Emeritus Professor Michael Buckland has been named the 2012 recipient of the annual Award of Merit, the highest honor of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a leading scholarly society for information professionals.
Buckland is the co-director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative and co-principal investigator of several research projects on information retrieval, metadata, controlled vocabularies, translingual search, and cross-database search systems. His interests include library services, information retrieval, cultural heritages, and the history of information science.
The award citation notes that “his work has had lasting influence due to its historical and conceptual richness, its acknowledgement of real needs and real problems, and its willingness to reconcile tradition with new thought and practice.” It also praises Buckland as “generous in sharing his expertise and providing encourage to more junior scholars and students.”
Buckland has served on the faculty of the School of Information since 1976 and was the dean of the school from 1976 to 1984; during his deanship, he oversaw the renaming of the school from the School of Librarianship to the School of Library and Information Studies. From 1983 to 1987, he served as the assistant vice president for library plans and policies for the nine-campus University of California system.
Buckland has led the I School’s Friday afternoon Information Access Seminar for the past forty-three consecutive semesters, along with his colleagues Ray Larson and Clifford Lynch (who himself received the ASIS&T Award of Merit in 2008). Buckland is the author of Library Services in Theory and Context, Information and Information Systems, Redesigning Library Services, and Emanuel Goldberg and his Knowledge Machine.
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.
Buckland is the fourth I School professor to win the ASIS&T Award of Merit, following professor Charles P. Bourne in 1965, late professor and dean Patrick Wilson in 2001, and adjunct professor Clifford Lynch in 2008. In addition, two I School alumni have received the award: Howard White (Ph.D. ’67) in 2004 and Marcia Bates (M.L.S. ’67, Ph.D. ’72) in 2005.
The award is scheduled to be presented tomorrow, October 30, at an awards luncheon during the ASIS&T Annual Conference.
Official ASIS&T Award Citation
Michael K. Buckland, Professor Emeritus in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, is the winner of the 2012 Award of Merit from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Professor Buckland is internationally recognized for his many publications encompassing topics in library services, history of information science, information retrieval, classification, metadata, and concepts and theories in information science. Among his most notable articles are “Information as Thing” and “What Is a Document?”, both published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science.
Professor Buckland has been an active member and leader of the American Society for Information Science and Technology since 1975, serving as president in 1998 and winner of the Watson Davis Award in 2005. The Award of Merit recognizes his exemplary career as information scientist, educator, mentor, dean, and leader of professional societies.
His work has had lasting influence due to its historical and conceptual richness, its acknowledgement of real needs and real problems, and its willingness to reconcile tradition with new thought and practice. His project-based research seeks to bring information to people in new, qualitatively rich ways, by rethinking traditional forms and practices through new digital tools. Michael is generous in sharing his expertise and providing encourage to more junior scholars and students.
In this 75th anniversary year as ASIS&T reflects on its history and looks to the future, it is especially fitting that we recognize Michael K. Buckland with the Award of Merit.
