Acceptance Remarks

I am honored to receive the Hugh Durbin Leadership Award. This award is very special to me because I worked with Hugh for five years. During that time his vision of library automation became my vision, and my goal has been to see library automation implemented in the Columbus Public Schools. I would like to thank Mary Nemeth for nominating me and writing the 3 LSTA grants. The services provided by MEC have been outstanding.

I have been the project manager for library automation for Columbus Public Schools for three years. During that time we have automated 144 buildings.

The first year we automated four middle schools, decided to go with Sirsi and merged our OCLC database with records from two vendors. Mr. Durbin laid the ground work for automation back in 1980 by purchasing our cataloging and card production from OCLC.

The second year we automated the rest of the middle and high schools, career centers, district libraries and centralized cataloging. A laptop training room was set up at MEC which we needed because Mary Nemeth and Ilene King trained over 80 people in two months.

This past year we brought up the elementary buildings. Dave Ambrose trained over 100 people this past winter--I think we both felt like we lived at MEC. In the spring, Mary and Ilene trained the year one and year two schools on the inventory module. I really appreciate every ones contributions to the project.

As project manager, I coordinate the efforts of the various departments in the Columbus Public Schools, conduct weekly meetings and work closely with Mary. I am the first line of support when librarians need help.

In closing, I see the next few years as a continuation of this project. Having access to all library resources in Ohio increases student achievement and develops life long learners. Library automation in Columbus has been, for me, a dream come true, a dream begun by Hugh Durbin and made possible by INFOhio.

Thank you.