New ALA Recognition Award Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Award for Innovation, and Service to Community and Profession

For Immediate Release
Tue, 09/08/2015

Contact:

Cheryl Malden

Program Officer

Governance

312-280-3247

cmalden@ala.org

CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA) announces the Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Award for Innovation, and Service to Community and Profession. 

The DiMattia Award for Innovation and Service to Community and Professions honors an administrator in a public library who demonstrates leadership qualities in anticipating emerging trends in services, products and technologies that will enhance the library’s position in its community. 

Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. was a longtime ALA member who lost his battle with cancer in June 2014.  DiMattia was president of ALA’s Library Leadership and Management Association, a director of the Public Library Association, chair and member of several ALA working committees and member of the executive committee of the Exhibits Round Table for a dozen years.  DiMattia was an ALA-appointed member of several IFLA standing committees, including the Public Library Standing Committee, for which he made lecture tours to Russia and Australia.  He also chaired many ALA award committees, including those for the Ken Haycock Award, the Lippincott Award, the Melvil Dewey Award, the World Book and H. W. Wilson Awards; the Futas Award and Beta Phi Mu Award. 

DiMattia dedicated his career to providing extraordinary library service to the Stamford community; he we president of The Ferguson Library from 1976 – 2014, was one of the longest serving library directors in Connecticut and as such, enabled the Ferguson Library to become one of the first public libraries in Connecticut to offer public Internet access and the first to establish enterprise zones in a library: a U.S. Passport Office and a Starbucks Coffee House.

His other accomplishments included an associate professor/visiting lecturer at the University of Connecticut School of Business, Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Rutgers University Graduate School of Communication and Information and Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science. 

The recipient of the Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Award for Innovation, and Service to Community and Profession will receive $5,000 and a plaque.  It will be awarded in Orlando at the American Library Association 2016 Annul Conference. 

ALA is currently accepting nominations for the Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Award for Innovation, and Service to Community and Profession.   The online application is to be submitted to ALA by Dec. 1, 2015.  Selection of the awardee will be made by the end of February, 2016 and announced in early March 2016.  For additional information, contact, Award Jury Chair Andrea Lapsley, andrea.lapsley@colostate.edu   or Cheryl Malden, ALA Governance Office, cmalden@ala.org