Lew and Yousefi win 2018 ACRL WGSS Significant Achievement Award

CHICAGO – Shirley Lew, dean of library, teaching, and learning services at Vancouver Community College, and Baharak Yousefi, head of library communications at Simon Fraser University, are the winners of the 2018 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Award for Significant Achievement in Women and Gender Studies Librarianship. The WGSS award honors a significant or one-time contribution to women and gender studies librarianship.

A plaque and $750 award, donated by Duke University Press, will be presented to Lew and Yousefi at a WGSS event during the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

“Lew’s and Yousefi’s book ‘Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership’ is a seminal review of the intersection of feminism, power, and leadership in our profession,” said award chair Dolores Fidishun, head librarian at Penn State Abington. “It is especially timely given the rise in awareness of women’s issues in our world today. We are happy to be able to honor their work with this year’s WGSS Significant Achievement Award.”

“Feminists Among Us” (Library Juice Press, 2017) makes explicit the ways in which a grounding in feminist theory and practice impacts the work of library administrators who identify as feminists. Recent scholarship by LIS researchers and practitioners on the intersections of gender with sexuality, race, class, and other social categories within libraries and other information environments have highlighted the need and desire of this community to engage with these concepts both in theory and praxis.

“Feminists Among Us” adds to this conversation by focusing on a subset of feminist LIS professionals and researchers in leadership roles who engage critically with both management work and librarianship. By collecting these often implicit professional acts, interactions, and dynamics and naming them as explicitly feminist, these accounts both document aspects of an existing community of practice as well as invite fellow feminists, advocates, and resisters to consider library leadership as a career path.

Lew received her M.L.I.S. from the University of British Columbia. Yousefi received her M.L.I.S. from the University of British Columbia, and her M.A. in Women’s Studies from Simon Fraser University.

For more information regarding the ACRL WGSS Award for Significant Achievement in Women and Gender Studies Librarianship, or a complete list of past recipients, please visit the awards section of the ACRL website.

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About ACRL
The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) is the higher education association for librarians. Representing nearly 10,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals, ACRL (a division of the American Library Association) develops programs, products and services to help academic and research librarians learn, innovate and lead within the academic community. Founded in 1940, ACRL is committed to advancing learning and transforming scholarship. ACRL is on the web at acrl.org, Facebook at facebook.com/ala.acrl and Twitter at @ala_acrl.

About Duke University Press
Duke University Press supports scholars in doing what they are passionate about: learning, teaching, and effecting positive change in the world. This bold, progressive spirit drives both what and how we publish. Each year we publish about 120 new books, more than 50 journals, and multiple digital collections that transform current thinking and move fields forward. We thrive as a nonprofit publisher because we adapt, innovate, and form strong global partnerships. It is our mission to find, curate, enrich, and disseminate scholarship that is vital to readers working at the forefront of their fields in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Our work supports Duke University’s mission to advance the frontiers of knowledge and contribute to the international community of scholarship.