Blaise Cronin, Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University and Dean of the School of Library and Information Science, has been honored by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) by being named the 2006 recipient of the Award of Merit.
The ASIS&T Award of Merit, established in 1964, is the Society's highest honor, bestowed annually on an individual who has made "a noteworthy contribution to the field of information science, including the expression of new ideas, the creation of new devices, the development of better techniques and outstanding service to the profession of information science." The award will be presented to Dean Cronin at the Society's annual meeting in November in Austin, Texas.
"Blaise Cronin is one of the most widely published and highly cited individuals in the field of information science, as a number of recent studies have documented. Cronin is author/editor of more than 300 books, reports, peer reviewed articles, book chapters, conference proceedings and other materials, a remarkable achievement in itself but all the more so considering the fact that he has been a dean/chair for the last twenty years. He is an influential thinker, prolific author, and program builder, one who is unafraid to espouse difficult positions or unpopular causes.
As a researcher, Cronin has produced a formidable body of work on scholarly communication. In the field of information science, it is hard to think of any other individual who has made so many sustained and varied contributions to both the academy and the profession over the last two decades." [excerpts from award nomination]
Biographical Notes:
Blaise Cronin is the Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington, where he has been Dean of the School of Library and Information Science for fifteen years. From 1985-1991 he held the Chair of Information Science and was Head of the Department of Information Science at the University of Strathclyde Business School in Glasgow. He is concurrently a visiting professor in the School of Computing, Napier University, Edinburgh and for six years was the Talis Information Visiting Professor of Information Science at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr. Cronin is the author of numerous research articles, monographs, technical reports, conference papers, and other publications. Much of his research focuses on collaboration in science, scholarly communication, citation analysis, the academic reward system, and cybermetrics. His books include The Citation Process (1984), The Scholar's Courtesy (1995) and The Hand of Science (2005). He has also published on topics such as information warfare, information and knowledge management, strategic intelligence and digital pornography. For the last six years Dr. Cronin has been editor of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Professor Cronin sits on a number of editorial boards, including Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Scientometrics, Cybermetrics, and International Journal of Information Management. He has extensive international experience, having taught, conducted research, or consulted in more than 30 countries: clients have included the World Bank, NATO, Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, U.S. Department of Justice, Brazilian Ministry of Science & Technology, European Commission, British Council, Her Majesty's Treasury, Hewlett-Packard Ltd., British Library, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, Chemical Abstracts Service, and Association for Information Management. He has been a keynote or invited speaker at scores of conferences, nationally and internationally. Professor Cronin was a founding director of Crossaig, an electronic publishing start-up in Scotland, which was acquired in 1992 by ISI in Philadelphia. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin (M.A.) and the Queen's University of Belfast (Ph.D., D.S.Sc.) In 1997, he was awarded the degree Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., honoris causa) by Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh for his scholarly contributions to information science.
- "SLIS dean wins highest information science honor" (Indiana Daily Student, 9/19/06)
- "SLIS, its dean and faculty earn top honors" (IU Media Relations Press Release, 9/15/06)
Posted September 07, 2006