Each year, one of the NISO Plus conference highlights is our awards ceremony, where we introduce the new cohort of NISO Plus scholarship winners, recognize key community members for their service, and honor the recipient of the Miles Conrad Award — this year’s awardee is Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan, Director of the National Library of Medicine.
The Miles Conrad Award was established by NFAIS in 1965, to recognize the contributions of those whose lifetime achievements have moved the information community forward. Previous awardees include Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (2021) and James G. Neal, University Librarian Emeritus, Columbia University (2020). Introducing Dr. Brennan, our Executive Director, Todd Carpenter noted that, “One of the most striking things about Dr. Brennan is her practicality in the application of data and information resources. It’s not simply about collecting items for the sake of preservation or building a collection. Her approach is one that is centered around the user, the patron, the public, who needs this information to address a pressing health concern. Last month, NISO hosted a virtual conference on putting the user at the center of design decisions. This is something that has been core to Dr. Brennan’s work for decades and she has continued it at the National Library of Medicine to amazing affect.” Dr. Brennan’s Miles Conrad Lecture, The Role of a Library in a World of Unstructured Data, is now openly available.
The Ann Marie Cunningham Service award was established in by NFAIS in 1994 to honor volunteers who routinely go above and beyond in their commitment to our organization. This year’s Ann Marie Cunningham awardee is Laurie Kaplan, Senior Manager – Content at ProQuest. She has participated in many NISO activities, including as Convenor of the ISO 8 Presentation and identification of periodicals working group; and as a member of the ISO-3297 (ISSN Revision) working group, the NISO Content Platform Migration Working group, and the NISO PIE-J and PESC NISO committees.
NISO occasionally recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to our organization by granting them a lifetime membership of our organization. This year, we honored Oliver Pesch, Chief Product Strategist at EBSCO Information Services in this way. Oliver has been an active member of the NISO community for well over 20 years, including serving several terms on our Board of Director on two separate occasions, and as Board Chair in 2008-2009, when he launched the ESPReSSO project.
Last, but not least, it was wonderful to (virtually!) see so many NISO Plus scholarship winners — past and present — at this year’s conference, and to introduce this year’s cohort to our community. Congratulations again, class of 2022!
- Elham Abdallah, Assistant University Librarian for Public Services and Research, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) Library, Lebanon
- Bethany Arsenault, Digital Discovery Librarian, Edmonton Public Library, Canada
- Alice Eng, Electronic Resources Librarian, Wake Forest University, USA
- Stephanas Galinnya, Librarian, Uganda Christian University, Uganda
- Cindy Gruwell, Assistant Librarian/Coordinator of Scholarly Research, University of West Florida, USA
- Yuimi Hlasten, E-resources and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Denison University, USA
- Suzanne Heslan, Librarian, Manx National Heritage, Isle of Man, UK
- Benjamin Ignac, Policy Analyst, Taylor & Francis, Germany
- Lorin Jackson, Executive Director, NNLM Region 2, Medical University of South Carolina, USA
- Russell Michalak, Library Director, Goldey-Beacom College, USA
- Yetunde Omodele Oladipo, Librarian, Caleb University Lagos, Nigeria
- Anjaneya Reddy, Assistant Librarian, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, India
- Kasia Repeta, Analyst, Global Outreach and Publishing Systems, Duke University Press, USA
Our thanks and congratulations to all this year’s NISO awardees!
