Two from UNCG’s University Libraries Win Awards

Lynda Kellam

Kelsey Cheshire

Lynda Kellam is the recipient of the 2015 NewsBank/Readex/GODORT/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Award. This award provides funding for research in the field of documents librarianship, or in a related area that would benefit the individual's performance as a documents librarian or make a contribution to the field. Lynda’s work with the North Carolina Library Association’s Government Resources Section (GRS) certainly makes a significant contribution to our profession. The GRS webinar series “Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian” has been a valuable source of instruction for accidental and non-accidental government information librarians alike for the past three years.

This grant will allow Lynda and GRS to purchase software that will be used to preserve these webinars and make them more accessible through channels such as YouTube and embeddable in LibGuides. Lynda’s work to make these valuable webinars more accessible to government document librarians helps our community provide permanent no-fee access to government information. As one of her letter writers pointed out "this will benefit not only Ms. Kellam's performance as a documents librarian, but GRS, NCLA and the entire government information community as well".

 The 2015 W. David Rozkuszka Scholarship has been awarded to Kelsey Cheshire. Kelsey is a LIS graduate student at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro who plans to graduate in May 2015. She credits her early exposure to librarianship while working at the Austin Peay State University library as the reason she chose to enter the profession. Even though her primary duty was circulation she found herself often assisting students with basic reference questions. Kelsey describes this experience as the motivation for pursuing her graduate degree.  In June 2014, Kelsey began working for the UNCG University Libraries as a student assistant to the Documents Manager. She became an integral part of a team tasked to weed and to move the government documents print collection to remote storage during the summer break. Her supervisor and the head of the reference department describe her as a dedicated and hardworking member of the team. Both credit the success of the project to her diligence and good humor. In addition, Kelsey was selected to be an intern in a competitive library internship program at UNCG. Her primary supervisor for the internship praises her commitment to the profession and work ethic. Moreover, as part of the internship she continues to work with the documents team on several projects including a finding aid for the Serial Set collection and promotional materials for the ASERL Center of Excellence collection. Upon completion of her degree, Kelsey intends to pursue a research and instruction position at an academic library and to continue to serve the profession with passion.