GENEVA, NY - Peter McDonald, Director of the Library at Cornell University's Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY, has been named 1996 co-recipient of two prestigious awards: the Blackwell North America (BNA) Scholarship Award and the Best of Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS) Award. The article for which he won the award was entitled "The Internet and Collection Development: Mainstreaming the Selection of Internet Resources," and appeared in LRTS, v.39, no. 3, July 1995. He co-authored it with Sam Demas and Gregory Lawrence, both of Mann Library on Cornell's Ithaca campus.
According to committee chairwoman Holley R. Lange, the article was selected because the committee felt it best met the criteria for making a timely and significant contribution in an area of interest to members of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) . "The issues you address are important to the future of collection development, and your article will assist other librarians as they move their traditional print-based libraries to Internet inclusive collections," she said.
The award is $2,000 toward the scholarship of the recipient's choice. The final choice of library school has not yet been made.
McDonald will receive the awards during the ALA's Annual Conference on Monday, July 8, as part of the ALCTS Membership Meeting and President's Program.
In addition, McDonald was senior editor of The Literature of Forestry and Agroforestry with James Lassoie, Director for Cornell's Center for the Environment. The book was published by the Cornell University Press this past April. The 448-page clothbound volume traces the evolution of forestry from nature appreciation, to exploitation, to multiple use, to sustainable and scientific forestry through its research, education, and literature. The book is the seventh and final book in the series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences. It sells for $79.95.
McDonald was instrumental in recognizing the importance of the Internet at the Experiment Station as an information retrieval tool. Under his leadership, the Geneva Library put up the first Station home pages on the World Wide Web. In December, 1994, he co-chaired a conference at Cornell with Henry DeVries entitled "Highest Denominator Agricultural Information Systems: Implications and Issues," which was attended by communicators, extension and outreach personnel in academia and agribusiness.
McDonald received his Masters of Library Science degree at the University of Washington in Seattle. After serving as a reference librarian at the New York Public Library for five years, he came to Cornell in 1990 to work at Mann Library. He was appointed Director of the Experiment Station Library in the summer of 1993.
NOTE: A photo of Peter McDonald is available.
Contact: Linda McCandless
315-787-2417
e-mail: llm3@cornell.edu
Communications Services, Geneva, NY
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