91´«Ã½

CHICAGO — The 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½) has named “The Tech Set" the winner of the 2011 Greenwood Publishing Group Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. "The Tech Set" was envisioned, created, and edited by Ellyssa Kroski and published by Neal-Schuman.

"The Tech Set" uses a creative, innovative approach with both printed books and links to online resources that give readers the opportunity to interact with each other and the authors on current and ever-changing technology topics. These user-friendly, practical and highly readable primers offer a rich source of up-to-date information that will allow librarians to understand and employ social networks, wikis, blogs, mobile information services and other technologies to further library services. Kroski will receive $5,000 and a 24K gold-framed citation, donated by the Greenwood Publishing Group.

The Award committee chose “The Tech Set” from a strong field of nominated books on many aspects of librarianship. The committee praised the book for covering a wide variety of timely topics, providing a way to keep the topics updated and interactive, and for being written in an easy-to-understand manner for readers both at the beginning of their quest for information and those more advanced who want an overview and updated information online.

Kroski is the emerging technologies & web services librarian at Barnard College Library as well as a writer, educator and international conference speaker. She is an adjunct faculty member at Long Island University, Pratt Institute, and San Jose State University where she teaches LIS students about emerging technologies. Series contributors include Marshall Breeding (Next-Gen Library Catalogs), Jason Griffey (Mobile Technology and Libraries), Robin M. Hastings (Microblogging and Lifestreaming in Libraries), Thomas Sean Casserley Robinson (Library Videos and Webcasts), Lauren Pressley (Wikis for Libraries), Sarah Houghton-Jan (Technology Training in Libraries), Cliff Landis (A Social Networking Primer for Librarians), Steve Lawson (Library Camps and Unconferences), Kelly Nicole Czarnecki (Gaming in Libraries) and Connie Crosby (Effective Blogging for Libraries).

The annual award will be presented at the 91´«Ã½ Annual Conference in New Orleans in June.

Members of the 2011 Greenwood Publishing Group Award committee are: chair, Laurel Bliss, fine arts librarian, San Diego State University; Paul Anderson, assistant director for Library Administrative Services, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Del.; June DeWeese, head of access services, University of Missouri, Columbia; Eva Poole, director of libraries, Denton Public Library, Texas; and Susan Searing, library and information science librarian, University Library, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The deadline for submission of applications for the Greenwood Publishing Group Award is Dec.1, 2011. forms are available on the 91´«Ã½ website.