By Nella Letizia, WSU Libraries
PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State University emeritus faculty member and retired animal health sciences librarian Vicki Croft is part of the team that earned the 2016 Medical Library Association’s Section Project of the Year Award.
The project – “Promoting and Advocating for the Profession: Creating a Multi-Faceted Illustrated History of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section (VMLS) and Its Impact” – “was designed to be more than a history lesson,” according to the project statement. “The committee wanted to ensure that the project could be utilized in a variety of ways. As an advocacy tool, the project has served to make the greater community of medical librarians aware of the impact of librarians on veterinary medicine through peer-reviewed articles published about the section.
“Since these diverse articles are part of the scholarly record, they will be discoverable to future generations of librarians. The project serves as a model for other sections to help develop their own section histories.”
Collaborating on the winning project with Croft were Laura Rey of Texas A&M University, Susanne Whitaker, formerly of Cornell University, and Gretchen Stephens of Purdue University.
The $500 award is given to an MLA section that demonstrates creativity, ingenuity, cooperation and leadership within the framework of the section’s mandate.