ACRL Oregon Award for Excellence Winners

 

Congratulations to our 2009 ACRL Oregon Award for Excellence Winners:

Janet Webster
and Michael Boock!

 

Project: Library Faculty Association Open Access Policy @ Oregon State University Libraries

 

About the project (from the nomination essay):
"On March 6, 2009 the library faculty at Oregon State University adopted an open access mandate requiring deposit of all their scholarly materials into the university's institutional repository. For years, librarians have been at the forefront of the push for OA, establishing and promoting IRs on our campuses, supporting PLoS, DOAJ, lobbying for the NIH mandate, etc. Librarians applauded the first-in-the-nation open access mandate approved by the Harvard faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2008. Curiously, though, not a single library faculty association had adopted a similar mandate before OSU. In an environment where most libraries were merely talking about the need for OA mandates, the OSU library faculty took action.

This award recognizes initiatives that significantly improve Oregon libraries and librarianship and this is just such an initiative. OSU's mandate benefits libraries nationally and close to home. Through their actions, OSU has shown Oregon's librarians to be leaders in the move toward open access. This symbolic, put your money where your mouth is, power alone would be worthy of the award. However, Oregon's libraries will now also benefit from greatly increased access to the excellent scholarly output of our colleagues at OSU. As we face budget shortfalls and, specifically, journal cancellations, this access to scholarship will be even more crucial for advancing research in our field. Though the entire library faculty association at OSU deserves recognition for their leadership, two OSU librarians were the key drivers of this policy. Janet Webster, Head Librarian, Guin Library and Michael Boock, Head of Digital Access Services deserve special acknowledgment for conceiving of the idea and working tirelessly to see it through to acceptance. Janet and Michael are vigorous and eloquent advocates for OA. Without their efforts, there would not have been an OA policy for the faculty to approve."