91´«Ã½

The 2009 recipient of the LexisNexis/GODORT/91´«Ã½/Documents to the People Award is Daniel Cornwall. This award honors the individual “who has most effectively encouraged the use of government documents in support of library service.” Daniel’s colleagues in GODORT believe he is most deserving of this award because of his zeal for “openness and transparency of government information.” They describe him as “a government information activist to the core,” as demonstrated by his work with the Alaska State Library, GODORT, and numerous online endeavors that foster collaboration among government documents specialists, and promote government publications on a global scale.

At the Alaska State Library, Daniel has utilized the Internet to deliver both state and federal government information to citizens, as well as to preserve this information in electronic formats for future generations. Through GODORT Daniel has spearheaded the State Blue Books and State Agency Databases in order to improve members’ access to valuable government resources and to encourage their contribution to the organization.

Daniel is probably best known for his efforts to highlight government information via the Web, especially through social networking sites. Facebook, Ning, Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and YouTube are just a few of the outlets he has used to advocate depositories and their collections. Most notably, Daniel has created a strong presence on the (FGI) where he has overseen the EPA Pilot Tagging Project and the Best Titles Ever compilation. His informative and influential blog posts on FGI connect documents librarians and other citizens to information tools for use in their professional and personal lives. Throughout his voluminous work, Daniel has written and advocated for ways of collecting, accessing, and preserving government information. He has been tireless in his outreach to both the library community and other user groups to make everyone aware of the critical issues surrounding government information. For all these reasons GODORT is very proud to present him with this year's "Documents to the People" Award.