Congratulations to the 2011 Innovation Award Winner, Roberto Sarmiento!

Roberto Sarmiento, of the Northwestern University Transportation Library, is the division’s first recipient of the Innovation Award. He wrote the paper Gifts management for transportation libraries: Observations and recommendations by Roberto A. Sarmiento is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License.

Award Objective

This award is intended to recognize a Division member or members for an innovative idea, tool, or solution that benefits the transportation information community.

Committee

The Division’s Awards Committee will be responsible for managing the awards process for the Division’s Professional Achievement and Innovation Awards.

Submission Requirements

• Award submissions must be in the form of a paper.
• The paper should outline or describe an innovative project, technique, tool, or practical solution that has improved or has the potential to improve access, dissemination, or retrieval of transportation information.
• Submitted papers should be no longer than 5 pages and must include an executive summary.
• Papers must be submitted electronically.
• Papers shall be addressed to the Committee chair; he/she will then be responsible for sharing them with the rest of the Committee.
• Late submissions will not be accepted.
• Applicants must be SLA Transportation Division members in good standing at the time of submission and award presentation.
• If a paper is written by multiple individuals, at least one of the authors must be a Division member at the time of the award submission and presentation.
• Only one paper per applicant will be accepted in any given year.

Evaluation Criteria

• The committee will verify that all applicants are Division members in good standing before evaluating the submissions.
• All submissions will be judged against each other, based on the following desired qualities presented in the paper:
  • Innovation value
  • Benefits to the community
  • Practicality
  • Uniqueness
  • Readability
• The Committee shall not contact authors, except to clarify problems regarding the delivery of submitted papers.
• The Committee will attempt to verify the accuracy and veracity of winning paper before making award. Committee must be reasonably certain that the winning paper is indeed original, accurate, etc.
• A winning paper may be selected from among all submissions.
• The Committee may also recognize papers that deserve additional recognition, such as formal publication.
• Non-winning paper(s) may be resubmitted in following year(s).
• Previous winners are eligible to resubmit new papers.
• Neither the SLA Transportation Division nor the Awards Committee is responsible for the winning paper content.  Nor do papers represent the views of the Division or SLA.

Selected Paper(s)

• The winning paper shall be presented at the GTRIC Roundtable during the SLA Annual Conference.
• The winning paper will be published on the Division’s website following the Annual Conference.  Author(s) will need to provide written consent to allow the Division to publish the paper.
• The Committee may choose to select for publication submitted paper(s) deemed to have a high information value and worthy of sharing with the membership.  The abstracts of these papers may be published on the Division’s website after the Annual Conference.  These papers may be fully published on the Division’s website later.  Author(s) will need to provide written consent to allow the Division to publish these papers with the understanding that the paper cannot be resubmitted.
• Non-selected papers will be disposed of after the award presentation.

Award Presentation

• The author(s) of the winning paper will receive a $1,000 cash award.  If the winning author is unable or unwilling to accept cash, alternative arrangements may be explored. These alternatives could include reimbursement for Conference travel expenses, pre-paid credit cards, etc.
• The award will be presented at the Annual Business Meeting & Awards Luncheon during the SLA Annual Conference and also published on the Division’s web site.
• The winner is expected to be present to accept the award at the Transportation Division Annual Business Meeting.
• If a paper is written by more than one individual, the distribution of the $1,000 award is determined by the authors, not by the Awards Committee.
• The Transportation Division reserves the right to not award the prize if the Awards Committee or the Executive Committee is of the opinion that none of the submissions are worthy of the award.