Luther and Lamoureux receive Coutts Award

Contact: Charles Wilt


Executive Director, ALCTS


312-280-5030

cwilt@ala.org

NEWS


For Immediate Release


March 3, 2009

CHICAGO - The Collection Management and Development Section (CMDS) of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is announcing Judy Luther, president of Informed Strategies and Selden Lamoureux, electronic resources librarian at North Carolina State University libraries, as winners of the Coutts Award for Innovation in Electronic Resources Management.

The award recognizes significant and innovative contributions to electronic collections management and development practice. The recipients each receive a $1,000 award generously donated by Coutts Information Services and a citation. The award will be presented on Sunday, July 12, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2009 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago.

Judy Luther and Selden Lamoureux were instrumental in developing SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding, currently a recommended practice of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). They brought together librarians, publishers and subscription agents to address the labor-intensive process of negotiating licenses for electronic resources, a process that has increasingly overwhelmed both libraries and publishers. SERU offers a congenial and painless method for achieving a mutual understanding between publishers and libraries. With the potential for drastically reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring resources to users, SERU is a significant step forward in the electronic resource acquisition process. Libraries and publishers can sign on to the SERU registry, which now includes more than 70 libraries and more than  25 publishers.

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print formats.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.