The History Section of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has named the winners of three achievement awards which honor outstanding service and contributions to the fields of historical and genealogical research.
“Quality historical research takes many forms in this modern age. The History Section’s achievement awards seek to identify and promote the authors, researchers and projects of some of the best historical collections and bibliographies on the Internet and in print,” said Jenny Presnell, Chair of the History Section. “Congratulations to this year’s winners and thank you to the members of the award committees for your hard work and to our sponsors, for their generous and continued support.”
The Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award, sponsored by Gale Cengage Learning, offers $2,500 and a citation to a librarian in need of funds to facilitate and/or further research in history or historical librarianship. David J. Gary, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, Yale University Library was selected as this year’s winner for his project “Toward a Sociology of Knowledge: The History of Acknowledgment Pages in American History Monographs,” which will “take thousands of acknowledgement pages from e-books and hand-selected acknowledgements since 2000 and use the methodology of the digital humanities to analyze them en masse,” said Gary.
The ABC-CLIO Online History Award, a bi-annual award of $2,500 sponsored by ABC-CLIO, recognizes the accomplishments of a person or a group of people producing (1) a freely available online historical collection, or (2) an online tool tailored for the purpose of finding historical materials, or (3) an online teaching aid stimulating creative historical scholarship. Joanne Murray,Historian and Director, The Legacy Center, Drexel University College of Medicine, was selected for her work as Principal Investigator of the online history project called “Doctor or Doctress?: Explore American history through the eyes of women physicians.”
The first runner up was Jason Roe for “The Civil War on the Western Frontier”; the second runner up was Robin Katz for TeachArchives.org.
The Genealogical Publishing Company Award, sponsored by Genealogical Publishing Company, offers $1,500 and a citation to a librarian or library in recognition of their professional achievement in historical or genealogical reference, service or research. Michael Kirley, retired librarian from Los Angeles Public Library History & Genealogy Department after 39 years of service (1970-2009) was chosen for single-handedly building the Genealogy Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library, which consists of more than 50,000 volumes of individual family histories in addition to more than 2,500 circulating books about genealogical research, heraldry and related subjects.