Contact: Megan Griffin
ACRL Program Coordinator
312-280-2514
mgriffin@ala.org
 
For Immediate Release
February 9, 2007

 

ACRL announces 2007 IS Innovation award winner

 

CHICAGO—The “Community Workshop Series” created by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library’s Instructional Services Department has been chosen to receive the 2007 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Innovation award. Sponsored by Lexis-Nexis, the annual award recognizes a project that demonstrates creative, innovative, or unique approaches to information literacy instruction or programming.

 

“The Community Workshop Series is a programming innovator, a model of creativity and quality we found especially compelling for its multi-level partnerships and multiple innovations,” said Kathleen Gallagher, IS awards committee chair.  “A quick glance at the statistics, too, provides strong evidence of the impact the workshop series is having. Since the program’s inception in March 2005, 248 class sessions have reached 1,490 participants and engaged 58 volunteer instructors. It is clear that the success of the program is due to the strength of the concept, the commitment of the partners, and the attention to detail in all aspects of the planning and delivery.”

 

The “Community Workshop Series” brings information literacy programming into the community through a partnership between the University Library and four local public libraries—Chapel Hill Public Library, the Carrboro Cybrary and Carrboro Branch Library, and the Durham County Public Library. The UNC Library’s Instructional Services Department, which initiated and manages the program, recruits and trains instructors from the Library, from the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS) and from undergraduates seeking to fulfill the UNC service learning requirement. The public libraries produce publicity, manage registration, and provide facilities for the classes.

 

The program represents an opportunity for UNC’s public library partners to offer a service they would not otherwise have the staff to provide, while for the University Library it represents “an important effort” in its mission “to serve the local community and the people of North Carolina.”

 

On the UNC campus, the program has also built bridges between the Library, SILS, and the Service Learning Office, while actively involving the Library in the instructional development of future librarians and the service learning of undergraduates.

 

A prize of $3,000 and a plaque will be presented to the project team during the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. at the IS program on Sunday, June 24, 2007, at 1:30 p.m.

 

ACRL is a division of the American Library Association, representing 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians.  Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

       

 

 

ACRL announces 2007 IS Innovation award winner