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This award is given to Lou for her “commitment, creativity and dedication to the principles embodied in the phrase “Documents to the People.”

Examples of her innovative and pragmatic approach include her brainchild, the CIC Floppy Disk Project, one of the first attempts to preserve federal depository materials in digital format. This project continues to provide web-based access to both the data and software required to access and use the data, helping libraries provide immediate user access to valuable information distributed on this now-obsolete format. More recently she provided the impetus and leadership for a much larger-scale preservation and access project, the Indiana Light Archive for Federal Documents. As noted in one nomination letter, “Lou’s presence and stature within the Indiana government documents community played a significant role in assuring the integrity and feasibility of such an undertaking. With Lou’s help and guidance what began as a project involving only the Indiana University federal depository libraries became an unprecedented collaboration involving all of the depositories in Indiana.” As chair of the project working group, she and the working group hammered out the details of collection assignments, cataloging standards, preservation best practices, delivery criteria, disposal guidelines, and reference, instruction, training, and professional development responsibilities that formed the basis of two critical documents: the Indiana Light Archive Collection Stewardship Guidelines and Memorandum of Understanding/Cooperative Agreement. These allowed creation of a collaborative shared print repository for the state of Indiana to become a reality. It is also now a national model for collaboration in preservation, cataloging and public access.

Lou’s passion for government information, expertise and generosity have won her the respect of her colleagues, one of whom describes her as the “quintessential government documents librarian.” She has shared this enthusiasm and encyclopedic knowledge of government resources with innumerable graduate students as a former adjunct faculty member in the IU School of Library and Information Science, for which she was honored with the Indiana University, School of Library and Information Science Alumni Award in 2005 and the Indiana University Teaching Award for teaching achievements in the School of Library and Information Science in 2002.