LITA is pleased to announce Dr. John Willinsky as the 2010 winner of the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology. The award, which is jointly sponsored by OCLC, is given for research relevant to the development of information technologies, especially work which shows promise of having a positive and substantive impact on any aspect(s) of the publication, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information, or the processes by which information and data is manipulated and managed. The awardee receives $2,000, a citation and an expenses paid trip to the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC where the award will be presented on June 27th.
Dr. John Willinsky is Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University and founder of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). The Award committee chose Dr. Willinsky from a strong field of nominated leaders in the field.
The Public Knowledge Project (http://pkp.sfu.ca/) is dedicated to improving the scholarly and public quality of research. It operates through a partnership among the School of Education at Stanford University, the Simon Fraser University Library, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, and the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.
The Award Committee was impressed with the impact that the Project has had in the open access movement and in providing the leading open source software for journal and conference management publishing. The public Knowledge Project has the enviable distinction of having moved beyond R&D to become a highly successful suite of open source software (Open Journals System – OJS; Open Conference System – OCS; PKP Metadata Harvester, and, soon, Open Monograph Press – OMP). Over five thousand scholarly journals, for instance, use the Open Journals System (OJS). Dr. Willinsky is a tireless advocate for the role of libraries in supporting academic publishing in new ways and for the values of open access.
“I’m honored and delighted to be the recipient of the 2010 Frederick G. Kilgour Award” said Dr. Willinsky. “It is one of the great pleasures of my life to be able to work so closely with a terrific team of academic librarians on the Project and it means a great deal to me to make a small contribution to the libraries that have meant so much to me and my work.”
Members of the 2010 LITA/OCLC Kilgour Award committee are: Patrick J. Mullin, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chair); Michael Gorman, university librarian emeritus, California State University, Fresno (past chair); Rene J. Erlandson, University of Nebraska at Omaha; William C. Kurt, University of Nevada – Reno; Andrea Tomlinson, Chemical Heritage Foundation; Mary Alice Ball, LITA board liaison; and Roy Tennant, OCLC liaison.