2001 Frederick G. Kilgour Award winner announced
Contact: Mary Taylor
312-280-4267
ALA News Release
For Immediate Release
February 2001
2001 Frederick G. Kilgour Award winner announced
Marcia J. Bates, professor in the department of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is the winner of the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology for 2001. The award is sponsored by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).
The award was established to honor the achievements of Frederick G. Kilgour, founder of OCLC, and a seminal figure in library automation. The award is given to a person who has amassed a significant body of "real world" research in the field of library and information technology that has had an impact on the way in which information is published, stored, retrieved, disseminated or managed. It consists of $2,000, an expense-paid trip to the ALA Annual Conference and a citation of merit.
"The Kilgour Award Committee was delighted to acknowledge so distinguished a researcher as Dr. Bates, whose work spans 30 years of research, teaching and scholarship in search strategies, information-seeking behavior, subject access, user-centered design of information retrieval systems and interfaces, and science and technology information services," Award Committee Chair Karen M. Drabenstott said. "Among Dr. Bates' published papers are "Idea Tactics," "The Fallacy of the Perfect 30-Item Online Search," and "The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface," which, over the years, have become seminal papers in our field. Her work carries on the tradition of Kilgour, in its recognition of the centrality of the user in the design of responsive information systems."
Dr. Bates received a doctorate in librarianship from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the recipient of grants from the Department of Education, Council on Library Resources, National Science Foundation and UCLA, where she has published research results in dozens of refereed journal articles, conference proceedings and research reports. Her research has contributed toward increasing the available knowledge about how library users search, how online systems could make more useful responses to user inquiries and definitions of and reflections on the field generally.
The award will be presented at the LITA President's Program on Monday, June 18, 2001, at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco.
