January 29, 2014

Lafayette’s Skillman Library Wins National Award

Lafayette College’s Skillman Library has received the prestigious 2014 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The national award highlights the library’s commitment to digital scholarship, its pioneering of new models for collaborative content acquisition, and the impact of its Information Literacy and Special Collections programs on student learning.

“Lafayette College seeks to be a model for other colleges and has been in the forefront on getting grants and experimenting with digital scholarship in the liberal arts setting,” says Joyce Ogburn, chair of the 2014 Excellence in Academic Libraries Committee.

Sponsored by the Association of College & Research Libraries and YBP Library Services, the award recognizes the staff of a college, university, and community college library for programs that deliver exemplary services and resources to further the educational mission of the institution. Lafayette was the winner in the College category and will receive $3,000 and a plaque, which will be presented at a future award ceremony on campus.

“We are greatly honored to be selected by our peers to receive this award, which recognizes not only our library’s innovative work on behalf of Lafayette College but also our strategic collaboration with other colleges and universities,” says Neil McElroy, dean of libraries. “While the award highlights our programmatic initiatives and technological innovations, we are mindful that our success has been enabled by those relationships of trust and reciprocity that we’ve been privileged to build with the Lafayette community and colleagues at other institutions over many years. We are deeply pleased and grateful.”

The library previously received the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Award for Interior Architecture, AIA/ALA Library Building Award, and the Boston Society of Architects’ Honor Award for Design Excellence and Higher Education Facilities Design Award.