Carla D. Hayden receives the 2013 Joseph W. Lippincott Award

For Immediate Release
Thu, 03/14/2013

Contact:

Cheryl Malden

Program Officer

Executive Office (EXEC)

800-545-2433 ext.3247

cmalden@ala.org

CHICAGO—2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the Joseph W Lippincott Award, which honors distinguished service to the profession of librarianship.  Presented every year since 1938, the award is named for Joseph W. Lippincott a noted publisher, author, naturalist and sportsman of the J.B. Lippincott Company and independent Philadelphia publisher that was acquired by Harper & Row in 1978. They later merged into Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.   He was the grandson of industrialist Joseph Wharton, founder of the Wharton School of Business and of the University of Pennsylvania.  Lippincott was a strong supporter of education and libraries and his grandson Joseph W. Lippincott, III continues to support this most distinguished award.    

Carla D. Hayden, executive director and CEO of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, is the winner of the 2013 Joseph W. Lippincott Award. This annual award is sponsored by Joseph W. Lippincott III and presented by the American Library.

“The jury for the 2013 Joseph W. Lippincott Award is delighted to honor Carla Hayden for her many accomplishments during a long, varied and distinguished career in American librarianship,” said Chair Winston Tabb. 

Among the achievements specially noted by the jury and the many colleagues who wrote in support of this award are Dr. Hayden’s two decades of visionary leadership as executive director/CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, which she has restored to national prominence, making it a national leader in providing access to the Internet and to digital collections; her extraordinary success in positioning the Pratt Library as a major and indispensable force in civic, community and municipal affairs; her outstanding service as president of ALA, where she spearheaded efforts to attract and train underrepresented groups to the library profession through the Spectrum Initiative and successfully challenged the government’s attempts, under the Patriot Act, to gain unwarranted access to library records; and her national leadership as a member of the steering committee overseeing creation of the pioneering Digital Public Library of America, and as a presidentially appointed member of the National Museum and Library Services Board.

“Dr. Hayden’s achievements, accurately described by various nominators as ‘visionary,’ ‘transformative,’ ‘indispensable’ and ‘legendary,’ demonstrate in an exemplary way the ‘distinguished service to the profession of librarianship’ the Lippincott Award was established to honor,” said Tabb.

The 2013 Joseph W. Lippincott Award will be presented at the ALA Awards Ceremony Reception on June 30, during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

In addition to Chair Tabb, Sheridan dean of university libraries and museums at John Hopkins University, the members of the 2013 Joseph W. Lippincott Award jury are: Carol Pitts Diedrichs, The Ohio State University; Karen Downing, University of Michigan; Cynthia Harbeson, Appalachian State University; and Dorothy Persson, University of Iowa.

The deadline for submission of applications for the 2014 Joseph W. Lippincott Award is Dec. 1.

Guidelines and application forms are available on the ALA website.