The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has named Myung-Ja (MJ) Han (MS ’06), metadata librarian and associate professor of library administration at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as the recipient of the 2015 Esther J. Piercy Award. The award will be presented on Saturday, June 27, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2015 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exposition in San Francisco.
Han has made a significant contribution to technical services, most notably through her work on applied metadata. Her scholarly output is remarkable, and she has shared her work with the broader library community through an exceptional number of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and publications in conference proceedings discussing the role of metadata in the cycle of knowledge creation, discovery, and preservation. She co-authored, with Professor Timothy Cole (MS '89) of the University of Illinois Library, XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians (Santa Barbara, California: Libraries Unlimited, 2013). This is in addition to many presentations and poster sessions. She shares her expertise widely with library school students as well as professionals. In addition to being an exceptionally productive and engaged scholar, she is a teacher and mentor both in the classroom and through practicum supervisions. She also serves as co-principal investigator on three grants, including the Emblematica Online project, and is engaged in numerous committees, task forces, and related groups.
Prior to assuming her current position, Han was metadata librarian and assistant professor of library administration, also at Illinois. Previous positions included visiting metadata librarian for Illinois Harvest/visiting assistant professor and graduate assistant/monograph cataloger, both at Illinois. She holds an MS in library and information science from Illinois and a BA from Sook-Myung Women’s University in Korea.
Through her scholarship, her presentations, and her mentorship of a new generation of librarians, Han shares her profound expertise with our community. She exhibits all the qualities represented by the Esther J. Piercy Award. The Esther J. Piercy Award was established by ALCTS in 1968 in memory of Esther J. Piercy, editor of Journal of Cataloging and Classification from 1950 to 1956 and of Library Resources & Technical Services from 1957 to 1967. The Piercy Award recognizes the contributions to those areas of librarianship included in library collections and technical services by a librarian with no more than 10 years of professional experience who has shown outstanding promise for continuing contribution and leadership. The recipient receives a $1,500 grant donated by YPB, Inc. and a citation in recognition of their accomplishments.
ALCTS is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, metadata, collection management, preservation, electronic and continuing resources. ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.