22 April 1999

HCL Anderson award goes to Tasmania

A Tasmanian has won the most-prestigious professional honour which Australian librarians can bestow.

Professor John Levett, of Hill Farm at Middleton in Tasmania's Huon Valley south of Hobart, has received the HCL Anderson Award, the highest honour which the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) can confer.

Professor Levett is a former director of the Department of Librarianship in the University of Tasmania and chair of the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records in Monash University.

He is still the editor of the Australian Library Journal and is active in national library affairs.

Professor Levett was a member of the ALIA Board of Education and has been prominent in ALIA affairs since 1964. The association awarded him its Fellowship in 1988 and he served as its president in 1991.

In making the award ALIA's General Council said Professor Levett had made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual development of librarianship, including the consideration of the ethical and philosophical issues which underpinned the profession.

The General Council cited Professor Levett's contribution to ALIA over a long period and his advocacy for education for librarianship.

Professor Levett began his career in 1954 as a library cadet in the Newcastle Public Library and gained a Bachelor of Arts at Newcastle University in 1969 and a Master of Librarianship at Monash University in 1985.

After working as chief librarian of the Lake Macquarie Shire Library in NSW in 1961 he was appointed director of the Resource Materials Centre in the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education in 1970.

He became a library educator in 1976 when he was appointed director of the Department of Librarianship in the college. He subsequently transferred with the department to the University of Tasmania in 1981.

Professor Levett resigned from the university in 1988 but continued to edit and publish the Australian Library Journal.