UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Emily Rimland, information literacy librarian and learning technologies coordinator at Penn State University Libraries, has been chosen by the American Library Association’s Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) as the 2018 recipient of its Librarian Recognition Award. Now in its fifth year, the award recognizes an individual’s contribution to the development, advancement and support of information literacy and instruction.
Rimland will be presented the award during the LIRT Awards Ceremony on Sunday evening, June 24, at the New Orleans Downtown Marriott at the Convention Center, as part of the American Library Association’s 2018 Annual Conference. She will receive a $1,000 cash prize and a plaque, as well as a $500 travel stipend for attending the conference.
“The University Libraries community is very proud of Emily for receiving this highest national honor in her field of academic specialization. She continues to innovate library instruction for Penn State students, with resulting positive impacts for students nationwide,” said Barbara I. Dewey, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications. “Emily was selected in 2012 for our inaugural Sally W. Kalin Early Career Librarianship for Learning Innovations, a three-year award for achieving librarians in the first decade of their careers, and quickly embraced that title. She has became a trailblazer in academic libraries’ use of digital badges, an instructional tool whose capabilities she continues to expand.”
When notified of the award, Rimland stated, “It is the highest honor to have this recognition from my fellow instructional librarians who are dedicated to advancing information literacy. I am so glad to be a part of such an awesome group of colleagues and collaborators.”
Since launching her career at Penn State in 2005, Rimland has focused on integrating technology into teaching practices and classroom spaces. Among her notable initiatives are using littleBits circuitry in instruction sessions to help students visualize their search processes, redesigning library learning spaces, and creating an information literacy digital badges program, which eventually led to her role as the founding member of the Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Badges Interest Group in 2014.
More recently, Rimland and teammates are attempting to scale up the digital badges program using artificial intelligence to help assess students’ improvement of information literacy skills as they complete digital badges. The team’s project for the Penn State EdTech Network’s $100,000 Nittany AI Challenge, a collaboration with the College of Information Sciences and Technology titled “From Micro to Macro: Applying Machine Learning to Scale Up Competency Based Learning at PSU,” was one of five prototypes selected in late March to advance to the third phase of the challenge, receiving an additional $5,000 to complete a minimum viable product.
Rimland also has maintained a consistent record of research and scholarship. The LIRT committee noted that Rimland stood out as a candidate who is not only doing excellent work at her home institution but is also making sure to share her success with others in the profession.
The Library Instruction Round Table was started in 1977 with the intent to bring together librarians who provide library instruction across all types of libraries — academic, public, school and special libraries. 2018 marks the fifth year that the Librarian Recognition Award has been awarded.
The LIRT Librarian Recognition Awards Subcommittee included Joshua Vossler, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, chair; Yi Han, Illinois Institute of Technology; Meghann Kuhlmann, Wichita State University; Michael Saar, Lamar University; and Beth Fuchs, University of Kentucky, LIRT Awards Committee chair. The ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR) serves as the liaison to the LIRT.
For additional information about the LIRT Librarian Recognition Award, call or email Beatrice Calvin, manager, professional development, ALA/HRDR, at 312-280-4280 or bcalvin@ala.org.