Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) alumna Kristen Blake G’07 was awarded the Blackwell’s Scholarship Award for 2010 for the article, “Creating Organization Name Authority within an Electronic Resources Management System,” which she co-authored with colleague Jacquie Samples. The article was published in Library Resources & Technical Services, volume 53, issue 2, April 2009, pages 94-107.
The Blackwell Scholarship award is presented to the author of the year’s outstanding monograph or article in the field of acquisitions, collection development, and related areas of resources development in libraries. Blake and Samples’ article analyzes the need for name authority control within E-Matrix, an electronic resources management (ERM) system used at North Carolina State University. They reviewed practices throughout the academic library and vendor communities, strategies for data evaluation, and best practices to overcome challenges during implementation. Their findings confirmed that imposing name authority control on the organization name data within an ERM leads more accurate and cleaner data.
The Blackwell Scholarship donates $2,000 to the U.S. or Canadian library school of the winning author’s choice. Blake and Samples decided to split the scholarship between their two alma maters; the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) and the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. The award was presented on June 27 at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
The Blackwell’s Scholarship Award is presented by The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), a national organization for information experts who develop the collection and technical services used in creating, collecting, organizing, delivering, and preserving information in digital and print formats.
Blake is currently an electronic resources librarian at North Carolina State University. Her interests include workflow and communication between library developments that handle serials and electronic resources. Blake specializes in electronic resources, serials, link resolvers, and electronic resources management (ERM) systems. In 2007 Blake was awarded a fellowship at North Carolina State University Libraries.