News
Library Wins National Excellence Award
The most prestigious professional association for college libraries has named the A.C. Buehler Library winner of its 2010 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.
The annual award, sponsored by the Association of College & Research Libraries and Blackwell’s Book Services, “is a national tribute to a library and its staff for the outstanding services, programs and leadership they provide to their students, faculty, administrators and community,” said ACRL Executive Director Mary Ellen K. Davis. ACRL is a division of the American Library Association.
The ACRL Excellence Award is given annually to one college, one university and one community college library. In the college library category, the one in which Elmhurst College was recognized, previous winners include Mount Holyoke, Carleton, Oberlin and Wellesley.
“We have been successful in creating an excellent library because everyone is committed to flexibility, risk-taking, pitching in when and where they are needed and embracing new challenges and opportunities as they arise,” said Library Director Susan Swords Steffen.
Elmhurst’s library impressed the award selection committee with its strategic planning initiatives, its focus on student engagement, and how successfully the library’s efforts mesh with the College’s recently adopted, campus-wide strategic plan.
“Buehler Library demonstrated an excellent program for outreach to classroom faculty and articulated the link between library planning and activities to the institution’s strategic plan,” noted Julie Todaro, chair of the selection committee.
Elmhurst President S. Alan Ray added: “We aspire to offer a seamless vision of the future of the College, one that advances student learning by the intentional integration of library services, teaching, and research throughout our community.”
Steffen said the award reaffirms the library’s mission: to be “central to the life of the College.” That has meant making information literacy classes, which are taught by librarians, an integral part of each student’s academic career: in first-year seminars, in general education courses, and in courses required for majors. In information literacy classes, students learn not only how to access information, but also how to evaluate and synthesize it; they also explore the ethics of information use and creation.
The Excellence Award selection committee also admired the creative ways in which the library engages students. Steffen says she and her staff work collaboratively with student groups, and explore new roles the library can play in student life outside the classroom. For example, the library hosts computer gaming nights several times each semester, during which staff members move video game consoles onto the first floor of the library, organize competitions and provide a safe environment for players. This event has brought many students into the library, including those who were not regular or enthusiastic library users. Those students discovered that the library has more to offer than they expected. Regular users have discovered this too, Steffen said.
“It's the destination of choice for students to study, as you can tell from the fact that its seats are always filled and its computers always in use, as much as you tell from the buzz of energy you feel walking into the library, so different from the stereotyped idea of a library as a place of quiet and inaction,” said Alzada Tipton, vice president of academic affairs. “The library's information literacy classroom, which is at the heart of the library, symbolizes how the library is at the heart of our efforts to educate students to be critical analysts of information in an age of information overload.”
Tipton also noted the College’s collection of Chicago Imagist art, which hangs on the walls of the library, entirely accessible to students and visitors. “The fact that we have an impressive art collection on the walls of our library, as well as books on our shelves and databases on our computers, shows that we believe that the library is an important destination for all of our students and members of the community besides, and that we believe that arts and culture are ingredients as important to a true education as information and knowledge.”
The library staff will receive the award during a ceremony in the spring on the Elmhurst campus.
