NEWS

De Gruyter Saur IFLA Research Paper Award 2011

De Gruyter Saur and IFLA are delighted to announce that the winners of the De Gruyter Saur IFLA Research Paper Award 2011 are Erin Thomas, Grace Costantino, Bianca Crowley and Rebecca Morin with their paper entitled “Heeding the Call: User Feedback Management and the Digital Library”. The first three authors are from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (USA), and Rebecca Morin is from the California Academy of Sciences (USA).  

The authors receive prize money of EUR 1.000 donated by De Gruyter Saur and are invited to attend the President’s Lunch at the Annual IFLA World Library and Information Congress in San Juan in August 2011.  

Using the example of the collaborative Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the paper offers a timely view how users’ views and feedback can be captured and integrated in order to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of digitization projects. As the authors write, “In adopting issue tracking software, a small, decentralized staff is able to leverage user feedback, transforming it into an essential component of daily workflow and empowering users to determine ongoing Biodiversity Heritage Library activities”.  

The jury – assembled by IFLA Governing Board Members Patrice Landry (Switzerland), Zhu Qiang (China) and Sjoerd Koopman (IFLA HQ) – was impressed by the quality of the paper and the insight it gave into an innovative approach to encourage and utilize user involvement in digital library collection development.