Paper co-authored by iSchool student and faculty named best of 2007 by ALA
The American Library Association (ALA) announced an iSchool student and two faculty have been awarded the 2008 ALA Jesse H. Shera Award, given to honor the best published article in the library and information science field. Doctoral student Eric Meyers and faculty members Karen E. Fisher and Elizabeth Marcoux received the award for their article, "Studying the Everyday Information Behavior of Tweens: Notes from the field" published in Library and Information Science Research, 29 (3) in September 2007.
The research was part of Dr. Fisher’s National Science Foundation grant on why people turn to other people for information.
Established by the Library Research Round Table to encourage excellence in library research, the Jesse H. Shera Award is presented annually. Dr. Fisher also won the award with Joan C. Durrance and Marian Bouch Hinton in 2005 for her work with immigrants in the Queens Borough Public Library on the subject of information grounds.
"My colleagues and I wrote this paper to illustrate an important shift in how we explore children's information worlds: the shift from doing research on or about youth to doing research with youth,” said Myers, first author of the paper. “The Shera Award validates the critical importance of designing and carrying out effective and engaging information behavior research from this perspective."
More information about the grant that supported this work can be found at ibec.ischool.washington.edu.
Alumna Beverly Cleary to receive UW's highest alumni honor
Alumna Beverly Cleary ( '39) has been selected as the next recipient of the University of Washington’s Alumna Summa Laude Dignata Award. This award recognizes an outstanding alumnus or alumna for a lifetime of achievement. It is the highest honor that the University of Washington can bestow on a graduate.
Past recipients of the award include Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners as well as leaders of government and industry. Since its inception in 1938, 69 alumni who personify the University's tradition of excellence have received this prestigious honor, including Dale Chihuly, Dr. William H. Foege, William Bolcom and 2004 Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck.
The author of Ramona the Brave and Henry Huggins, Mrs. Cleary is one of this century's most popular writers for children. Her books appear in more than 20 countries in 14 languages. Her characters Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins have delighted children for generations.
Mrs. Cleary earned a degree in librarianship from the University of Washington in 1939 and became a librarian, reading to children at story hours and helping them find books. Placed in a low reading circle when she was in elementary school, Mrs. Cleary empathized with struggling young readers. In her quest to find books that weren't too boring or too thick for these young readers, she was inspired to write her own books. Hers are stories about kids in neighborhoods like the one where she grew up, who have parents and friends and pets and who have exciting and funny things happen to them.
Her books have won many prestigious awards, including the John Newbery Medal and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.
In 2006, the iSchool created the Beverly Cleary Professorship, which was established in her honor to support research and service in the field of children’s and youth library services.
Four MLIS students published in ALA's Documents to the People
Three articles written for iSchool lecturer Cassandra Hartnett's course on government publications were published in the Winter 2007 issue of Documents to the People, a publication of the American Library Association. Documents to the People is produced four times a year and is currently available in print format only. A table of contents for the issue can be found here.
The articles, written by four Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) students, were developed as part of MLIS course LIS 526—Government Publications. LIS 526 introduces students to government publications of the United States and their acquisition, organization, and use. Other topics covered in the course include the public's right to know, the Federal Depository Library Program, government influences in our daily lives, and future directions in government information.
The three articles were "History Is Not Partisan: Presidential Records Changes and Responses during the George W. Bush Administration," by Gina M. Strack; "Space Tourism: These Trips Are Out of This World," by Alex Bertea; and "Lost Treasure: The Investigation of Looting at the National Museum of Baghdad during the 2003 U.S. Invasion," by Deborah Bosket and Lorraine Thomas.