Greenblatt wins 2012 ACRL WGSS Career Achievement Award

CHICAGO – Ellen Greenblatt, scholarly communications librarian at the University of Colorado-Denver Auraria Library, has been selected as the 2012 winner of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Career Achievement Award. The award honors significant long-standing contributions to women’s studies in the field of librarianship over the course of a career.

A plaque will be presented to Greenblatt at 8 a.m. on June 28, 2012, at the WGSS program during the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim.

“Ellen Greenblatt has continuously made significant contributions in Women and Gender Studies librarianship,” said award Chair Jane Nichols of Oregon State University. “Through her service and scholarship, she has been at the forefront of LGBTIQ librarianship. She expanded the profession’s understanding of problematic language used to describe the LGBTIQ community and co-revised a bilingual thesaurus to establish appropriate terminology for access. Her many publications are excellent resources for librarians and archivists who wish to develop services for the LGBTIQ community. Greenblatt’s colleagues and nominees are inspired by her leadership and achievements.”

Greenblatt’s long-time women’s studies involvement is demonstrated by a variety of projects, including serving as one of the first co-chairs of the former ALA SRRT Gay & Lesbian Task Force, as well as her service as the first editor of WSS Links Lesbian Sites. In addition to her groundbreaking book, "Gay and Lesbian Library Service" (1990 with Cal Gough), she has published numerous articles and most recently edited "Serving LGBTIQ Library and Archives Users" (2011).  She co-compiled the thesaurus for EBSCO’s LGBT Life database and a revision of the Homosaurus, a bilingual LGBTQ Thesaurus, for the International Gay and Lesbian Information Centre and Archives in the Netherlands, and teaches the first and only library-related course in the U.S. focused on LGBTIQ resources and issues at San José State University’s School of Library and Information Science. Most recently she has turned her attention to the development of a database of LGBTQ‐related literature for children and young adults, underwritten by an ALA Carnegie Whitney Grant.

For more information regarding the ACRL WGSS Career AchievementAward, or a complete list of past recipients, please visit http://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/achievementawards/wssachievement.

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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.