Left to Right: Mary Ellen K. Davis, ACRL Executive Director; Erika Linke, ACRL President; Mark Kendall, Senior Vice President, Sales, YBP Library Services; Gloriana St. Clair, 2009 ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year and Dean of University Libraries, Carnegie Mellon University
2009 Recipient of ACRL's Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award
I want to begin by thanking the Association for this stunning award. ACRL actually made me the person who won the award by believing in me in 1990 when they selected me to be the first and only woman to edit College & Research Libraries. Most of my other accomplishments were based on my having held that very prestigious gatekeeping position. Later at portal, we sought to alter our gatekeeping results by giving assistance to potential authors.
Also I want to thank both my librarian and university colleagues at Texas A&M University, Oregon State University, Penn State University, and Carnegie Mellon University. Librarianship relies on teamwork. Having quality colleagues to work with has been an essential to my success.
One of my Carnegie Mellon campus colleagues told the folks in my beauty shop that I had won the Nobel Prize of Librarianship. I suspect that the Nobel often requires less teamwork than the Librarian of the Year award does.
Finally, I want to thank the National Science Foundation for funding the million book project … it isn’t often that they invest in libraries. And the Qatar Foundation for funding my current digitization project for the Heritage Library in Qatar. The digital future of libraries is giving more people more access to more resources worldwide. And that’s a wonderful thing.
Thank you all.
- Gloriana St. Clair