FEDLINK Announces Annual Awards for Federal Librarianship

The Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) has announced the winners of its national awards for federal librarianship, which recognize the many innovative ways that federal libraries, librarians and library technicians fulfill the information demands of government, business and scholarly communities and the American public.

FEDLINK will honor the 2014 award winners at the FEDLINK Spring Exposition on May 5, 2015, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The names of the winners will remain on permanent display in the FEDLINK offices at the Library of Congress.

Federal libraries and staff throughout the United States and abroad competed for the awards. The winners are listed below. 

2014 Federal Library/Information Center of the Year

Large Library/Information Center (with a staff of 11 or more federal and/or contract employees): Barr Memorial Library, Fort Knox U.S. Army Garrison, Kentucky, is recognized for its leadership role in delivering flexible, innovative and relevant programs and services to support, build and sustain a constant state of Army readiness. Its focus on quality programs and services for nearly 200,000 patrons included deploying a self-contained wireless network with digital content at more than a dozen locations across the installation. The library is known for its “Authors at Your Library” program, which features notable names from the New York Times Best Sellers list and an additional 300 interactive learning programs for more than 13,500 attendees. Beyond supporting its collection of 120,000 items with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, the library also offered pre-deployment briefings, soldier mission-essential training, civilian information fairs, research and writing classes, summer reading programs for all ages, and “Puppy Tales,” a children’s reading program in coordination with the Fort Knox Red Cross Pet Therapy Program. 

Small Library/Information Center (with a staff of 10 or fewer federal and/or contract employees): Darnall Medical Library, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is recognized for dedicated library leadership in support of quality patient care and health education. Through a clinical librarian program, improved research portals and high-visibility marketing strategies, the library dramatically increased its online profile by more than 250 percent. By embedding a clinical librarian into the inpatient pediatrics team, the library gave providers the rapid ability to identify esoteric drug interactions, radiologic procedures and other up-to-date guidelines. With the combination of evidence-based medical teaching and online medication resource sites, librarians organized and presented an array of electronic resources into customized web portals with the latest data and information simultaneously vetted by health care professionals. 

2014 Federal Librarian of the Year

Richard James King, Branch Chief and Information Architect, National Institutes of Health Library, Bethesda, Maryland, is recognized for his unique ability to blend technology with librarianship to lead and implement information solutions. In 2014, he led three custom library solutions: a portfolio analysis process to create a searchable 12,000-record website on Alzheimer’s disease research for the National Institute on Aging; a searchable funding database for a 6,000-record website on Chronic Pain Conditions for the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee; and a digital archive of more than 5,000 publications on pandemic and epidemic influenza for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. King also used his leadership approach to create a culture of creativity to expand the library’s efforts to include bioinformatics, data services, bibliometrics and custom information solutions to its clients.  

2014 Federal Library Technician of the Year

Maria Walls, Library Technician, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., is recognized for her outstanding level of quality research assistance and library service to the agency’s Civil and Criminal Division attorneys. Last year, she completed more than 450 interlibrary loan requests with a special research effort to support environmental litigation. She was also instrumental in the creation of new best practices and procedures for the agency’s integrated library system across four library collections and the library’s initiative to integrate its legislative history collection and bound journals. As part of the library’s collection-management initiatives, Walls expanded her work on both acquisitions and cataloging, and served as the library’s acting management analyst and as the administrator for the Attorney General’s Honors Program. She is further recognized for her dedication to collegial professional development, her service on several federal information community working groups, and her exceptional service to the mission of her agency. 

For the latest information on the awards, please see the FEDLINK website, www.loc.gov/flicc/.

The Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) is an organization of federal agencies working together to achieve optimum use of the resources and facilities of federal libraries and information centers by promoting common services, coordinating and sharing available resources, and providing continuing professional education for federal library and information staff. FEDLINK serves as a forum for discussion of the policies, programs, procedures and technologies that affect federal libraries and the information services they provide to their agencies, to the Congress, to the federal courts and to the American people.

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