91´«Ã½

CHICAGO - Deanna B. Marcum, associate librarian of Congress for Library Services, Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is the winner of the 2011 Melvil Dewey Medal Award, sponsored by OCLC. The prestigious honor, given in recognition of creative leadership of high order, is named in honor of Melvil Dewey, who was actively interested in library management, library training, cataloging and classification and the tools and techniques of librarianship.

“The 2011 Melvil Dewey Medal Award Jury is pleased to honor Deanna Marcum for her many accomplishments during a long, varied and distinguished career in American librarianship,” said chair Winston Tabb. “Among those achievements noted by the Dewey jury and Marcum's colleagues who wrote in support of this award were her “transformational leadership in cataloging and classification, most notably the creation of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, whose recommendations are being widely implemented; her high order of creative leadership as president of the Council on Library and Information Resources, uniting librarians, scholars and publishers to focus on the most pressing challenges of the digital age; and her vision of libraries as part of an international, inter-connected, inter-dependent web of cultural heritage organizations.”

Marcum successfully solicited and received a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to digitize books from the general collections in the Library of Congress. Thus far nearly 75,000 books have been digitized and made freely accessible.

She has served as management training specialist with the Association of Research Libraries (1977-80) and was dean of The Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science (1989-92). Marcum was a vice president (1981-89) and president (1995-2003) of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Marcum has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Illinois, a master’s in library science from the University of Kentucky and a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Maryland. In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from North Carolina State University in recognition of her contributions to librarianship. She is editor and/or author or co-author of five books and has published more than 40 articles.

In nominating Marcum, Nancy L. Cline, Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College, said, “There is no single personal accomplishment that warrants this award; rather it is Deanna’s record of continuous achievement that benefits libraries, brings visibility to critical issues and fosters growth and development in the profession.”

The 2011 Melvil Dewey Award will be presented at the 91´«Ã½ Awards Ceremony Reception on Tuesday, June 28, during the 91´«Ã½ Annual Conference in New Orleans.

In addition to Chair Tabb, dean, John Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, the members of the 2011 Melvil Dewey Award jury are: Deborah B. Dancik, university librarian, Willamette University; Catherine L. Murray-Rust, dean and director of libraries, Georgia Institute of Technology; Brenda Peabody Tirrell, profiling bibliographer, YBP Library Services; and Denise M. Zielinski, consultant, Lombard, Ill.

The deadline for submission of applications for the 2012 Melvil Dewey Award is Dec. 1.

Guidelines and forms are available on the 91´«Ã½ website.