Adjunct Professor Clifford Lynch has been awarded the annual Award of Merit by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a leading scholarly society for information professionals.
Clifford Lynch
Cliff thinks quietly and deeply about the big issues of information
science and then explains them lucidly and eloquently....
There are few, if any, others who have done so much to make the more
arcane aspects of so many different areas of information science
comprehensible and approachable to a wide audience.
The ASIS&T Award of Merit is the society's highest honor, bestowed annually to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to the field of information science, including the expression of new ideas, the creation of new devices, the development of better techniques and outstanding service to the profession of information science.
The award was presented on October 28, 2008, as part of the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The awards jury praised Lynch as "a prodigious analyst and writer, ... an accessible colleague, teacher, and mentor."
Clifford Lynch is the director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and an adjunct professor at the School of Information. Prior to joining CNI in 1997, Lynch spent eighteen years at the University of California Office of the President, the last ten as director of Library Automation. Lynch is a past president of ASIS&T and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Information Standards Organization.
Lynch has led the I School's Friday afternoon Information Access Seminar for the past thirty-five consecutive semesters, along with his colleagues Michael Buckland and (since 2004) Ray Larson.