The Nomination form for 2026 is now open! Nominations are due by April 3.

ABOUT

This award recognizes academic librarians or academic project teams who have made an outstanding recent contribution to advance the mission of an academic library in Minnesota through an innovative project, program or service. The award is sponsored by the MLA Academic & Research Libraries Division (ARLD). The recipient of the Innovators Award is recognized and presented with a $300 award at ARLD Day.

CRITERIA

Projects, programs, or services should demonstrate creativity, quality, and innovation within the context of an academic institution. Innovation is doing something in a new way.  Innovation can be a brand new idea or refining something that’s always been done with great results.  Innovation will be considered very broadly and is not limited to technology.

ELIGIBILITY

Nominees must be employed by or associated with an academic or research library, and/or organization that furthers the mission of academic libraries. A nominee may not be a current officer of ARLD. Nominees and nominators do NOT need to be ARLD or ACRL members to qualify.

NOMINATION & SELECTION PROCESS

Nominations can be made online each Spring.  An announcement requesting nominations will be publicized by the ARLD Board prior to each award cycle.  The ARLD Awards committee will receive and evaluate nominations, and the award winner will be announced at the annual ARLD Day conference. Self-nominations are accepted.

NOTIFICATION

The award recipient will be notified prior to ARLD Day and will be recognized at ARLD Day.  Announcements will also be shared on the MLA website, by email to MLA members, and via other channels. 

PAST RECIPIENTS

2025

Aubree Tillett and Lacie McMillin

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Aubree Tillett and Lacie McMillin were recognized for developing Libraries Mission Brief for UMN Veterans, an initiative designed to better support student veterans and military-connected students at the University of Minnesota. Drawing on their professional expertise in Research Services and Student Experience, Learning, and Accessibility—and their lived experience as military spouses—they created a flexible workshop (offered both virtually and in person) that introduces veterans to library research tools, archives, and campus resources. When initial workshop attendance was low, they adapted their approach by partnering directly with the Student Veterans Association of Minnesota (SVAM). Through in-person pop-ups in the SVAM space, they provided research help, curated materials for browsing, and built meaningful relationships with student veterans where they already gather. Their work reflects innovation not only in program design, but in responsiveness, collaboration, and a sustained commitment to meeting military-connected students where they are.

2024

Kayleen Jones

University of Minnesota, Duluth

Kayleen Jones partnered with UMD Education faculty to create an Antiracist Literary Advisory Board, or A-LAB. This initiative has profoundly transformed the Children’s Literature Collection at UMD, which dates back to 1895, by integrating a crucial antiracist perspective into its curation and management. Under Kayleen's guidance, A-LAB has not only reviewed and rejuvenated the collection with contemporary and representative titles but has also become a vibrant community that empowers BIPOC teacher candidates and promotes student involvement in library decision-making processes. A-LAB’s achievements include the critical review of over 308 books, the enrichment of the collection with 53 new inclusive titles, and the initiation of student-led events that amplify the impact of their work within and beyond the university. Congratulations to Kayleen on this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding commitment to innovation, quality, and community engagement in education.

2023

Robin Ewing, Jennifer Quinlan, Tom Steman, Melissa Prescott, and Missy Northenscold 

St. Cloud State University

The team made substantial strides towards making course materials and scholarship more affordable and accessible for their institution, and for the larger Minnesota State system. By creating an open textbook for LIB courses, openly sharing learning objects and resources in the course management system and institutional repository, managing textbook donations, coordinating events, and going above and beyond with their outreach, these librarians have saved students over $10 million. From their nomination letter, "The entire team of librarians and staff have strategically focused on all elements of affordability and OER/OA, with much success for our students, faculty, and staff, and this year will be awarded an additional $100K in grant and project funding from Minnesota State to develop a Z-degree transfer pathway for all students in the Minnesota State system." The ARLD Board is thrilled to have the opportunity to recognize this important work. One can look further by visiting their Affordability and Open Educational Resources (OER) guide. Recipients accepted the 2023 Minnesota Academic Innovators Award at the ARLD Day Virtual Opening on April 28, 2023.

2022

Megan Kocher and Amy Riegelman

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Amy Riegelman and Megan Kocher, respectively Social Science and Science Librarian at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, developed the IMLS-funded Evidence Synthesis Institute. In collaboration with the libraries at Carnegie Mellon University and Cornell University, Megan and Amy’s leadership and work to establish free, multi-day workshops for librarians and information specialists across the US and Canada has provided much needed evidence synthesis training previously unavailable outside the health sciences. As stated in their nomination letter, “over the course of the grant, hundreds of librarians in a broad range of disciplines are being trained in best practices in supporting evidence synthesis at their own institutions and thus improving the quality of research and publications which are utilized to inform practice and policy. An improved understanding of evidence synthesis methods extends far beyond the growing community of librarians being trained to other library staff at their institutions and in their regions and impacting a vast number of disciplinary researchers outside of librarianship being supported by their libraries.” Amy and Megan accepted the 2022 Minnesota Academic Innovators Award at the ARLD Day Virtual Opening on May 6, 2022.

2021

Dawn Wing

Metropolitan State University

ARLD recognized Dawn’s outstanding work amplifying marginalized and diverse voices in the library and in the local community. Dawn’s work incorporating graphic novels, graphic narratives, comics, and zines into the library and the classroom is both important and impactful. This past year Dawn also organized several Zoom library events including, "Characters Who Look Like Me,” "Literary CelebrAsians” with Ed Bok Lee and Mainhia Moua, and “Paper Party! Making Zines.” As stated in one of Dawn’s nomination letters, “Dawn's work is innovative because it has brought people together and supported continued, deep learning throughout the difficult circumstances of the pandemic.” And as another of Dawn’s nominators shared, "Her work is interdisciplinary, intersectional, multimedia, and pushes against some of the traditional boundaries of what is considered scholarly/academic work. Most importantly, Dawn helps people find and express their own voices in a time when doing so is more important than ever."  Dawn accepted the 2021 Minnesota Academic Innovators Award at the ARLD Day Virtual Opening on April 30, 2021.

2020

Adam Konczewski, Kelly Kraemer, Ethan Wittrock, Sarah Gewirtz

College of Saint Benedict; Saint John’s University

These four developed a series of “Learning Sequences” documents that help guide collaborations between the two units and classroom instructors. When we were reading their nomination letter, we were excited to learn about how they are integrating information literacy into different courses with these documents, and we believe these are a valuable contribution to the academic library community in Minnesota and provide a model for other librarians to engage students with information literacy through technology. The Learning Sequences documents for the various technology classes are publicly available on their Instructional Design website. Kelly Kraemer, Business Librarian and Adam Konczewski, Instructional Technology Specialist; both at the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University, accepted the 2020 Minnesota Academic Innovators Award at the ARLD Day Virtual Keynote on May 1, 2020 on behalf of the Learning Sequences Team.

2019

Kirsten Delegard, Ryan Mattke, Kevin Ehrman-Solberg and Penny Peterson

University of Minnesota

Since 2016 the Mapping Prejudice project, based in the Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota, has worked to create the first-ever comprehensive visualization of racial covenants for an American city. That city, Minneapolis, is acknowledged as having some of the largest racial disparities in the nation, a fact reinforced by residential segregation and racial gaps in home ownership. Starting with digitized Hennepin County property deeds, the project employs optical character recognition to identify specific phrases and terms used to racially restrict specific groups from owning, leasing, or renting the referenced property. The project then turns to humans to examine the tagged documents and answer a series of questions aimed at identifying the geographic location and specific language use in the covenant. The Mapping Prejudice founding team of Kirsten Delegard, Ryan Mattke, Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, and Penny Petersen, along with University of Minnesota undergraduate and graduate students, have produced a creative, although sobering, example of an innovative program that sheds new light on the history of a city believing itself to be outside historical contexts of segregation. They are providing the data objectively, letting it speak through the lens of an interactive map where the information tagged in the process described above shows the spread of covenants throughout the most affluent Minneapolis neighborhoods. They are also providing knowledge to government agencies and lawmakers to support acknowledgement of past discrimination and implement change to help reverse the racial disparities still seen every day in Minneapolis.

2018

Daniel Gullo, Eileen Smith, and David Calabro 

Hill Museum & Manuscript Library

Since August 2016, Gullo, Smith, and Calabro have developed a method to establish new authorities for underrepresented communities not commonly found in Library of Congress and VIAF authority files including authorities for authors and titles from early modern and medieval Eastern Christian and Islamic writers, especially those from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Turkey, India, Malta and the Western Mediterranean where HMML continues to digitize previously uncatalogued manuscript and rare book collections. To date, over 200 authors and titles have been established and are being prepared to enter the NACO funnel. The cataloging of these records is being done in conjunction with Gullo, the lead designer and program manager of vHMML Reading Room, a unique database that allows for the sharing of native script and traditional metadata, along with the digitized images of the manuscripts and rare books. During 2018, the metadata and cataloging team will be developing a harvestable metadata system, where other libraries will be able to harvest metadata in RDF, MARC-21, and EAD formats.

2017

Amy Mars

St. Catherine University

After the murder of Philando Castile, Amy — feeling the library needed to do more to help enact change on racial justice issues — started a year-long initiative, One Read for Racial Justice, to open up conversations about race on her campus. Centering on the book A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, she partnered with many people and departments on her campus to create discussions around the book, encourage faculty to use it in their classes, design events, and bring in author speakers. Programs included in this initiative have covered topics including diversity in the publishing industry, racism in the criminal justice system, Black Lives Matter, stand your ground culture, and healing justice. Several departments across campus sponsored One Read-related events; ultimately more than 40 events were held as part of this year-long initiative. Most recently, Amy organized an on-campus panel discussion featuring six authors from A Good Time for the Truth. Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd, they received a standing ovation and accolades from the University’s President. Because of Amy’ efforts reaching out to faculty, staff, and students, this One Read permeated her campus community, showcasing the library as a strong advocate for racial justice and an active partner in educating students. Amy started an important dialogue on her campus about how faculty, staff, and students talk about race.

2016

Kaia Sievert, Becky Adamski, Amber Fick, and Danika Stegeman

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

The “From Our Collections Group” encourages leisure reading for students, faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. They have created book displays highlighting popular fiction available, organized a summer reading program, and designed a book matchmaking service to correspond with their “Blind Date with a Book” display. The group has also organized a number of “pop-up libraries” at various campus locations including the Recreation Center and the campus farmers market. Phil Dudas, UMTC Information Services Manager, wrote in his nomination that the group members “come to work each day with an eager passion to learn” and that their work “has energized many staff and reminded them of the value of continuing to explore and push the boundaries of our role in our community.”

2015

Virginia Connell, Kevin Baggett, Theresa Borchert, Connie Jones, Solveig Lund, Lisa Sjoberg and Wendy Spiesman, 

Concordia College, Moorhead

The group works with first year students as part of the college’s First Year Experience curriculum. Starting in fall 2014, the group reimagined the program to incorporate the use of cell phones and social media as well as online class activities, eliminating the need for paper worksheets. Early results show that the students are asking more questions, completing more assignments and generally having more fun with the work. Laura Probst, Director of the Carl B. Ylvisaker Library at Concordia College, wrote in her nomination that the success of the program is due to the librarians, who form strong relationships with the faculty and students and who strive to make the program interesting and engaging for the students.

2014

Jayne Blodgett

University of Minnesota, Morris

At Morris, she has been the driving force for innovation in multiple areas of the library services. She developed an embedded librarian program with courses in multiple disciplines and partnered with faculty in flipping a course. She has been key to expanding digital initiatives, including collaboration on digitizing the archival images and lobbying for an institutional repository. She also partnered with faculty and students to create the Prairie Gate Literary Festival which has become a significant event for Morris as well as the surrounding area.

2013

Shane Nackerud

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

The first project applied affinity strings to user behavior, essentially tracking who used library resources and mapping that use to a relatively broad user designation. It provided a mechanism by which the libraries could make resource recommendations back to the peer groups represented by the affinity strings. The second project, Library Data and Student Success, was a nationally known effort that successfully ties library usage data to student success measures; namely GPA and retention. This groundbreaking study demonstrated statistically significant relationships between library use and higher GPAs and better student retention. For more information on this project, see two articles by the project team in the April 2013 issue of the journal portal: Libraries and the Academy.

2012

Julie Gilbert

Gustavus Adolphus College

Gilbert, in collaboration with political science faculty, developed a weekly library-based lab to the department’s research methods course. Gilbert captured data on student learning to demonstrate that the lab experience significantly improves student learning. Gilbert has created a successful model for any college or university interested in promoting information literacy. 

2011

Lisa R. Johnston

University of Minnesota

Her project, a campus-wide data management program that grew out of her work with the Minnesota Geological Survey and the Universal Digital Conservancy, has become a model for other universities around the country. Johnston’s data-management program for the University of Minnesota can be explored on its website, www.lib.umn.edu/datamanagement.