2020 ASIS&T Award Winners
AWARD OF MERIT
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Professor Diane H. Sonnenwald, Emerita Professor and Emerita Head of School of the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University College Dublin is the 2020 recipient of the ASIS&T Award of Merit, the highest honor presented by the Association. The award’s purpose is to recognize an individual who has made particularly noteworthy and sustained contributions to the information science field. The award is based on 3 criteria: impact on theory, scholarship, and practice; exemplary leadership and sustained involvement; and education and mentoring.
Professor Sonnenwald’s research has contributed to our understanding of information seeking, information transfer and collaboration. She championed the idea of an individual’s “information horizon,” understanding of how people’s perceived information options construct their information behavior. This line of research highlights an important concept that has been influential in information behavior research, adds to information science theory, and merits continuing attention. As editor of and contributor to the influential book Theory Development in the Information Sciences, she has made the field considerably more accessible to doctoral students.
ASIS&T BEST INFORMATION SCIENCE BOOK AWARD
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Childwritten by Morgan Ames of the University of California, Berkeley and published by MIT Press is the recipient of the ASIS&T Best Information Science Book Award for 2020. The award’s purpose is to recognize the outstanding book in information science published during the preceding calendar year. The award is given to the author(s) whose book is judged to have made the most outstanding contribution in the field of information science during the year.
In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames chronicles the life and legacy of the One Laptop per Child project and explains why—despite its failures—the same utopian visions that inspired OLPC still motivate other projects trying to use technology to “disrupt” education and development. Announced in 2005 by MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child promised to transform the lives of children across the Global South with a small, sturdy, and cheap laptop computer, powered by a hand crank. In reality, the project fell short in many ways—starting with the hand crank, which never materialized. Yet the project remained charismatic to many who were captivated by its claims of access to educational opportunities previously out of reach.
ASIS&T DOCTORAL DISSERTATION PROPOSAL SCHOLARSHIP
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Saguna Shankar of the University of British Columbia is the 2020 recipient of the ASIS&T Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Scholarship Award for her dissertation proposal titled, “Caring for Information Practices: An Inquiry into Visions of Data, Digital Technologies, and Migration.” The award’s purpose is to foster research in information science by encouraging and assisting doctoral students in the field with their dissertation research.
The Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Scholarship was established in 1981. Candidates are evaluated on the following criteria: Potential significance of research to the field of information science; Validity of methodology and proposed methods of analysis; originality and creativity; clarity and completeness of the proposal; presentation of a convincing plan for completion in a reasonable amount of time; and evidence of a continuing interest in scholarship, such as, a previous publication record.
ASIS&T OUTSTANDING TEACHER AWARD
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Jeonghyun “Annie” Kim, PhD of the University of North Texas is the 2020 recipient of the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award. The award’s purpose is to recognize the unique teaching contribution of an individual as a teacher of information science.
Professor Kim was selected as the winner from among a pool of outstanding candidates who were judged based on these criteria: evidence of sustained and unique contributions to teaching information science; impact on students, colleagues, and institutions; innovative and imaginative teaching materials and methods; professional association activities related to teaching excellence; research activities related to teaching excellence; and previous teaching awards.
ASIS&T RESEARCH IN INFORMATION SCIENCE AWARD
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Professor Pertti Vakkari is the 2020 recipient of the ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award. The award’s purpose is to recognize an individual or individuals for an outstanding research contribution in the field of information science. The award is for a systematic “program of research” in a single area that has significant impact in the field at a level beyond a single study, but not at the level of a lifetime’s work.
Professor Vakkari was selected as the winner from among a pool of outstanding candidates who were judged based on the following criteria: Intellectual Merit (intellectual quality of the contribution); Broader Impact (impacts of the contribution to theory, practice and society); Coherence of the Contribution (degree to which the contribution forms a coherent whole); Methodological Innovation (contributions to methodology, including the development and evaluation of software, corpora, and other research tools); and Transformation and Transcendence of the Information Field (degree to which the contribution helps to shape and reshape the information field and connects the information field with related research areas).
JASIS&T BEST PAPER AWARD
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Opinion convergence versus polarization: examining opinion distributions in online word‐of‐mouth written by Drs. Jianxiong Huang, Wai Fong Boh, and Kim Huat Goh of Nanjing University, published in Volume 70, Issue 11 of the Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology (JASIST) is the recipient of the ASIS&T Best JASIST Paper Award for 20. The award’s purpose is to recognize the best refereed paper published in the volume year of JASIST preceding the ASIS&T annual meeting. JASIST is published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The article was selected as the winner from among a pool of outstanding submissions that were judged based on these criteria: contribution; professional merit; and presentation quality.
JAMES M. CRETSOS AWARD FOR LEADERSHIP
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Aylin Ilhan, a doctoral student in the Department of Information Science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf is a 2020 recipient of the ASIS&T Cretsos Leadership Award. The award’s purpose is to recognize a new ASIS&T member who has demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities in professional ASIS&T activities.
The award is named in honor of James M. Cretsos, long-time member and leader in ASIS&T. Cretsos served as President of ASIS&T in 1997 and was also an active leader and contributor to the Southern Ohio Chapter, SIG-CON, SIG-MED, and the Awards & Honors Committee. He is perhaps best remembered for the role he played in mentoring emerging leaders in the field of information science. Candidates are assessed based on the following four criteria: participation in ASIS&T annual meeting as organizer, moderator, speaker, discussant, etc.; participation in programs and activities of SIGs, chapters and/or student chapters; services on ASIS&T committees; and recruitment of new ASIS&T members and/or retention of existing members.
PROQUEST DOCTORAL DISSERTATION AWARD
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Dr. Hussein Haruna of the University of Hong Kong is the 2020 recipient of the ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award from ASIS&T for his dissertation titled “Improving Sexual Health Education for Adolescent Students Using Game-Based Learning and Gamification.” The award’s purpose is to recognize outstanding recent doctoral candidates whose research contributes significantly to an understanding of some aspect of information science. The award is intended to encourage participation of new PhDs in the activities of a professional association by providing a forum for the presentation of their research and assisting them with some travel support.
Haruna was selected as the winner from among a pool of outstanding candidates who were judged based on these criteria: Importance of the topic to theory development and/or practical applications in information science; soundness of methodology; organization and clarity of the presentation; and quality of data (when applicable).
WATSON DAVIS AWARD FOR SERVICE
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Dr. Nadia Caidi of the University of Toronto is the 2020 recipient of the Watson Davis Award for Service. The award’s purpose is to recognize an individual member of the Association who has shown continuous dedicated leadership in and service to ASIS&T and made substantial and lasting contributions to ASIS&T governance, chapters, SIGs, committees, and publications. Candidates are assessed based on 3 criteria: dedicated service to ASIS&T as evidenced by the amount and length of participation in, leadership of, and support to ASIS&T programs, chapters, SIGs, committees, publications, etc.; sustained, active involvement in ASIS&T; and engagement in activities that create a meaningful impact on ASIS&T communities, such as in high attendance numbers for events, attracting significant news coverage of a publication or event, attraction of new members, and/or positive financial impact for the Association, SIG or Chapter.
Nadia Caidi is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool). She joined the Association for Information Science & Technology in 1995 as a student, and remained actively involved in it, eventually becoming the President of the Association in 2016. Dr. Caidi was also the 2011 President of the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS). Her research and scholarship have focused on novel conceptualizations in our understanding of human information behavior, and on expanding the meaning and values of diversity and inclusion in LIS education and practice