Braverman Prize winner (student essay contest)
Media Release
Contact:
Dr. Alison M. Lewis
Chair, Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize Committee
Progressive Librarians Guild
Phone: 215/895-2765
FAX: 215/895-2070
E-Mail: alewis@drexel.edu
June 6, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize Winner Announced
(Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA) – The Progressive Librarians Guild is pleased to announce the winner of the 2007 Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize. Marcel LaFlamme has been awarded the prize for his essay entitled “Towards a Progressive Discourse on Community Needs Assessment: Perspectives from Collaborative Ethnography and Action Research.” Mr. LaFlamme is currently enrolled in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, MA.
Mr. LaFlamme’s essay was one of many submitted by library and information science students from colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada. Their papers considered such subjects as rural information centers, library services to indigenous populations, and civic literacy. Mr. LaFlamme’s essay will be published in the forthcoming issue of Progressive Librarian, the journal published by the Progressive Librarians Guild. He will also receive a $300 stipend for attendance at the 2007 American Library Association’s annual meeting in Washington D.C., and an award certificate at the PLG annual dinner.
Honorable mentions go to Katherine Becvar, Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, for her paper, “Intellectual Freedom and Sensitive Knowledge: Embracing Pluralism in the Process of Knowing,” and to Joshua Jackson, Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, for his paper “Taking the Next Step: A Critical Encounter with Critical Information Literacy.”
The Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize is awarded annually for the best essay written by a student of library/information science on an aspect of the social responsibilities of librarians, libraries or librarianship. The prize is named in honor of Miriam Braverman (1920-2002), an activist librarian who was a longstanding member of the Progressive Librarians Guild and a founder of the American Library Association’s Social Responsibilities Round Table. She was a strong proponent of the social responsibilities perspective within librarianship and an inspiration to younger librarians entering the field.
The Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG) was founded in 1990 and is committed to supporting activist librarians and monitoring the professional ethics of librarianship from a perspective of social responsibility. For more information, visit the Guild’s website at: http://libr.org/PLG/