2005 Achievement Award Winner

The PAM Achievement Award is reserved for those recipients whose professional work is marked by distinction and dedication to librarianship in astronomy, mathematics and/or physics. The purpose of the award is to recognize those Division members who have made outstanding contributions to the Division.

The winner of this year's Achievement Award has served the division in her own special and accomplished style. From her early involvement as Hospitality chair, she moved on to the position of Treasurer where she instituted updated banking and budgeting practices. Through her terms in the demanding positions of Chair-elect and Division Chair she showed an unwavering commitment to the mission of PAM. She has also diligently represented PAM in her work with the national organization, serving on the planning committee for the successful SLA Conference in Nashville.

The winner has served the library profession through the implementation, at the national SLA conferences, of a successful continuing education course on Physical Science Reference for Non-scientists, through the publication of an article on mathematical indexes that helped librarians making difficult collection decisions, and by her contributions to the Guide to Information Sources in the Physical Sciences. The crowning achievement of her scholarly works to date is the publication of Using the Mathematics Literature, which she conceived, produced, edited, compiled, and steered to press.

In addition to this superb record of service to the division and her profession, this year's winner tirelessly represented the division's interests in her position as Chair of the 2004-2005 Governing Documents Task Force. As such, she tracked SLA's reorganization efforts and helped to guide the subsequent revision of the PAM Division Governing Document and the PAM Division Practices Manual. In the words of one fellow PAM member:

At the opening PAM Wide Roundtable at the Nashville SLA Annual Conference in 2004, Kris spoke of changes and edits to the governing documents. As the former leader of an organization during its initial filing for non-profit status, I was painfully aware of the pitfalls and mazes that are part of governing documents, policy and procedure manuals, and parliamentary process. As Kris spoke of the governing documents, I could see that she had plunged into the quagmire, had emerged battle-hardened, and had somehow managed not to lose sight of the goal: to help us work within the organizations of PAM and SLA. It is a task requiring tenacity, clarity, conviction, common sense, and a huge personal giving of time and energy. Fortunately, Kris has all those qualities and PAM is benefiting from her gift.

For all of these reasons, we are pleased and honored to award to Kris Fowler the 2005 PAM Achievement Award.

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Page last updated: July 11, 2005