The Technical Services Special Interest Section Awards Committee is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2017 Renee D. Chapman Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in Technical Services Law Librarianship is Jean Pajerek.
Jean is Director for Information Management at the Cornell University Law Library. Her extraordinary contributions on behalf of technical services law librarians are compelling and have had lasting significance. She is heavily committed and has consistently contributed to the advancement of our profession through her committee work, scholarship, presentations, and mentoring activities.
Jean joined AALL and the Technical Services Special Interest Section on her arrival at Cornell in 1985. Since that time, her service to AALL and TS-SIS has been exemplary. Within TS-SIS, she served as a member and chair of the Mentorship Committee from 1986-1988. She has been a member of the Cataloging and Classification Committee since 1985, serving as its chair in 2007-2008. She served on the Education Committee from 2002-2004 (chairing in 2003) and again in 2013. She was the editor of the TSLL “Serial Title Changes and Cessations” column from 1985-1995, and was a frequent contributor to the TechScans blog from 2009-2015.
Jean’s service to AALL includes a term as the AALL representative to the Subject Analysis Committee of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (American Library Association) from 1994-1996. She served on the AALL Annual Meeting Program Committee in 2004-2005. In 2007, she assisted in writing AALL’s official response to the draft report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. Most recently, she served a three-year term as the AALL representative to the MARC Advisory Committee (2014-2017), bringing a law-centric perspective to evaluation of proposals to adjust the MARC standard in preparation for new modes of bibliographic description.
With regard to educational programs, Jean taught at multiple AALL-sponsored preconference cataloging institutes and workshops. She was a panelist at several AALL annual meeting programs on topics related to technical services management, the value of technical services, and the implementation of the cataloging standard RDA: Resource Description and Access.
Outside of AALL and TS-SIS, Jean served the profession at the regional and national level, particularly in areas related to training and documentation. For example, she gave a presentation on legal subject headings at the Library of Congress for government librarians in 1998. She served on the BIBCO Standing Committee on Training Task Group to Update Integrating Resources Documentation and Training Materials (Library of Congress) in 2004.
Jean consistently and relentlessly proved to be at the forefront of the most critical developments and discussions in technical services. She frequently presented programs and panels on the implementation of RDA. Her numerous lectures on this subject were regarded as extremely clear and elucidating. Her expertise in teaching and training in RDA was recognized outside of the law library community–an RDA presentation she did at Cornell was selected by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Standing Committee on Training’s RDA Training Materials Task Force for inclusion on their website. To have her presentation be chosen by PCC for viewing by all technical services librarians (not just law librarians) is a great honor and illustrates her abilities and knowledge.
More recently, Jean is a pioneer in learning the basics of Linked Data and has promoted conversation among catalogers on the new cataloging model called BIBFRAME.
Jean’s scholarly publications include co-authoring the article “Rehabilitating Killer Serials: An Automated Strategy for Maintaining E-journal Metadata” in the academic journal Library Resources & Technical Services. Most recently, she has been writing book reviews for the technical services journal Technicalities.
As a mentor, colleagues frequently acknowledge Jean’s willingness to share her expertise and advice with every librarian in the field and to encourage newer librarians to become involved in library organizations. As one librarian noted, “When I think of Jean, a few key words come to my mind: knowledge, sharing, and enthusiasm.”
In summary, Jean’s service is in the best tradition of technical services law librarianship. She exemplifies leadership, a consistent and sustained record of advocacy for technical services standards and excellence, and extensive contributions to educational programming and training initiatives. The TS-SIS Awards Committee is pleased to recognize Jean Pajerek with this award.
Congratulations Jean!
2016-2017 TS-SIS Awards Committee
Kent Milunovich, Chair
Virginia Bryant
Kevin Carey
Cate Kellett
Stephan Licitra
Katrina Piechnik
George Prager
Akram Sadeghi Pari
Barbara Szalkowski