Pope, Konrad selected Librarians of the Year

Nolan Pope and Lee Konrad have been named the 1998 Librarians of the Year by their peers in the UW–Madison Librarians’ Assembly.

The annual awards, created in 1989, recognize outstanding contributions to campus library services by two unclassified staff members of the General Library System. The first is awarded to an individual who has worked for the system more than 10 years; the second recognizes service of less than 10 years.

Pope was cited for “providing vision and guidance to establish the UW- Madison library system as a leader in library automation among academic institutions.”

The associate director of the General Library System for Automation, Pope joined the GLS staff in 1985. He has overseen the development of MadCat (formerly NLS), the networking of PCs and CD-ROM resources, the use of a Web-based front end to library resources, the integration of CIC resources, and the new Virtual Electronic Library (WebZ).

Pope began his professional library career with the University of Florida library system in the late 1970s, where he worked in circulation and reference. He soon became the head of systems and computer-based operations there.

At UW–Madison, Pope has immersed himself in a wide range of responsibilities within the library, the campus, UW System, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and national arenas. He served as special assistant for library automation under the Office of Academic Affairs for UW System in 1991- 92. He has also been on the National Information Standards Organization board of directors since 1992 and has chaired the Standards Development Committee during that time. He has served as the Standards Committee chair for the American Society for Information Science; as chair of the CIC Library Automation Directors Group; and serves on the CIC Virtual Electronic Library (VEL) Steering Committee.

The Chinese University Development Project invited Pope to lecture and consult in a management seminar on library automation. He was a Mortenson Foundation Fellow, traveling to Moscow to consult on automation with the Library for Foreign Literature. He also spent time planning and consulting in Kiev, Ukraine.

Lee Konrad, director of the College Library Computer and Media Center, joined the GLS staff in 1993. Konrad earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in library science from the UW–Madison. Before going to College Library, he held positions at Steenbock and Law libraries.

Konrad was instrumental, along with Library User Education Coordinator Abigail Loomis, in developing CLUE (the computer-assisted library user education program) that introduces undergraduates to the UW library system. He was among the first library staff to teach users about using the Internet.

He has published several articles in library journals since 1992, one of which was selected among the “top 20 [library] instruction articles” for 1996 by the American Library Association.

Konrad was commended for “always being on the forefront in understanding and applying technology to librarianship and instruction.”