Contact:
Megan Bielefeld, ACRL Program Coordinator
312-280-2514
mbielefeld@ala.org

For Immediate Release
March 2004 

2004 Atkinson winner announced

Jerome Yavarkovsky, university librarian at Boston College , has been named the 2004 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Yavarkovsky will receive $2,000 and a citation during the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando , Fla. at the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) President’s Program on June 28, 2004 at 2 p.m.

Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management, and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

“Mr. Yavarkovsky has made a significant impact on academic librarianship in several areas since the 1970’s,” said committee chair Russell Bailey. “He did important work as an early planning management officer at the Columbia University libraries, and while at the New York State Library in the 1980’s, he brought the insights of scientists from Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox, Kodak, NASA, and the input of numerous academic scholars, to bear on library potential for providing faster access to more and better information for patrons. Mr. Yavarkovsky’s work on the Coalition for Networked Information Steering Committee in the 1990’s influenced changes in scholarly publishing and the Open Archive Initiative.

“In the Association of Research Libraries, he has contributed to the digital publishing and scholar’s portal initiatives since Boston College joined in 2000,” said Bailey. “In the Research Libraries Group, Mr. Yavarkovsky has been instrumental in furthering the concept of a nationwide online research library processing system. ”

Yavarkovsky received his B.M.E. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1960, and his M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. He received his M.S.L.S. in 1971 from Columbia University .

The Hugh C. Atkinson Award is jointly sponsored by four divisions of the American Library Association: the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Library Administration and Management Association (LAMA), LITA, and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS). The award is funded from an endowment established to honor Hugh C. Atkinson.

Donations to the endowment may be sent to Megan Bielefeld, 50 East Huron St., Chicago , Ill. 60611 .