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May 18, 2009

ULM faculty wins second award for dissertation work on Freedom Libraries

A University of Louisiana at Monroe faculty member won the Phyllis Dain Library History Award for her dissertation on the Mississippi Freedom Libraries.

Assistant professor Karen J. Cook, ULM's Government Documents Librarian, will receive the award during a meeting of the American Library Association held at Chicago in July.

The full title of her dissertation is "Freedom Libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project: A History." Dissertations completed and accepted during the preceding two academic years are eligible for the award.

Her professional peers, which include other library historians in the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association, chose Cook as award recipient.

The award recognizes outstanding dissertations in the general area of library history and is given to a "library historian widely known as a supportive advisor and mentor as well as a rigorous scholar and thinker."

The association gives the biennial award, along with a certificate and $500, for work that embodies original research on a significant topic relating to the history of books, libraries, librarianship or information science.

The committee cited Cook's work as being "a first rate dissertation that handles a complex subject with exemplary skill in its use of massive quantities of archival materials," while Chairman Andrew Wertheimer stated,"I hope that the work can be published as a book, I think it is of such general interest."

Earlier this year, Cook was awarded "The University of Alabama Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2008-2009," for her dissertation.

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