LRRT’s Shera Research Awards Recipients

Almost every year since 1975, the Library Research Round Table has given one or more awards to honor excellent research. The names of the awards have changed over the years and may be summarized as follows:

LRRT Research Award (1975-1986)
Jesse H. Shera Award for Research (1988-1995)
Jesse H. Shera Award for Excellence in Published Research (1998 to 2012; updated information for subsequent years on main awards page)
Jesse H. Shera Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research (1998 to date; updated information for subsequent years on main awards page)

The winners of each award are listed below:

In 2003, this award's title was changed from the Jesse H. Shera Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research to the current title of the Jesse H. Shera Award for Support of Dissertation Research.

Shera Award for Dissertation Research Winners

Year	Awardees
2022	Amber Matthews for "Advancing Anti-Racism in Public Libraries for Black Youth in Canada."

2020	Bonnie Tulloch for "Do the Ends Justify the Memes? Exploring the Relationship between Youth, Internet Memes, and Digital Citizenship."
2019	Rene Burress for “School Libraries and Every Student Succeeds Act: A Qualitative Study.”
2018	NO AWARD
2017	Rachel D. Williams, for Performing Boundary Work: An Exploration of Public Library Workers’ Provision of Information Services to People Experiencing Homelessness
2016	Min Sook Park for “Exploring Social Semantic Relationships in Knowledge Representation in Health Through Mining Unstructured Textual Data on Social Media.”
2015	NO AWARD
2014	NO AWARD
2013	Devon Greyson, for "Health-related Information Practices and the Experiences of Childbearing and Parenting Youth."
2012	Victor J. Sensenig for “Public Libraries and Literacy in Ecological Perspective.”
2011	Amy VanScoy for "Exploring the Meaning of Reference Work for Librarians in Academic Research Libraries."
2010	Hea Lim Rhee, University of Pittsburg School of Information Sciences, for "The Relationship between Archival Appraisal Practice and the User Study in U.S. State Archives and Records Management Programs: An Exploratory Study."
2009	NO AWARD
2008	Sharon McQueen, University of Wisconsin-Madison for "The Story of 'The Story of Ferdinand': The Creation of a Cultural Icon."
2007	Melissa Just, University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education, for “Measuring Medline Searching Skills Acquisition and Retention in Medical Students.”
2006	Rebecca Miller, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University, for “The Diffusion of Professional Knowledge in Intercultural Exchanges: The American-Bulgarian Library Exchange Case Study"
2005	Donghee Sinn, Ph.D. student, School of Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, "Records and the Understanding of Violent Events: Archival Documentation, Historical Perception, and the No Gun Ri Massacre in the Korean War"
2004	NO AWARD
2003	NO AWARD
2002	NO AWARD
2001	NO AWARD
2000	Robert Carey, Ph.D. student, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, The University of Western Ontario, “Claiming the Inevitable Argument, User Fees and Professional Discourse in Librarianship”
1999	NO AWARD
1998	NO AWARD

Year	Awardees
2022	Maria Cahill, Erin Ingram and Soohyung Joo for "Storying Programs as Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors? Addressing Children's Need Through Diverse Book Selection" The Library Quarterly, July 2021, 91(3), 269-284
2021
2020	Rachel Ivy Clarke and Sayward Schoonmaker for their article, "Metadata for Diversity: Identification and Implications of Political Access Points for Diverse Library Resources" published in the September 2019 Journal of Documentation 76(1): 173-196
2019	Alexander Poole, for their article in American Archivist entitled “’Be Damn Pushy at Times’: The Committee on the Status for Women and Feminism in the Archival Profession, 1972-1998.”
2018	Alison L. Weightman, Damian J. J. Farnell, Delyth Morris, Heather Strange, and Gillian Hallam, “A systematic review of information literacy programs in higher education: Effects of face-to-face, online, and blended formats on student skills and views,” in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) 12, no. 3 (2017).
2017	Alistair Black and Henry Gabb, “The Value Proposition of the Corporate Library, Past and Present,” in Information and Culture: A Journal of History 51, no. 2 (2016): 192–225.
2016	Eamon Tewell and Katelyn Angell, for the article “Far from a Trivial Pursuit: Assessing the effectiveness of games in information literacy instruction,” published in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.
2015	Colleen Harris-Keith,"The Relationship between Academic Library Department Experience and Perceptions of Leadership Skill Development Relevant to Academic Library Directorship"
2014	Paul Conway, for the article “Preserving Imperfection: Assessing The Incidence of Digital Imaging Error in HaithTrust” in Preservation, Digital Technology, & Culture, 42(1), 17-30
2013	Sung Jae Park, for the article, "Measuring Public Library Accessibility: A Case Study Using GIS,” published in Library & Information Research 34(2012): 13-21, December 2011
2012	Shana Pribesh, Karen Gavigan and Gail Dickinson for their article, "The Access Gap: Poverty and Characteristics of School Library Media Centers," published in The Library Quarterly 81(2): 143-160, April 2011.
2011	M. Christina Patuelli, for "Modeling Domain Ontology for Cultural Heritage," published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62(2): 314-342, February 2011.
2010	Dr. Jane Greenberg, for "Theoretical Considerations of Lifecycle Modeling: An Analysis of the Dryad Repository Demonstrating Automatic Metadata Propagation, Inheritance, and Value System Adoption," published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 47 (3-4): 380-402.
2009	Lynn Westbrook, for "Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case on Intimate Partner Violence Survivor," Library Quarterly 78 (3): 237-261.
2008	Eric M. Meyers, Karen E. Fisher, and Elizabeth Marcoux, for "Studying the Everyday Information Behavior of Tweens: Notes from the Field," Library and Information Science Research vol. 29, 2007, pp. 310-331.
2007	Gary Marchionini, Paul Solomon, Cheryl Davis, and Terrell Russell, for “Information and Library Science MPACT: A Preliminary Analysis," Library and Information Science Research, vol. 28, 2006, pp. 580-500
2006	Helen Georgas and John Cullars, for "A Citation Study of the Characteristics of the Linguistics Literature,” College and Research Libraries, Vol. 66, No. 6 (November 2005): 496-515
2005	Karen E. Fisher, Joan C. Durrance and Marian Bouch Hinton, "Information Grounds and the Use of Need-Based Services by Immigrants in Queens, NY: A Context-Based, Outcome Evaluation Approach," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55 (8) 2004
2004	Jeffrey D. Kushkowski, Kathy A. Parsons, and William H. Wiese “Master's and Doctoral Thesis Citations: Analysis and Trends of a Longitudinal Study,” portal: Libraries and the Academy, 3 (3): 459-479, 2003
2003	George D’Elia, Corinne Jorgensen, Joseph Woelfel, and Eleanor Jo Rodger “The Impact of the Internet on Public Library Use: An Analysis of the Current Consumer Market for Library and Internet Services,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53 (10): 802-820, 2002
2002	NO AWARD
2001	NO AWARD
2000	Karen M. Drabenstott, Schelle Simcox, and Eileen G. Fenton “End-User Understanding of Subject Heading in Library Catalogs”, Library Resources & Technical Services, 43(3): 141-160 July 1999
1999	Christine Pawley “What to Read and How to Read: The Social Infrastructure of Young People’s Reading, Osage, Iowa, 1870-1900”, Library Quarterly 68(3): 276-97 July 1998
1999	Pamela Spence Richards “Soviet-American library Relations in the 1920s and 1930s: A Study in Mutual Fascination and Distrust”, Library Quarterly 68(4): 390-405 October 1998
1998	Allyson Carlyle “Fulfilling the Second Objective in the Online Catalog: Schemes for Organizing Author and Work Records into Usable Displays”, Library Resources & Technical Services 41(2): 79-100 April 1997

The award was established by the Library Research Round Table to encourage excellence in library research this award of $500 was presented annually to the person submitting the best-unpublished paper. Entries were judged on the following points: definition of the research problem, application of research method, clarity of the reporting of the reporting of the research, and significance of the conclusions.

Year	Awardees
1986	Charles McClure and Peter Hernon “Unobtrusive Testing of Library Reference Services: An Experimental Approach” [later published in Library Journal 111: 37-41 April 15, 1986]
1985	NO AWARD
1984	George D’Elia and Sandra Walsh “Patron Use and Evaluation of Library Service: A Comparison Across Five Public Libraries” [later published in Library and Information Science Research 7: 3-30 January 1985]
1983	NO AWARD
1982	George D’Elia and Sandra Walsh “User Satisfaction with Library Service—A Measure of Public Library Performance” [later published in Library Quarterly 53(2): 109-133 April 1983]
1981	NO AWARD
1980	George D’Elia “The Development and Testing of a Conceptual Model of Public Library User Behavior”
1979	Charles R. McClure “Perceived Values of Information Sources in Library Decision-Making”
1978	Wayne A. Wiegand “Scholarly Research in American Library History: Herbert Putnam’s Appointment as Librarian of Congress as a Test Case”
1977 (2 awards)	Herbert S. White and Karen N. Hasenjager “Some Measurements of the Impact of the Rapid Growth of Library Doctoral Programs”
1977 (2 awards)	Robert W. Burns, Jr. “Library Performance Measures as Seen in the Descriptive Statistics Generated by a Computer Managed Circulation System”
1976 (2 awards)	James C. Baughman “Toward a Structural Approach to Collection Development” [later published in College & Research Libraries 38: 341-8 May 1977]
1976 (2 awards)	Ruth Wender, Esther Fruehauf, Marilyn Vent, and Connie Wilson “The Determination of Clinician Continuing Education Needs from a Literature Search Study” [later published in Medical Library Association Bulletin 65: 330-4 July 1977]
1975 (2 awards)	Maurice P. Marchant “University Libraries as Economic Systems” [later published in College & Research Libraries 36: 449-57 November 1975] and “Patterns of Staff Involvement in University Library Management: A Field Study” (2 papers)
1975 (2 awards)	Robert L. Burr “Toward a General Theory of Circulation” [later published as Occasional Paper, no. 130, University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library Science 1977]

Year	Awardees
1997	NO AWARD
1996	NO AWARD
1995	Catherine S. Ross “If They Read Nancy Drew, So What? – Readers Talk Back” [later published in Library and Information Science Research 17: 201-36 Summer 1995]
1994	Judith Serebnick and Frank Quinn "Measuring Diversity of Opinion in Public Library Collections"
1993	NO AWARD
1992	Charles A. (Tony) Schwartz “Research Significance: Behavioral Patterns and Outcomes Characteristics” [later published in Library Quarterly 62: 123-49 April 1992]
1992	Mary Niles Maack and Joanne Passet “Aspirations and Mentoring in an Academic Environment: Women Faculty in Library and Information Science”
1991	Patricia Dewdney and Roma M. Harris “Community Information Needs: The Case of Wife Assault” [later published in Library and Information Science Research 14: 5-29 January/March 1992]
1990	Charles R. McClure, Ann Bishop, and Philip Doty “Electronic Networks, the Research Process, and Scholarly Communication: An Empirical Study with Policy Recommendations for the National Research and Education Network”
1989	Carol C. Kuhlthau, Betty J. Turock, Mary W. George, Robert J. Belvin “Validating a Model of the Search Process: A Comparison of Academic, Public, and School Libraries” [later published in Library and Information Science Research 12: 5-31 January 1990]
1988	Danny P. Wallace and Bert R. Boyce “Holdings as a Measure of Journal Value” [later published in Library and Information Science Research 11: 59-71 January 1989]
1987	NO AWARD

LRRT’s Shera Research Awards Recipients

Jesse H. Shera Award for Support of Dissertation Research

Jesse H. Shera Award for Excellence in Published Research

Jesse H. Shera Award for Research

LRRT Research Award