Dickinson College's Commitment to Information Literacy Honored
Photo by Joe O'Neill.
The Waidner-Spahr Library Adds Fourth Award in a Year's Time
The American Library Association's Library Instruction Round Table (ALA/LIRT) Innovation in Instruction Award was bestowed on Dickinson College's Waidner-Spahr Library. It is the association's highest honor for excellence in information literacy.
The college will officially accept the ALA/LIRT Innovation in Instruction Award in June 2019 at the American Library Association's national annual conference. The award includes a plaque and prize money, which will establish a research prize for Dickinson students in their sophomore or junior years. The college currently funds a similar prize for first-year students, which was established in 2018 when the library won an award recognizing its first-year information literacy program.
This marks the fourth award in one year's time for the library. It was recently named the winner of the Credo Reference First Year Experience Innovation Award for its First-Year Seminar information literacy program, and The Milton E. Flower Historian of the Year Award from the Cumberland County Historical Society for the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. Eleanor Mitchell, director of the library, was also honored with the prestigious Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award, the Reference and User Services Association's (RUSA) highest honor.
"The four awards we've received in the past year are external validations by our peers of the excellent work we do to educate our students about the process of locating information, analyzing it and using it effectively, as well as helping them create their own contributions to scholarly conversations," said Associate Director of Information Literacy & Research Services Christine Bombaro ’93. "The award citations reflect that we don't simply follow 'best practices,' but that we are actively establishing them as leaders in our field. We consistently improve our methods and resources through innovation and assessment, which were key requirements of the two information literacy awards we received."
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Published March 28, 2019