In co-sponsorship with the American Library Association(ALA), EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) has awarded seven librarians $1,000 scholarships to attend the ALA Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, June 26– July 1, 2014. The EBSCO ALA Annual Conference Sponsorship is an annual award consisting of $1,000 for actual reimbursed expenses designed to allow librarians to attend the conference.
The scholarship winners, including five first-time attendees, are:
Elena Safia Azadbakht, reference librarian, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Miss.
Casey Hoeve, content development librarian for Arts, Architecture and the Humanities, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.
Karen Grigg, science liaison librarian, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, N.C.
Julia Hutchins, young adult librarian, Leesburg Public Library, Leesburg, Fla.
Kimberly Miller, research and instruction librarian for Emerging Technologies, Towson University, Towson, Md.
Stacy Schwartz, librarian, Gann Academy, Waltham, Mass.
Erica W. Tyler, circulation assistant, Charlotte school of Law, Charlotte, N.C.
As part of the application process, librarians were asked to write an essay on the topic of how attending the conference will contribute to the librarians’ professional development. Casey Hoeve from Kansas State University wrote that attending the conference for the first time would allow him to attend sessions that are not always available at other conferences and meet with fellow members of the ALA-NMRT Endnotes Committee and the ACRL Cyber Zed Shed Committee in person. “It would offer opportunities to network with librarians and view sessions on collection development that are rarely held outside of ALA Annual, and the ability to view them would significantly enhance my development as an emerging professional.”
EBSCO is dedicated to supporting the professional development of librarians around the world and has a long tradition of co-sponsoring scholarships to ALA conferences, providing funds for conference registration, travel, and expenses. The scholarship recipients will be honored by EBSCO and ALA representatives during the conference at a breakfast on Sunday, June 29.
Applications were judged by an ALA-designated jury: jury chairman Julius C. Jefferson Jr., information research specialist, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Anders C. Dahlgren, president, Library Planning Associates, Normal Ill.; Elizabeth Nelson, adjunct reference librarian, McHenry County College, Crystal Lake, Ill.; Dorothy M. Persson, edu/psychology librarian/embedded Ln,, University of Iowa,Iowa City I.A.; and Annie Zeidman-Karpinski, science and technology services librarian, Eugene, Ore.
