You could have knocked me over with a feather on Friday when I read the e-mail notifying me that I will be receiving the 2013 AASL Distinguished Service Award.  The award will be presented during the AASL Awards Luncheon at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago on July 1.  This award is both flattering and humbling, having been won previously by many “giants” in the field whose work I admire, whose collegiality with peers and mentoring of students I strive to emulate, and whose last names suffice:  Haycock, Woolls, Kuhlthau, Loertscher, and Eisenberg—just to name a few.

I am also grateful to:

·     early winner, Mary Gaver of Rutgers University, whose research decades ago inspired the first “Colorado study”,

·     former Colorado State Librarian Nancy Bolt, for her supportive and empowering leadership,

·     my RSL Research Group and Library Research Service collaborators–Marcia Rodney, Bill Schwarz, Nicolle Steffen, Briana Hovendick Francis, and Linda Hofschire–with whom I share this award, and finally,

·     my friend, colleague, and nominator, Christie M. Koontz of Florida State University, and her “collaborators” (Kit Keller–a longtime colleague when she was at the NE Library Commission as well as a sometime RSL colleague–and Rochelle Logan of Douglas County (CO) Libraries, among others, I’m told).

Now I ask you:  how many people do you know who would join an ALA division just to nominate you for an award?