Tim Bucknall Receives ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award

In January, we announced that Tim Bucknall, assistant dean of libraries and head of electronic resources and information technologies at UNCG had been named the 2014 Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The award, sponsored by YBP Library Services, recognizes an outstanding member of the library profession who has made a significant national or international contribution to academic/research librarianship and library development.

Bucknall received the $5,000 award during the ACRL President's Program at 10:30 am on Saturday, June 28, 2014, at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas. We also took the opportunity this summer to celebrate the achievement with many of Tim’s colleagues in the state and area. Mary Ellen Davis, executive director of ACRL offered remarks, as did Leah Dunn of UNC Asheville and Dana Sally of Western Carolina who nominated Bucknall for the award.

The occasion offered a chance to do some reminiscing. Former colleague Dana Sally recalled, “as I remember it, Journal Finder grew out of some early morning coffee conversations Tim and I had while at UNCG. During these conversations, we compared notes constantly about how much time was spent tracking down journal articles while working the reference desk (this of course was well before the time of full-text databases). We would “blue-sky” and rhetorically muse: wouldn’t it be great to be able to find an article in a database (a database that simply indexed because that’s all we had at the time) and then go directly to the article itself? That would be a brilliant development...but clearly, all things considered, not possible. This hugely helpful, but not possible, idea stayed impossible for Tim for about 48 hours (it might have been 72!). Within several days, Tim came in with his coffee cup in hand and said ‘it can be done.’ And he and his team did it, building a prototype very quickly. Tim has the rare gift combination of vision and execution. “

The University Libraries have now been very fortunate to have benefit of Tim’s outstanding service for 20 years. Dana Sally summed up the sentiment of the group with these words, “Tim’s successes and achievements have two primary sources: his innate intelligence and acquired competence, and his character. Tim is profoundly honest, committed, and selfless in his devotion to his professional work. He is collaborator by nature, always seeking team and service improvement. His quiet persistence is matched only by his unfailing good humor and his authentic and unrequited humanity. He is a humane colleague and true friend, first and foremost. For the library world, he has been a master service designer and builder. He is a doer. “

Well done, Tim. Congratulations.