April 8, 1998 Winston Tabb to Receive Melvil Dewey Medal

Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress and a 25-year Library veteran, will receive the Melvil Dewey medal from the American Library Association (ALA) at its annual convention in Washington this summer.

The award will be presented in the Library's Great Hall during the inauguration ceremony for the new ALA president, Ann K. Symons. The ALA Annual Conference runs from June 25 to July 2 in Washington, and many meetings and programs will be held at the Library of Congress.

In a letter announcing the award, Valerie J. Wilford, chair of the 1998 Melvil Dewey Award Jury, told Mr. Tabb that ALA will be giving him the Dewey award for his "distinguished service to the [library] profession; [his] high order of creative leadership to the Library of Congress and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions; and for [his] vision, leadership and determination in establishing the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, which resulted in significant improvement to global bibliographic control worthy of our benefactor, Melvil Dewey."

Established in 1952, the Dewey medal and citation is given annually to an individual or group for a recent creative professional achievement of high order, particularly those areas of librarianship in which Dewey was interested: library management, library training, cataloging and classification and the tools and techniques of librarianship.

ALA is recognizing Mr. Tabb's work with the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), which was started by the Library in 1993. The Library provides logistical support for the PCC and is one of eight permanent members of the PCC's executive council. The other seven members are the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, the Cooperative Online Serials Program, the National Library of Medicine, the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the Research Libraries Group, and the national libraries of Great Britain and Canada. Seven rotating members of the executive council are elected by program members.

Mr. Tabb said that credit for the work with the PCC also should go to Sarah Thomas (former director for cataloging and now head of the Cornell University Library); Director for Cataloging Beacher Wiggins; Jean L. Hirons, LC's CONSER coordinator; Mr. Byrum; and other RCCD staff.

"We have found that it has been extremely productive for us to collaborate with other libraries as cataloging partners. It allows us to concentrate on the things we do best and are uniquely well-equipped to do," Mr. Tabb said.

Two other Library employees are scheduled to receive awards from divisions of the ALA this summer. John D. Byrum Jr., chief of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division (RCCD), will be presented with the Margaret Mann Citation for outstanding professional achievement in cataloging or classification from the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services; and Judith Reid, head of the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room, will receive the top award for genealogy librarians from the Reference and User Services.