DeJohn Wins President's Award for Outstanding Service
Bill DeJohn, director of the MINITEX Library Information Network, has been named one of 12 recipients of the 2007 President's Award for Outstanding Service by University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks.
The University of Minnesota President's Award for Outstanding Service was established in 1997 to recognize faculty and staff who have provided exceptional service to the University. This award is presented each year to honor active or retired faculty or staff members who have demonstrated an unusual commitment to the University community. Ten to fifteen faculty and staff receive the award each year.
Since 1984, DeJohn has been director of MINITEX Library Information Network, a publicly supported network of academic, public, state government, and special libraries working cooperatively to improve library service for their users. Funded by the Minnesota Legislature, MINITEX is a program of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education and the University of Minnesota. Its programs are coordinated by MINITEX staff located at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Libraries.
MINITEX enables libraries in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota to share materials, including collections and electronic resources, bibliographic records, and reference services. Each year, MINITEX fills more than a quarter-million requests from library users throughout the region for library material and transports over 800,000 items to meet these requests. The program serves over 2,200 individual libraries. MINITEX is the OCLC Regional Service Provider for libraries in Minnesota and the Dakotas and is a member of NISO, CNI, ICOLC, and Project COUNTER.
Due to MINITEX’s services, the University of Minnesota Libraries have consistently ranked as the top lending library within the 114-member Association of Research Libraries for volume of loans external to the University.
As director, DeJohn has significantly expanded MINITEX’s mission from that of the original pilot project, which began in 1969. He initiated a cooperative purchasing and group discount program for Minnesota libraries, saving libraries millions of dollars and allowing them access to collection resources that far surpass what any one library could achieve on its own.
Additionally, DeJohn helped secure legislative funding to create ELM, the Electronic Library of Minnesota, a service that allows all Minnesota citizens to access licensed content (newspapers, journal articles, and the like) via the web. Also funded in part by the Minnesota Department of Education, ELM provides users with free access to more than 17,000 periodicals, 340 newspapers, and core electronic reference services. In 2006, ELM users conducted over 10 million searches.
Under DeJohn’s leadership, MINITEX has built a strong program of training sessions, workshops and conferences on timely issues. Recent conference topics have included interoperability among library systems, the change facing of reference services, and the future of resource sharing and interlibrary loan.
“I was surprised and delighted with the news that I was one of the recipients of the 2007 President’s Award for Outstanding Service,” DeJohn said. “It is satisfying to be a part of an outward-looking institution like the University of Minnesota, one that shares its library collections with all the residents of Minnesota. I couldn’t provide the level of service recognized by this Award without a great staff and the ongoing support of the University Libraries.”
In nominating DeJohn for the President’s Award, Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian at the University of Minnesota, said, “In his more than 20 years here, Bill has built a tremendous network of services for library users in the region. The outcome of that selfless effort is experienced every day, whether it is a high school student in outstate Minnesota having an article for a term paper delivered to her computer, or a faculty member at a Minnesota private college getting a monograph not available in his library, or a librarian in Minneapolis who needs training about copyright law. MINITEX is there for them, and Bill has ensured that the service is timely, cost-effective, and responsive to user needs. He is a true citizen of the state.”