CHICAGO – John Wilkin has been named the winner of the 2011 LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. Emerald Group Publishing  Limited and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) sponsor the award.

The award recognizes outstanding persons or institutions for their long-term contributions in the area of Library and Information Science technology and its application. It consists of $1,000 and a certificate of merit.

Mr. Wilkin serves as the associate university librarian for Library Information Technology and Technical and Access Services in Ann Arbor, Mich. and is the executive director of HathiTrust (http://hathitrust.org).  In addition to his work on the HathiTrust and the Google Books project, Mr. Wilkin was the primary investigator on a number foundational grants and projects including a Mellon Foundation grant for creating an OAI harvesting platform, and was the principal investigator in the Making of America IV, the American Voice project, a grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for conversion of 7,500 19th century US imprint monographs.  Over the last 18 years, he has researched and published in the fields of digital libraries, open source software and multi-institution collaboration.  His work in transforming books to digital platforms has positioned him as one of the leaders in digital libraries.

The award will be presented at the LITA President's Program on Sunday, June 26, 2011 at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

About LITA
LITA is the leading organization reaching out across types of libraries to provide education and services for a broad membership including systems librarians, library administrators, library schools, vendors and many others interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers.  For more information about LITA go to www.lita.org, or contact the LITA office by phone, 800-545-2433, ext. 4268; or e-mail: lita@ala.org

About Emerald
Established in 1967, Emerald Group Publishing is the world’s leading publisher of management research.  In total, Emerald publishes over 700 titles, comprising 200 journals, over 300 books and more than 200 book series as well as an extensive range of online products and services.  Emerald is both COUNTER and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.