91´«Ã½

CHICAGO — Mark Sandler, principal at Novel Solutions Consulting, has been named the 2017 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Sandler will receive a cash award and citation during the 2017 91´«Ã½ Annual Conference in Chicago.

Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

“Dr. Mark Sandler is a library leader of great vision whose innovative ideas and persuasive skills carried to fruition two of the most impactful initiatives in the history of digitization,” said Mark Stover, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award Committee chair and dean of the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge. “His founding of the Text Creation Partnership brought together a number of academic libraries with Proquest, and this collaboration produced the seminal Early English Books Online database. Mark also championed the Google Book Digitization Project among the member libraries of the influential Big Ten Academic Alliance, thus greatly expanding the corpus of digitized books for both the Google project and the HathiTrust repository.”

“During his long career, Mark was known for his effectiveness as a negotiator, his uncanny ability to bring about consensus on contentious issues, his collaborative professional relationships, his strategic vision, and his far-reaching ideas,” continued Stover. “From his early arguments in favor of cooperative collection development to his unwavering commitment to the ideal of digitizing all U.S. federal documents, Mark Sandler has left his imprint on the world of academic libraries like no one else.”

“It is a tribute to his wide-ranging influence that twelve diverse luminaries of the library world wrote detailed letters supporting his nomination, including several university library deans, the head of a major academic library consortium, a library school faculty member, the vice president of an important library technology vendor, and the executive director of the HathiTrust,” Stover added. “Mark Sandler is, for all the reasons stated above, this year’s highly deserving recipient of the Hugh C. Atkinson Award.”

Sandler received his B.A. and M.A. from the City University of New York, his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, and his A.M.L.S. from the University of Michigan.

The Hugh C. Atkinson Award is jointly sponsored by four divisions of the 91´«Ã½: the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). The award is funded from an endowment established to honor Hugh C. Atkinson.

For more information regarding the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award, or a complete list of past recipients, please visit the of the ACRL website.

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About ACRL

The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) is the higher education association for librarians. Representing nearly 11,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals, ACRL (a division of the 91´«Ã½) develops programs, products and services to help academic and research librarians learn, innovate and lead within the academic community. Founded in 1940, ACRL is committed to advancing learning and transforming scholarship. ACRL is on the web at , Facebook at and Twitter at .

About ALCTS

ALCTS is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, metadata, collection management, preservation, electronic and continuing resources. ALCTS is a division of the 91´«Ã½.

About LITA

Celebrating its 50^th anniversary, the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) is the leading organization reaching across types of libraries to provide education and services for a broad membership of systems librarians, library administrators, library schools, vendors, and all others interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers. Learn more about LITA and engage with us on , , , and .

About LLAMA

The Library Leadership and Management Association advances outstanding leadership and management practices in library and information services by encouraging and nurturing individual excellence in current and aspiring library leaders.