The award, administered by RUSA’s Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS), recognizes an individual for outstanding professional achievement, leadership and significant contributions to the fields of interlibrary loan and document delivery and is generously supported by OCLC.
In selecting Oberlander for this prestigious award, the committee highlighted the excellence and scope of his work with the Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project, a resource sharing cooperative within New York State. Members are from public and private academic libraries, New York Public Library and the New York State Library. They also made note of his leadership and mentor role as the Internal Project Consultant for the IDS Project team and the GIST Team responsible for the Getting it Systems Toolkit (GIST). This innovative approach to ILL practice—and an important contribution to ILL services for the entire ILL community—is a set of customizable tools and workflows that enhance interlibrary loan, just-in-time acquisitions services, purchase requesting and cooperative collection development efforts. In addition, Oberlander is recognized for his prior work at the University of Virginia and Portland State University, where he created a wireless scanning book truck/mobile library workstation, and as the co-creator of LibStatCAT, a library statistical collection analysis tool, and STATCAT, an interlibrary loan statistical database.
Oberlander received his MLS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His most recent publications include a chapter on the future of ILL in “Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook, 3rd edition,” (American Library Association, 2011), and “Point–of–Need Collection Development: The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) and a New System for Acquisitions and Interlibrary Loan Integrated Workflow and Collection Development,” co-authored with Kate Pitcher, Tim Bowersox and Mark Sullivan, Collection Management, vol 35. (3) 2010, p.222-236, which was republished in “Patron-driven acquisitions: current successes and future directions,” (Routledge, 2011).
The award, a citation and $2,000 cash prize, will be presented at the RUSA Awards Reception, scheduled for 5 - 6:30 p.m. Sunday, June 24 as a part of RUSA’s events at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif. The exact location of this event will be announced in late spring. For more information, visit RUSA’s website or the Annual Conference website.
The Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers’ advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need. Learn more about the association at www.ala.org/rusa.