april08b.indd Megan Griffin ACRL honors the 2008 award winners, Part 2 A recognition of professional achievement ACRL presents WSS Signifi cant Achievement Award Jane Sloan, media librarian at Rutgers University, is the winner of the Women’s Studies Section (WSS) Award for Significant Achievement in Woman’s Studies Librarianship. The WSS award, sponsored by Routledge, honors a significant or one­time contribution to women’s studies librarianship. Sloan will receive her $1,000 award and plaque during the 2008 American Library As­ sociation (ALA) Annual Conference in Anaheim at the WSS Program on Monday, June 30, at 8:00 a.m. “Jane Sloan’s recently published book Reel Women: An International Directory of Contem­ porary Feature Films About Women (Scarecrow Press, 2007) fi lls a void in the study of fi lm and women,” said Kelly Barrick, chair of the WSS award committee and coordinator, reference and instruction librarian for gay and lesbian studies and women’s studies at Yale University. “No such reference book prior to its publication contributed in such a unique and substantial way to the field. The introductory critical survey written by Ms. Sloan is a worthy achievement in and of itself and speaks to her tireless effort and expert knowledge in compiling this invaluable reference book.” Ragains wins IS Ilene F. Rockman Publication of the Year award Patrick Ragains, business and government information librarian at the University of Ne­ vada­Reno, has been chosen as the winner of the Instruction Section (IS) Ilene F. Rockman Publication of the Year Award for his book, Information Literacy Instruction That Works: A Guide to Teaching by Discipline and Student Population. This annual award honors Ilene F. Rockman’s professional contributions to academic librari­ anship in the area of information literacy. The award recognizes an outstanding publication related to instruction in a library environment pub­ lished in the preceding two years. Emerald Group Pub­ lishing Limited, sponsor of the award, will pres­ ent the $3,000 award and plaque at the IS program on Sunday, June 29, at 1:30 p.m. “Patrick Ragains’ book is both timeless and timely, rendering it an in­ valuable resource for instruction librarians as it informs, guides and supports their work,” said Susan Beck, IS awards committee chair and collection development coordinator at the New Mexico State University Library. “Although the work is aimed at librarians who teach distinct user groups and subject areas, academic library instruction programs must em­ brace and provide service to all of these groups, be they college freshmen, students in specifi c disciplines or distance learning students. “Contributions are provided from 18 leading experts around the country; however, Ragains knits together their chapters and provides the Patrick Ragains Megan Griffin is ACRL program coordinator, e-mail: mgriffi n@ala.org 198C&RL News April 2008 mailto:n@ala.org essential framework so that instruction librarians can take this work to both integrate information literacy standards into their respective curricula and to establish firm pedagogical foundations within their programs.” Hazard Community and Technical College wins CJCLS Program Award Hazard Community and Technical College has been chosen to receive the Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS) EB­ SCO Community College Learning Resources Program Achievement Award. A citation and $500, donated by EBSCO Information Services, will be presented to the staff of the Hazard Community and Technical College during the CJCLS Awards Breakfast, Sunday, June 29, at 8:00 a.m. Hazard Community and Technical Col­ lege hosts an annual regional conference in Southeastern Kentucky, which brings together academic, public, and school librarians. The program includes trainers from Hazard Com­ munity and Technical College, the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, the Uni­ versity of Kentucky, Morehead State University, and local artists. The program has grown to include 15 counties. “Hazard Community and Technical College addressed the need for staff development and training for librarians who may not have the resources or personnel to acquire the skills needed for their jobs,” said award committee chair Matt Burrell, librarian at Gulf Coast Com­ munity College. Susan Sharpless Smith wins IS Innovation award Susan Sharpless Smith, head of information technology at Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library, has been chosen to receive the Instruction Section (IS) Innovation award. Sponsored by Lexis­Nexis, the annual award recognizes a project that demonstrates creative, innovative, or unique approaches to information literacy instruction or programming. A prize of $3,000 and a plaque will be presented to Smith during the IS program on Sunday, June 29, at 1:30 p.m. “ S u s a n S h a r p l e s s Smith’s pioneering efforts to ensure the success of Wake Forest University’s Embedded Librarian Proj­ ect illustrates the inno­ vative application of a “Library Without Walls,” both in the context of how technology has allowed the library to transcend its traditional physical confines and also in the project’s outreach efforts to include the community in a faculty­ library partnership initiative,” said Susan Beck, IS awards committee chair and collection de­ velopment coordinator at the New Mexico State University Library. The Embedded Instruction program, launched by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, was a true partnership between teaching faculty and librarians in pro­ viding the resources and technologies needed to teach a nontraditional, service learning course called “Social Stratification in the Deep South.” Students enrolled in this sociology course spent two weeks traveling on a bus throughout the South, studying the most pressing current social issues found in that region. Smith, the “embedded librarian” of the Em­ bedded Instruction project, created community by immersing herself in the experience, literally traveling with students and faculty on the bus. She set up, taught, and moderated the use of the collaborative Web site. She helped students to use the Web site to communicate with parents, the local press, and others at home. “The fact that the course faculty consulted with [the] library regarding [the] program’s technology needs was both commendable and a tribute to the high esteem Wake Forest Univer­ sity faculty hold for the library and its staff,” said Beck. “This library­academic partnership project demonstrates how librarians can make a positive and dramatic impact on a program. “The Embedded Instruction program from Wake Forest University serves as a model for true collaboration between librarians and fac­ ulty. Susan was a necessary component of the Susan Sharpless Smith April 2008 199 C&RL News program and her participation allowed for com­ munity building as well as provided a means for documenting and sharing the learning that took place.” ACRL announces RBMS Leab Exhibition award winners There are five winners for the Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Awards. These awards, funded by an endowment established by Katha­ rine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current and sponsored by the ACRL Rare Books & Manuscripts Sec­ tion (RBMS), recognize outstanding exhibition catalogs issued by American or Canadian insti­ tutions in conjunction with library exhibitions as well as electronic exhibition catalogs of outstanding merit issued within the digital/Web environment. • Division One (expensive), the winner is Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros’ Eragny Press, 1894­1914: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Books, Prints & Drawings Related to the Work of the Press, submitted by The Grolier Club. “Illustrating the Good Life is best character­ ized as a beautifully composed catalog, one that does its very good best to complement, as a sympathetically designed book, the books printed at the Eragny Press,” said Richard Noble, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee and rare books cataloger at Brown University. “Alice Beckwith’s text in the general introduction and in the individual commentaries is intended at every point to recall the reader, as a member of “the book­loving public,” to a consciousness of process, not simply as a set of isolated tech­ niques, but, in this case particularly, as a lived aesthetic. The designer has assembled and styled the printed text and the images with something of the same feel as the work of the press without imitating the full density of its typography, but with sensitivity to its sense of color. “Above all, this is an informative catalog, a worthy contribution to the history of the Eragny Press in its historical moment, starting with the books that influenced it, proceeding through its own work, and ending with an account of its influence on the work of others, with the valuable addition of an extensive bibliography and an index.” • Division Two (moderately expensive), the winner is the Chicago Public Library, Special Collections and Preservation Division, for their piece entitled One Book, Many Interpreta­ tions. “This little catalog—little by design, but well packed—is the outcome of what one might think to be as ‘general collections’ a project as a public library could undertake: to encourage, by way of the reading of the same book by many people, a ‘culture of reading,’” said Noble. “It was an inspired idea to take the One Book, One Chicago reading program and extend it to the creation of a small but rich collection of forty­ seven interpretive fine bindings (and one bonus binding by the exhibit curator). “The book is decidedly designed. Even the cover design, with the die­cut circle giving us the One Book program device ‘before letters,’ adds to the fun. We are particularly happy to make this award to a public library building on the culture of reading to advance the culture of the book.” • Division Three (inexpensive), the winner is Mapping America: 500 Years of Cartographic Depictions, submitted by Vassar College. Noble commented, “It might be taken as a sign of what this catalog is, that it was entered under the name Vassar College, rather than Vas­ sar College Libraries. It does include a checklist of an exhibition held in the Vassar College Li­ brary, consisting of materials held by the Vassar College Libraries; but the work as a whole is about the pedagogical underpinnings of the pro­ cess that brought it into being. The basic theme is stated by Ronald Patkus, in his introductory essay. While conceding that ‘the holdings here do not have the breadth or depth of collections in larger institutions,’ he goes on to say, ‘Viewed as a whole, the collection of atlases and maps that has been assembled by the library is a valu­ able resource that continues the Vassar tradition of learning by ‘going to the source.’” Moreover, “A special aspect of ‘Mapping America’ is that students—not only librarians—have played an important role in its creation. 200C&RL News April 2008 “The catalog has been well designed and produced, at relatively little cost, and repre­ sents one ideal of the exhibition catalog, as a permanent contribution to the institution’s own resources for making the best use of its collec­ tions and as a signpost for others.” • Division Four (brochures), the winner is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University’s brochure entitled “Collecting an Empire: The East India Company (1600–1900).” Noble noted, “The various elements by which this committee judges brochures are here of the highest quality. Ayesha Ramachandran’s 1,000­word essay, which might well serve to introduce a comprehensive history of the EIC, is a model of scholarly concision that orients—and, we might say, occidents—an intel­ ligent reader to the historical background and material scope of this exhibition, which drew on a number of Beinecke collections. “The text is also an example of straightfor­ ward good typography. The six color illustrations represent the exhibition’s wide variety of docu­ ments and graphics, with captions that succinctly identify and place them. The tri­fold format has been well used: the formal front cover title and back cover facsimile exemplify, when opened to face each other, the contrasting modes of cultural confrontation that inform the exhibition as a whole; and the interior is a well balanced trip­ tych of printed and facsimile text. The brochure is of handy size, printed on heavy matte stock, the ideal, non­glossy medium for fi ne­grained graphics. In none of these things is it startlingly innovative: its business is to stay out of its own way and let its excellent contents through.” • Division Five (electronic exhibition), the winner is the North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center for B. W. Wells, Pioneer Ecologist, www.lib.ncsu. edu/exhibits/wells/. “This online exhibition is the most publicly accessible node of a system of exhibition, cata­ log, and online resources devoted to the life and work of B. W. Wells, an interesting but little known pioneer of the movement in natural sci­ ence from botanical description to the systems approach known as ecology,” said Noble. “All the elements of this archival ecology, so to call it, are consistent in design, and allow the viewer/ reader the opportunity to follow a narrative, or to branch out to image and sound resources that go well beyond the boundaries of the exhibition proper, yet allow one to backtrack and set out in other directions without the confusion that may sometimes be observed in other sites that attempt the same sort of multiple linkings. “Taken together, it is an exemplary exercise in telling a story using archival materials of many kinds, of which the online exhibition is the real linchpin.” Certificates will be presented to each winner at the conclusion of RBMS Program on Sunday, June 29, at 1:30 p.m. Emanuel named WESS Coutts Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant Winner Michelle Emanuel, catalog librarian and assis­ tant professor at the University of Mississippi Libraries, has been selected to receive the Western European Studies Section (WESS) Coutts Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant. This grant, sponsored by Coutts Informa­ tion Services, covers airfare to and from Eu­ rope, transportation in Europe, and lodging and board for up to 14 days. The primary criterion for awarding the grant is the signifi ­ cance and utility of the proposed project as a contribution to the study of the acquisition, organization, or use of library materials from or relating to Western Europe. Emanuel will receive her plaque and $3,000 award check at the WESS general membership meeting on Monday, June 30, at 8:00 a.m. Emanuel’s proposal aims to survey major film libraries in the Par­ is region in order to analyze and evaluate the collections and ser­ vices provided to visit­ ing scholars, with some particular focus on the fi lms of Francis Veber. Michelle Emanuel April 2008 201 C&RL News www.lib.ncsu “The growing importance of fi lm stud­ ies in many academic fields, as well as the challenges of identifying and access­ ing a full range of relevant primary and secondary research materials, suggest that Ms. Emanuel’s timely survey of Parisian resource centers will provide valuable guidance for librarians and for the stu­ dents and faculty they serve,” said award committee chair Bryan Skib, collection development officer at the University of Michigan Libraries. Dolores Fidishun wins WSS Career Achievement Award Dolores Fidishun, head librarian at the Pennsylvania State Great Valley Library, has been selected as the winner of the Women’s Studies Section (WSS) Career Achieve­ ment Award. The award, sponsored by Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., honors significant long­standing contributions to women’s studies in the field of librarianship over the course of a career. A cash prize of $1,000 and a plaque will be presented to Fidishun at the WSS Program on Monday, June 30, at 8:00 a.m. “Dolores epitomizes what the ACRL Wom­ en’s Studies Section is all about,” said Kelly Barrick, chair of the WSS award committee and coordinator, reference and instruction, librarian for gay and lesbian studies and women’s stud­ ies at Yale University. “She actively engages in issues involving the practices of women’s studies librarianship and the politics of femi­ nist librarians; she is a pioneering researcher in the study of adult learners, women, and technology and she is an extraordinary mentor to librarians in all fields of the profession. One nominator wrote that Ms. Fidishun has an ‘unselfi sh spirit to serve and assist others.’ I couldn’t agree more.” Dolores Fidishun 202C&RL News April 2008