portal: Libraries and the Academy 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press Award for Best Article

The Awards Committee of the Editorial Board of portal: Libraries and the Academy is pleased to announce that “The Apprentice Researcher: Using Undergraduate Researchers’ Personal Essays to Shape Instruction and Services,” by Jennifer L. Bonnet, Sigrid Anderson Cordell, Jeffery Cordell, Gabriel J. Duque, Pamela J. MacKintosh, and Amanda Peters, has been awarded the 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press Award for the best article published in the 2013 volume of portal, http://muse.jhu.edu. After an independent review of all articles published over the year, this article, featured in the January 2013, Volume 13, Number 1 issue, was selected as the tenth annual recipient of the award.

Written by six colleagues at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Alma College in Alma, MI, this article offers an enriched understanding of undergraduates as apprentice researchers. Using for analysis the documentation submitted by students and faculty participating in the University of Michigan Library’s Undergraduate Research Award, the authors pursued a narrative approach in their research methodology and produced an in-depth discussion of the learning and research experience of undergraduates. The authors offer both confirmation and refutation of many of the assumptions we make about library instruction. They suggest the application of a broader pedagogical approach in library instruction, and a revision of the stereotypes usually applied to undergraduates and their attitudes toward research and library services. Whereas earlier library literature on the topic polarized modes of research between “expert” and “novice,” the students in the Michigan study demonstrated sophisticated, persistent, and hybridized methods of inquiry. The portal Award Jury believes that “this conclusion puts this work in a unique position within the literature of 2013, and challenges us to test it across other academic research libraries.”

The criteria used in the selection process for this award included the quality of research methodology, the extent to which the article places library issues in a broader academic or higher education context, the extent to which the article makes a significant contribution to the literature or the advancement of knowledge, its timeliness, its originality, and the overall quality of writing. The Editorial Board is pleased to emphasize the need for visionary approaches to major professional concerns that require significant investment of resources; have a fundamental role in enhancing the processes of research, teaching, learning, and communication; and have an impact on access to information at every stage from creation to use to archiving. In addition to the Johns Hopkins University Press Award, the authors will share a cash prize.