and Regional Librarians Conferences. Mark has literally been brought up in "the business". He of all people knows the issues and problems confronting the free flow of government information and he is committed the preservation of born digital government information. By making government information available to the general public in an online format Mark advances the age-old concept of no fee access in the 21st Century. Mark takes us into the future with new technology like the Cyber Cemetery at the University of North Texas. He will help to lead the way for electronic methods to deal with multimedia files, dynamically generated websites, and content that itself is a database.

As one of colleagues has stated Mark's potential is boundless. He demonstrates a passion for his work and does research on technology or other issues on his own time. He has gained the respect of his colleagues at the University of North Texas for his innovative approach to his work.