Northern Iowa’s Comic Con Committee receives ACRL CLS Innovation in College Librarianship Award

CHICAGO — Melinda Beland, Angie Cox, Melissa Gevaert, Anna Hollingsworth and Linda McLaury, all members of the Comic Con Committee at the University of Northern Iowa’s Rod Library, have been named the 2015 recipients of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) College Libraries Section (CLS) Innovation in College Librarianship Award for their work on the RodCon 2015 program.

This annual award honors ALA members who have demonstrated a capacity for innovation in their work with undergraduates, instructors and/or the library community.

Their award will be presented during the CLS program at the 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco.

The Rod Library RodCon brought faculty, staff and community members into the library for a day of programs and events, including lectures covering a variety of disciplines from Gender Studies to Communication, inspired by the growing role of graphic novels in the curriculum. Students also presented, with a number of student groups involved in the costume contest and other events.

“We liked the draw of people to the library as a new way to engage students and faculty with one another and others in the community,” said award chair Amy E. Badertscher, director of library services at Kenyon College. “The event costs, including speakers and materials, came in under $2,000. Therefore, the committee thought the ideas would be easy to create on other campuses.”

The Rod Library will offer RodCon again on March 28, 2015.

For more information regarding the ACRL CLS Innovation in College Librarianship Award, or a complete list of past recipients, please visit the awards section of the ACRL website.

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ACRL is a division of the American Library Association, representing more than 11,000 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.