Two Library staff received important honors at the American Library Association's (ALA) Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla., in late June. Barbara Tillett, chief of the Library's Cataloging Policy and Support Office in the Cataloging Directorate since 1994, received the 2004 Margaret Mann Citation, which is the ALA's highest honor for achievement in cataloging and classification. And Sally H. McCallum, chief of the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) at the Library of Congress, is the 2004 recipient of the Melvil Dewey Medal and Citation for recent creative professional achievement of a high order.
Margaret Mann Citation to Barbara Tillett
Kate Harcourt of Columbia University Libraries, chairman of the 2004 Margaret Mann Citation Committee, said Tillett was selected for her "extraordinary contributions to both the theory and the practice of cataloging. … Her achievements … have given shape and direction to the work of many others in our profession, catalogers and noncatalogers alike."
Judith Mansfield, the Library's acting director for cataloging, noted, "In addition to her accomplishments in the theory and practice of bibliographic control, Barbara shows great personal warmth and accessibility to Library staff at every level. She is a master of communication through both formal and informal channels and goes to great lengths to ensure that Library staff members are informed of international cataloging developments."
Added Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services: "I have known Barbara Tillett for the past 25 years and have had the privilege to work closely with her and to witness the evolution and growth of her prestigious career. The countless positive changes Barbara Tillett has brought to the Library of Congress and the library community make her supremely deserving of the nomination for ALA's top honor in cataloging and classification."
Active in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) since 1993, Tillett contributed her research to IFLA's 1998 production of "Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records," which presents a model for the restructuring of information in catalogs to improve user access to international library collections.
As director of the Library's Integrated Library System (ILS) Program from August 1997 through July 2001, Tillett led the Library in selection and implementation of the institution's first integrated library system, the largest single information technology project in the Library's history. Guiding more than 500 Library staffers in some 40 teams, Tillett oversaw the migration from stand-alone legacy systems to the new integrated system of 12 million bibliographic records, 5 million authority records, 20,000 patron records, 30,000 vendor records, more than 55,000 records for open orders, as well as the transfer or creation of more than 20 million holdings and item records. Tillett also oversaw the training of 3,000 Library staff members to use the new system.
While she was ILS program director, Tillett represented the Library on the international Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR as it revised Chapter 9 of the "Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules" 2nd Ed. (AACR2) on electronic resources and Chapter 12 to improve the cataloging of serials and integrated resources.
Based on her research and advocacy for a decade, the Library, OCLC and the German National Library agreed in 2003 to test the concept of a Virtual International Authority File, which will provide access to millions of name authorities produced by libraries according to their own rules and in the languages of their choice. This file will provide World Wide Web access to approximately 2 million records for personal names from the German library and more than 3.8 million personal-name records from the Library of Congress. The system will link records for the same personal name.
The Mann Award includes a donation of $2,000 from OCLC Online Computer Library Center to be given to the recipient's choice of library schools. Tillett has decided to split the donation between the University of Hawaii, where she earned her master's degree in library science in 1970, and the University of California at Los Angeles, where she earned her doctorate in 1987.
Sally McCallum Receives Melvil Dewey Award
Chair of the Melvil Dewey Award Jury Winston Tabb said that McCallum, as recipient of the Dewey Award, is recognized for a career devoted "to the continual development of library standards that have resulted in significant, ongoing improvements to global bibliographic control and access to information. She has also been an effective leader within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions community, playing a major role in the recent changes that are making the federation a more open and inclusive organization." Tabb, who retired from the Library of Congress as associate librarian for Library Services, is now dean of the libraries and director of the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University.
McCallum began her library career at the Library of Congress' Network Development Office in August 1976, after earning a master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago. From the beginning of her career, she was actively involved in the development of the MARC formats and worked to promote the interoperability of MARC to ensure that the formats would be relevant in a networked environment. She was named the assistant to the director for processing systems, networks and automation planning in 1980, assisting in the management of the Automation Planning and Development Office, Catalog Management and Catalog Publication divisions, Cataloging Distribution Service and Serial Record Division, as well as the Network Development Office. In June 1984 she was named chief of the newly established NDMSO.
As chief of NDMSO, McCallum oversaw the advancement of the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol from a U.S. standard to an international standard and ensured that the Library of Congress contributed to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. She chairs the MARC Harmonization Technical Committee, which carries out the technical support for the harmonization of USMARC and CANMARC into the MARC 21 formats and leads the continuing development of metadata standards including MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) and the Encoded Archival Definition (EAD). Over the past several years, she has led an expansion of NDMSO's responsibilities to encompass planning and technical review for digital projects within Library Services.
McCallum became active in national and international collaborations early in her career. She was involved in early work by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions on international authority control and participated in the American National Standards Institute's Committee Z39 and collaborations led by the former National Bureau of Standards for defining character sets. She also represented the Library of Congress in various projects sponsored by the International Standards Organisation and UNESCO, the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Most recently, she became chair of the Networked Reference Services Committee of the National Information Standards Organization.
In IFLA McCallum moved from technical working groups to a leadership role in the governance of the organization, serving on the former Professional Board for many years and chairing the board from 1995 through 1997. In the 1990s she was instrumental in the revision of IFLA's Statutes and Rules of Procedure to open up the governance of IFLA to wider participation, especially by members in developing countries. McCallum was elected to the new Governing Board in the first elections under the revised Statutes in 2001. Most recently, she became chair of the Networked Reference Services Committee of the National Information Standards Organization.
McCallum has received numerous accolades throughout her career. In 1981 she received the Esther J. Piercy Award given by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), an ALA division, to a librarian with not more than 10 years of professional experience who has shown outstanding promise for continuing contribution and leadership in the area of technical services. In 2002 she received the LITA/Gaylord Award for Achievement in Library and Information Technology for outstanding achievement in the creative use of information technology for improving or enhancing library services.
The Dewey Medal and Citation are donated by OCLC/Forest Press Inc., to an individual or group for recent creative professional achievement in library management, training, cataloging and classification and the tools and techniques of librarianship. Other Library of Congress employees who have been awarded the medal in recent years are Tabb (1998) and David A. Smith, retired chief of the Decimal Classification Division (2003).
