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1997 CARL Member of the Year is someone recognized by many of us as the
organization's foremost leader, collective memory, expert communicator and
builder of CARL. Bill Whitson has contributed over a number of years
to CARL's development beginning in 1979 when he served on a committee that
established CARL as both the California Chapter of ACRL and the academic
librarian chapter within the California Library Association--an arrangement
which continued until 1992.
He
was active in the Northern CARLDIG Steering Committee in the early 1980s,
and was its chair in 1985. He became active in CARL's parent organization,
CLA, as well, serving on the CLA Council from 1984-1987, and chairing its
Editorial Committee in 1989.
Bill
served in CARL leadership positions continuously from 1989 until 1995, serving
as Secretary-Treasurer (1989), Membership Director (1990), Northern Campus
Liaison Coordinator (1991 and1992), Northern Vice-President (1993 and 1994)
and President (1995).
Bill
created excellent regional programs, assisted in planning the first annual
CARL conference which took place in October 1993, and served on the Long
Range Planning Committee in 1993 and 1994. Once the plan was developed,
he chaired an implementation committee in fall 1994 which rewrote the Constitution
and Bylaws and lead to the creation of new officer positions the following
year.
As
president, his chief accomplishment was to move CARL to a full-fledged annual
conference, held in a convention hotel, over a day and a half, drawing people
from both sides of the state. The first few annual conferences were
one day events, but he set the tone and tradition for more extensive conferences
that future presidents strive to match. The Third Annual Conference,
which he organized, "Re-Tooling Academic Libraries for the Digital Age:
Missions, Collections, Staffing" was highly successful and the start of
the multi-day event.
Bill's
other major accomplishment and dream, was to establish a CARL Web site,
where all the organizational policies, procedures, forms, committee rosters,
and other related materials could be easily available to anyone active in
CARL. When no academic institution was willing to host such a Web
site, he made the decision to open a personal account with an internet service
provider, created the CARL Website himself, and began placing information
about the third conference and much of the information from the CARL
Administrative Manual on it. He has continued to shoulder overall
responsibility and development of the site, working this year with Julie
Sih, who assumed responsibility for the conference Web pages and the program
calendar. The CARL Web site is a valuable source of information and
offers great potential for the future.
As
a leader, Bill has demonstrated a talent for soliciting member input, promoting
consensus decision making, reconciling divergent viewpoints, and making
difficult decisions, when necessary. He is an avid personal computer
user and has been a strong supporter of the introduction of personal computer
software and networking technology in CARL's business, especially for accounting,
membership records, and communication.
Bill
has a B.A. in Government from Cornell University, served in the Peace Corps
in Colombia, and earned a M.A. in Economics and Library Science, as well
as a secondary teaching credential, from U.C. Berekeley. He is currently
working in U.C. Berkeley's Doe Library, where he is a reference librarian
in documents and social sciences and manages the Main Stack collections
in Economics, Linguistics, and Library and Information Sciences.
CARL
has come a long way during the last few years, and Bill has played an important
leadership role. For these accomplishments and much more, it is my
pleasure to recognize Bill Whitson as the 1997 Member of the Year.
Sandra Vella
CARL President
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