91´«Ã½

The Donald G. Davis Article Award Committee of the Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½) is pleased to present the 2022 Davis Article Award to Alex H. Poole, Associate Professor of Information Science at Drexel University, for his article "'Tearing the Shroud of Invisibility': Communities of Protest Information Practices and the Fight for LGBTQ Rights in US Librarianship," which appeared in Library Quarterly Vol. 90, No. 4, 2020. The Davis Award is presented every second year to the best published article written in English in the field of United States and Canadian library history. The award honors Donald G. Davis, longtime professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin, and editor of Libraries and Culture (formerly Journal of Library History, Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship).

Poole’s "'Tearing the Shroud of Invisibility'” builds a comprehensive, well-delineated and deeply researched historical picture of an under-investigated branch of library history, LGBTQ rights. It launches an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding protest practices from 1971-1986 by the 91´«Ã½’s Task Force on Gay Liberation as forms of community practice and information practice in themselves. The language of the article is vivid and the argument is sophisticated in its multidisciplinary and multidimensional nature. The final gesture it makes of suggesting how the concepts it builds might help “illuminate the social justice work of other marginalized and oppressed groups” makes the article’s significance reach beyond its own area of study.

The Donald D. Davis Article Award Committee congratulates Alex Poole on his achievement and is pleased to recognize innovative, provocative, and rigorously researched scholarly work on library history that promises to make a lasting impact across multiple fields.