Ellinor Archer Pioneer Award

This award is no longer awarded...

The Ellinor Archer Pioneer Award recognises pioneering work in new areas of library and information science. This may involve a one-off product, a new service or program or development of an existing service, but must incorporate a future-oriented approach.

Nominees may be individual or institutional members of the Association. The nomination may identify a specific group or unit within an institution.

Ellinor Archer, MBE, was a pioneer, a foundation member of the Australian Institute of Librarians (precursor to our Association) and its first woman president. A lecturer in botany at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, she was appointed in 1923 Chief Librarian of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research which became the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. In her 31 years of work for the organisation, she developed an extensive library network delivering modern specialist library services and organised the first co-operative union catalogue of Australian library holdings, based on the scientific and technical periodicals in collections throughout Australia.

The award was changed in 2002 to the pioneering focus. The previous Ellinor Archer Award was presented to Ena Noël (1984) and Allan Fleming (1989).

Nominations close on 1 August 2010.

This award is peer-nominated. Confidentiality in nomination is essential and nominees should not be aware that they are being nominated for an award. Premature disclosure of details may prejudice consideration of the nomination.

Nominations are considered by the national awards panel which makes recommendation to the Board of Directors. More than one award may be made each year if there are multiple nominations which are considered worthy of the award. Details are published only when a nomination is successful.