ACRL Awards Announced

Three libraries, Univ. of Washington dean Wilson to be honored

By Andrew Albanese & Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 3/1/2007

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has announced the recipients of the 2007 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award: Hostos Community College/CUNY Library, Bronx (community college); Elizabeth Huth Coates Library at Trinity University, San Antonio (college library); and Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center, Atlanta (university library). Each winning library will receive $3000 and a plaque, to be presented at an award ceremony held on each recipient’s campus.

The winners also will receive special recognition at the ACRL President’s Program during the American Library Association conference in Washington, DC, in June. The award is sponsored by ACRL and Blackwell’s Book Services.

Lizabeth (Betsy) A. Wilson, dean of Libraries at the University of Washington (UW), was named 2007 ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. Wilson will be publicly honored with the award, sponsored by YBP Library Services, on Thursday, March 28, at the opening keynote during the ACRL 13th national conference in Baltimore. The UW Libraries received the 2004 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.

Wilson was cited for significant work on campus—including a “model assessment program” and collaboration with faculty on information literacy—as well as beyond it. She played a key role in creating the regional consortium of the Orbis Cascade Alliance and joined with technology companies like Microsoft to form the Digital Futures Alliance in 2005 to deal with long-term preservation issues. She was also praised for her role, chairing the OCLC Board of Trustees, in furthering the merger of RLG into OCLC.