ALIAWest is delighted to announce Jessica Shortis as the 2007 winner for the prestigious F A Sharr Medal presented on the 9th of July. Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director, presented Jessica with the Medal at a function held at the Curtin University Graduate School of Business in Perth.
The F A Sharr Medal is awarded to the graduand who has just completed their final year of a library and information degree or diploma, or is in their first year of employment and exhibits the most potential and is most likely to have a positive impact on their preferred stream of the library profession.
The Medal is named after Francis Aubie Sharr, State Librarian in Western Australia from 1953 to 1976, in recognition of his contribution to libraries and librarianship in Western Australia and to the profession overall.
Whilst studying towards her Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies at Curtin University, Jessica worked at the Subiaco Library as a library officer. After completing her practicum at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, University of Western Australia, and graduating as a qualified librarian, she was offered an ongoing full-time position at the UWA Law Library. Jessica was nominated for the award by two of her supervisors from the University of Western Australia.
During her interview, Jessica demonstrated a strong understanding of issues facing the library profession and the environment in which our industry operates. She gave an impressive presentation to guests on using relevant online technologies to better serve the typical generation Y user of academic libraries. Jessica has also completed degrees in Communications at Murdoch University and Advertising at Edith Cowan University and hopes to capitalise on this experience to raise the public profile of library and information services.
Due to the exceptional quality of the candidates applying for the F A Sharr Medal this year, the ALIAWest Committee decided that in addition to awarding the Medal they would make two highly commended awards to Naomi Gorrie and Karen Rickman.
The special guest speaker for the night was Liz Byrski who took the time to discuss the development of her career as a writer and broadcaster over the past 40 years. She is the author of eleven non-fiction books and three popular novels. Liz loves to support library professionals because they are people who are like her - lovers of books.
Jessica's presentation is available to be viewed at http://www.alia.org.au/awards/merit/sharr.medal/Jessica.Shortis.ppt
It is well worth a look!
