Chair: Sally Holterhoff
Members: Merle Slyhoff, Beth Gemellaro
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| ALL-SIS Chair Tory Trotta presents Hicks Award to Penny Hazelton |
The charge to this committee from ALL-SIS Chair Tory Trotta was "to plan and recommend an awards program for the ALL-SIS." The intent was for the program to honor appropriate achievements of section members and to be ready for presentation to the ALL-SIS Board by Dec. 1999, with the first awards to be presented at the 2000 AALL annual meeting.
The committee met in person at the 1999 annual meeting in Washington, D.C. We decided to concentrate on designing one award, for outstanding contributions to academic law librarianship. We also decided to give ourselves a much shorter deadline, with the hope that our award proposal would be approved by the ALL-SIS Board early in the fall, leaving plenty of time to advertise it and solicit nominations for 2000.
We worked on the proposal in August, modeling it on the Renee D. Chapman Memorial Award of the Technical Services SIS. We liked the idea of naming the award for a notable academic law librarian of the past. We thought that recognizing our roots could have an educational/inspirational purpose. We selected the name Frederick Charles Hicks from a list supplied at our request by Frank Houdek. Our completed draft proposal was sent to Tory and the ALL-SIS Board on August 30.
During the month of September, the Board considered the proposal and made some comments. The Awards Committee responded to these. Negotiations focused on such details as
It was decided to state that preference in selection would be given to section members, that a CV would not be required but suggested, that the award is not given for lifetime achievement but would likely go to someone whose career is well-established, that the Awards Committee makes the final selection, that the SIS Chair will present the award at the Academic Reception at the AALL annual meeting, and that it be stated that self-nomination is allowed. Agreement was reached by the end of Sept., and we proceeded to publicize the award through various channels. Deadline for nominations for the 2000 award was set for Feb. 1, 2000.
We were attempting to meet the Sept. 15 deadline for the fall issue of the ALL-SIS newsletter, for which we did get an extension. (Newsletter came out at end of November.) Other publicity included an announcement on the ALL-SIS listserv and on Law-Lib, as well as posting on the ALL-SIS website. Award information on the website included a link to articles about F. C. Hicks, excerpted from issues of Law Library Journal. Tory made an announcement at the AALS meeting in January, at the library directors' breakfast.
By the Feb. 1 deadline we had received 7 nominations. Some nominations were received with minimal documentation. Two of the people nominated were not ALL-SIS members. We created a nominee ranking form and rated each nominee on our own and then compared notes. We were able to reach consensus via e-mail by early March and we communicated the winner's name to Tory. We informed Penny Hazelton of her selection as Hicks Award winner for 2000 by the end of March/beginning of April. We eventually thanked all who had submitted names for consideration.
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| Hicks Award winner Penny Hazelton addresses ALL-SIS members in Philadelphia |
I wrote a press release about Penny's selection and sent it to her for corrections at the end of April. I arranged for the announcement to be printed in the Awards brochure for the AALL annual meeting, contacted the AALL Awards Committee Chair, and AALL Headquarters.
Other tasks completed in May include: posting an announcement on ALL-SIS listserv and website (with a link to Penny's personal website), and deciding on the wording for award plaques (one for Penny to keep and a permanent ALL-SIS Hicks Award plaque to be passed along year to year). An article about the Hicks Award winner was submitted for the SIS News column in the June issue of AALL Spectrum. The same article was sent to the ALL-SIS Newsletter for inclusion in the Spring 2000 issue. An AALL Press Release/broadcast e-mail was submitted to Roger Parent for approval on May 23 and it was sent out in mid-June.
We contacted Penny's staff in May for ideas, photos, etc. We had a display about Penny and the Hicks Award at the ALL-SIS table in the AALL Activities Area of the exhibit hall in Philadelphia, using some of the photos and articles loaned to us by Penny's staff. We submitted an article for the convention newsletter, which appeared in the Monday issue.
Ideas for the future:
