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The 2000 Bernadine Abbott Hoduski Founder's Award is presented to the Government Documents Group of the Five Colleges of Ohio, a consortium of private, liberal arts colleges, for their project to retrospectively catalog pre-1976 Federal Depository documents. The Hoduski Award recognizes documents librarians who may not be known at the national level but who have made significant contributions to the field of state, international, local, or federal documents. This award recognizes those whose contributions have benefited not only the individual's institution but also the profession.

Each of the five colleges: Denison University, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, and the College of Wooster; have well respected depository holdings and knowledgeable and committed documents librarians, who proposed a project for comprehensively cataloging pre-1976 documents in 1998. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granted funding, and with Ellen P. Conrad as Project Coordinator, over 12,000 records have already been handled, with an additional 12,000-15,000 expected to be processed in the second year. The librarians rightly perceived that bibliographic data from this project would not only greatly enhance access to, and service for, depository holdings within the consortium, but would expand access throughout the state, and, by making the records available through OCLC, across the nation. The benefits to all depositories of such a critical mass of high-quality bibliographic data has been recognized, studied, and discussed in the literature for many years, and various forerunner projects have paved the way. The Five Colleges of Ohio have harnessed the individual strength of their member collections, the experience and expertise of their librarians, and have boldly stepped forward, with careful consideration and significant commitment, to successfully implement a project that is creating that critical mass. Top row: Jennifer McMullen (WOO), Tom Hinders (OBE)
Second row: Mary Prophet (DNU), Beverly Gage (DNU), Donna Wilson (KEN), Andrea Peakovic (KEN)
Third row: Margaret Powell (WOO), Ellen Conrad (Project Coordinator)
Front Row: Cynthia Cort (DNU), Cecilia Robinson (OBE), Joy He (OWU), Judy Orahood (OWU)
WOO=The College of Wooster
DNU=Denison University
KEN=Kenyon College
OBE=Oberlin College
OWU=Ohio Wesleyan University