ABC-CLIO Online History Award

ABC-CLIO Online History Award is offered every other year beginning in 2005. It consists of $3,000 donated by ABC-CLIO, a publisher of reference materials in the field of history, and a citation recognizing a person or a group of people producing (1) a freely available online historical collection, or (2) an online tool tailored for the purpose of finding historical materials, or (3) an online teaching aid stimulating creative historical scholarship. It is administered by the History Section of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). Deadline for receiving submissions is December 15.

Nominee

The nominee(s) must be employed by a library or educational institution during the year prior to nomination for the award; institutions do not qualify. There is no restriction on the nominating individual.

Eligible Projects

The award seeks to encourage the development of freely available, sustainable online history resources by singling out innovative projects and the individuals who created them. Projects shall have been completed (or, in the case of a regularly updated database, well established) in the two years prior to nomination and serve as a model for broader emulation. Examples can include:

• Primary sources digitized from the collections of more than one repository
• Guides to research on an historical subject that span multiple formats and repositories
• Databases incorporating citations, annotations, text, multimedia, and/or hyperlinks
• Presentations of an historical theme stimulating new approaches to its teaching

Submissions

Candidates may nominate themselves or someone else. Nominations should be no more than three pages in length, and must be submitted via e-mail attachment to the chair of the committee noted below. Please include:

• The name and contact information of the nominator
• The title and URL of the resource
• The name, title, and place of employment of its creator
• The date of the project’s initiation and completion
• The material’s chronological, geographical, and thematic parameters
• Some measurement of the quantity of information presented in the resource
• A statement about what is innovative and unique in the resource

The selection committee will be made up of three members appointed by the History Section Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect. At least one member should be a reference librarian and at least one should be a history selector.

Letters of nomination can be sent to the chair of the committee via information obtained using this link.

Past Recipients

2005 —  Oregon Historical Society
2006 — None chosen
2007 — Faith Jones