(via the Illinois Library Association)
Emily Gilbert (she/her), Assistant Professor and Information Services & Liaison Librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago Library of the Health Sciences and a past member of HSLI, is the 2024 recipient of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year Award. The award, presented by the ILA Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries (IACRL) Forum, recognizes an Illinois librarian who is making an outstanding statewide contribution to academic or research librarianship and to library development.
Gilbert has been involved with IACRL since 2018, has served the three-year term as incoming/sitting/past president of IACRL from 2020-2023, and participated in numerous committees. In her time as president, Gilbert made significant impacts on how the IACRL Executive Board operates. Unprompted, she took on the valuable yet invisible work of succession planning and documenting timelines and tasks of the operations of the forum to help facilitate easy transitions between leadership. Her efforts will have a lasting impact on the success of IACRL.
She is a passionate advocate for all libraries and for those who want to get involved and improve their communities. In her time on the Schaumburg Township District Library Board, Gilbert has helped improve patron services and update policies to reflect the needs of a 21st -century library in an ever-changing landscape. She is particularly proud of the small part she played in the central library’s recent second-floor renovation.
Gilbert has demonstrated leadership in her efforts to make libraries more inclusive. She has been vocal about bringing representation to various populations in libraries and encourages library workers to be open about their identities when they can do so safely. Her research on anti-fatness will be presented at the 2024 Illinois Library Association Annual Conference. She also recently collaborated with a medical student to present a colloquium on anti-fatness to students in the College of Medicine.
To view the full announcement, please go here. A list of all of this year’s ILA award and scholarship winners is available here.