For immediate release | March 14, 2011

2011 ACRL STS Innovation Award to AgEcon Search

CHICAGO – AgEcon Search, the agricultural repository of the University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics and the University of Minnesota Libraries, has been selected as the 2011 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Science and Technology Section (STS) Innovation in Science and Technology Librarianship Award.

The $3,000 cash award, donated by IEEE, will be presented at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 26 at the STS All Members Breakfast during the 2011 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

“AgEcon Search is the trusted national and international repository for open access to agricultural economic research valued by disciplinary researchers the world over,” said award co-chairs, Marianne Stowell Bracke of Purdue University and Lutishoor Salisbury at the University of Arkansas. “Since its inception in 1995, it has changed continuously as technology has evolved, finding innovative solutions to indexing, archiving and delivering these materials.”

AgEcon Search is a free, open access repository of full-text scholarly literature in agricultural and applied economics, including: working papers, conference papers and journal articles. It is available at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/.

AgEcon Search is coordinated by Louise Letnes, librarian in the Department of Applied Economics, and Julie Kelly, science librarian at Magrath Library, at the University of Minnesota. Letnes along with Patricia Rodkewich, who retired in 2002, started the project in 1994, and Kelly joined the effort in 2003.

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ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 12,000 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.

Contact:

David Free