On Friday we had the great honor of receiving the ACRL Excellence in Libraries Award in the College Library division. Our college president, while introducing the award to those present at the Honors Convocation spoke about the importance of collaboration and of intellectual curiosity on a college campus, and of how he sees these twin values in evidence in the library and across campus. And looking around at all the students, faculty, and staff, at all the representatives of various academic and computer support teams, and at the supervisor of the students who do all our public computing support in the library, I realized again how lucky I am to work in this place. I realized yet again that the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts here, because no one of us alone could have done anything approaching award-worthy work. And I realized for the millionth time what an amazing experience it has been for me to work here as I learn to be a librarian in the midst of this type of community.
So what will we do with the award money? Well, people nominated ideas and we all voted, and kudos to whomever came up with this idea: we’re donating it to Katrina-damaged Dillard University’s library.
Congratulations!
Thanks!