LAUC-LA 1996 Librarian of the Year Award

Richard Chabran

LAUC-LA SPRING MEMBERSHIP MEETING

May 9, 1996

It is with great pleasure that LAUC-LA honors Richard Chabran, Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center Library, with its 1996 Librarian of the Year award. Richard personifies those qualities in a librarian that this award wishes to recognize: creativity, innovation, leadership and scholarship. The specific contribution we wish to recognize is Richard's creation and development of Chicano/LatinoNet (http://latino.sscnet.ucla.edu) widely recognized as the most important World Wide Web resource on Chicanos and Latinos in the United States and a model for other Web sites.

Richard's vision for CLNet reaches far beyond the UCLA community and effectively meets the intellectual, cultural and information needs of the Latino community at large. CLNet was entirely developed with grant funding secured by Richard's successful fund writing proposals. The effort Richard has invested into creating CLNet goes far beyond the day-to-day work of UCLA librarians. CLNet represents the results of imagination and perseverance in a new arena.

One colleague of Richard's has identified him as "...an electronic populist who believes these services should be available as widely as possible..." Another colleague attested "...it would be a mistake to consider Richard primarily as an excellent 'Chicano' librarian but rather. . .as an outstanding professional librarian who has adopted the field of Chicano Studies as the area he wanted to promote and develop." Still another wrote "With unflagging energy Richard read the books and the manuals, he talked to programmers and technicians, and he taught himself what he needed to know to establish and develop CLNet."

For his dedication to excellence and commitment to providing access to scholarly resources to the University and to the community at large, Richard is richly deserving of being recognized as the 1996 LAUC-LA Librarian of the Year.

The 1995-1996 LAUC-LA Committee on Distinguished Librarian

Professor Albert Boime - Art History

Debe Costa -College Library

Rita Costello - Rosenfeld Library

Ray Soto -Bibliographers Group

Suzanne Shellaby - University Archives