Deadline for Submissions for the Next Samuel Swett Green Award is 7/25

[Steve Coffman]

Friends, colleagues and fellow librarians. 

Just a reminder to the growing number of virtual reference librarians
around the world, that the deadline for the next LSSI / Samuel Swett
Green Award for Exemplary Virtual Reference Service is coming right up.
Transcripts must be submitted by July 25th at 12:00 Midnight US Pacific
Time to be considered for the August Award.  

Tamsin Bolton of the University of Winnipeg is the winner of June's
award, and you can see her transcript at
http://vrhome.virtualreference.net/greenaward.htm

For those of you who may be new to the field, or who have short
memories,  LSSI established the Samuel Swett Green Award to recognize
the efforts of individual librarians who have provided exemplary virtual
reference service and to help foster and encourage the development of
the highest standards of quality in live online reference.

The Award is for $500 US, and is named in honor of Samuel Swett Green,
the founder of reference services in the United States.  It is presented
every two months to the librarian who submits the best virtual reference
transcript for that period.   

Transcripts are judged by panel of distinguished practitioners and
researchers including:  Marie Radford (Pratt Institute), Marianne Sweet
(SJRLC), James Rettig (University of Richmond), Tracy Strobel
(Clevenet), Ilene Rockman(Editor, Reference Services Review), Barbara
Quint (Editor, Searcher Magazine), Amy VanScoy (NCSU) and Steve Coffman
(LSSI).  John Richardson, LSSI's Presidential Scholar, will chair this
distinguished panel and will maintain the single blind review status of
the award.

In selecting the best electronic transcript of a chat or live and real
time
transaction (but not an email transaction), the panel considers relevant
quality factors such as accuracy of the answer, user as well as
librarian
satisfaction, and utility of the answer to the user.  Submitters should
review the panel's checklist at http://purl.org/net/checklist and
then submit their transcript to johnr at lssi.com with "LSSI Green" in the
subject heading or enter online using our electronic submission form at 
http://vrhome.virtualreference.net/greenaward.htm.  No matter which
method you choose, please be sure to include all information requested
in the checklist and to remove all personal information (both the
patron's and the librarian's) from your transcript before you submit it.


Candidates may send only one transcript per award period.  The
competition is open to all reference staff using any 'live' virtual
reference software
that can produce an electronic transcript; in other words, it is not
just for librarians using LSSI Virtual Reference software.  

So hurry up and get those transcripts in, judging by the submissions
we've received so far, it looks like the August Award is going to be
very competitive and if you given some great virtual reference, we
encourage you to submit your work.

Sincerely, 


Steve Coffman
On behalf of everybody on the Samuel Swett Green Award Team.