2013 Library Juice Paper Contest Winner: Ryan Shaw

Library Juice Press is happy to announce the winner of the First Annual Library Juice Paper Contest. Ryan Shaw’s paper, titled, “Information Organization and the Philosophy of History,” was judged by the award jury to be the best paper out of fifteen submitted in this year’s contest, in a blind process. Jury member Ron Day wrote,

“[The paper] is extremely well written and researched with a tight, but historically broad and interdisciplinary review of the literature and focus. It is theoretically important and it has very important implications for practices…”

Shaw’s paper was published in June of 2013 in JASIS, and can be read on the web at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22843. Ryan Shaw is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science.

The jury selected one paper for an honorable mention: Julie Graves Krishnaswami’s paper titled, “Critical Information Theory: A New Foundation for Teaching Regulatory Research.” This paper is slated for publication in the forthcoming book, Boulder Statements on Legal Research Instruction: The Intersection of Intellectual & Practical Skills, to be published by William S. Hein & Co.

The Library Juice Paper Contest winner receives an award of $1000. The intention of this contest is to encourage and reward good work in the field of library and information studies, humanistically understood, through a monetary award and public recognition. Papers submitted may be unpublished, pending publication, or published in the year of the award. Any type of paper may be entered as long as it is not a report of an empirical study. Examples of accepted forms would be literature review essays, analytical essays, historical papers, and personal essays. The work may include some informal primary research, but may not essentially be the report of a study.

The critera for judgment are:

– Clarity of writing
– Originality of thought
– Sincerity of effort at reaching something true
– Soundness of argumentation (where applicable)
– Relevance to our time and situation

The jury for this year’s award consisted of Ron Day, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Indiana University; Toni Samek, Professor, School of Library & Information Studies, University of Alberta; and John Doherty, instructional designer with the Northern Arizona University’s e-Learning Center.

Entries in next year’s award are due September 1st, 2014.

Library Juice Press is an imprint of Litwin Books, LLC specializing in theoretical and practical issues in librarianship from a critical perspective, for an audience of professional librarians and students of library science.

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