2011 ACRL STS Oberly Award to William R. Shurtleff

For Immediate Release
Tue, 03/01/2011

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CHICAGO – William R. Shurtleff, founder and director of the Soyinfo Center (Lafayette, Calif.), has been selected as the 2011 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Science and Technology Section (STS) Oberly Award for Bibliography in the Agricultural or Natural Sciences for his bibliography “History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in Africa (1857-2009): Extensively Annotated Bibliography and Sourcebook.”

The cash award and plaque will be presented at 8 a.m. on Monday, June 27, 2011, at the STS program during the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

“This is a true piece of scholarship which will be useful to help governments, NGOs, nutritionists, soybean farmers, breeders, historians access a wide range of information of soybean that can help them in their quest to stem malnutrition and expand soybean production in Africa,” said the award co-chairs, Marianne Stowell Bracke of Purdue University and Lutishoor Salisbury at the University of Arkansas.

The publication is a freely available electronic bibliography (http://www.soyinfocenter.com/pdf/134/Afri.pdf) and was published simultaneously on the Web and Google Books in September 2009. 

Shurtleff has worked in the field of soy research since 1976, when, together with Akiko Aoyagi, he founded the Soyinfo Center, an information and publishing company. He has written 55 published books, including “The Book of Tofu,”  “The Book of Miso” and “The Book of Tempeh.”

The Oberly Award was established in 1923 in memory of Eunice Rockwood Oberly, librarian of the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, from 1908 to 1921.  She was the Bureau of Plant Industry's representative to the Congressional Joint Commission on Reclassification of Government Employees and was instrumental in gaining a fairer recognition of library activities. This biennial award is given in odd-numbered years for the best English-language bibliography in the field of agriculture or a related science. 

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ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 12,000 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 is on the Web at http://www.acrl.org, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ala.acrl and Twitter at @ala_acrl.