by Kathy Roegge, MLS

During this year's Illinois Library Association (ILA) Conference in Peoria the MLS System Wide Area Network, better known as SWAN (http://swan.mls.lib.il.us) was awarded the Hugh Atkinson Award (http://www.ila.org/membership/awards/atkinson.htm).

The award is presented by ILA and DEMCO, Inc. annually for sustained activity and contributions having a lasting impact on librarianship. The recipient may be an individual, a group, a program, or an institution.

Aaron Skog, Director of SWAN Services, accepted the award for the consortium at the ILA program.

This award pays respect to Hugh Atkinson’s contribution benefiting all libraries and library users. Hugh C. Atkinson (1933–1986) has been appropriately eulogized as “a man for all seasons.” His talents touched many aspects of the profession including automation, library advocacy, space management, and collection accessibility. Some of Mr. Atkinson’s most significant efforts were directed toward establishing a climate of multi-type library cooperation in Illinois. Due in large part to his influence, Illinois has garnered national recognition in this important area. Therefore, a citation and award recognizing and encouraging statewide interlibrary cooperation was created to provide an appropriate living memorial to Hugh’s innovative leadership.

SWAN received the award because, as quoted by one of the nominators, it “values collaboration, cooperation, commitment, innovation and reliability."

Another nominating member libraries notes “from its inception, SWAN has provided resource sharing and mentoring to member libraries, with the goal of finding the best ways to serve our wide range of patrons. Since SWAN serves public, academic, high school and special libraries, resource sharing can be daunting. Clarendon Hills is a small public library serving a population of 7610. From the early 80’s to the present, SWAN has provided a foundation of training and technical support that make our small library a benefit to the community.”

Began in 1974 by nine public libraries the SWAN consortium has grown to include 74 public libraries, 3 community college libraries and 3 community libraries. As stated in their nominating documents it has “a history of strategic initiatives plus a tradition of excellence and commitment has made SWAN an LSAP known around the world for cooperation and collaboration plus service, stability and innovation“.

Congratulations to the staff and members of the SWAN consortium.

Published November 4, 2009 in vol. 3, iss. 21 [View]