Loretta Parham has been named the 2018 winner of the James Partridge Outstanding African American Information Professional Award. Presented by the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland and the Citizens for Maryland Libraries, the Partridge Award honors the members of the library profession who contribute greatly but who are often behind the scenes and not sufficiently publicly recognized for their important contributions to librarianship and the library community.
Loretta Parham is CEO & Library Director of the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, Inc., an independent entity operating as the single library shared by its four member institutions—Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College and Spelman College. Under her leadership the library was awarded the ACRL 2016 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. With more than 30 years in the profession her experience includes: Director of the Hampton University Library, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pa., District Chief of the Chicago Public Library (CPL) and other professional positions with the Chicago Public Schools and the City Colleges of Chicago.
An active leader, scholar and engaging speaker, Parham was named the ACRL 2017 Academic Research Librarian of the Year, the 2016 Distinguished Alumna of the University of Michigan School of Information Sciences, an 2004 “Mover & Shaker” by Library Journal, has authored articles on HBCU libraries and archives, and is co-editor of the book, Achieving Diversity: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians. Parham is a member of the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors, a member of the University of Michigan Information School Alumni Advisory Board, Chair of the ALA Committee on Accreditation, and Chair of the ARCHE (Atlanta Regional Council on Higher Education) Library Council.
Parham is co-founder and past chair of the Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance, past chair of the Georgia Humanities Council, former board member of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Wayne State University School of Library Science Advisory Board, past treasurer of the Oberlin Group and former trustee of OCLC, Inc. Parham holds the Master of Library Science degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the Bachelor of Science in Communications from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
The 2018 James Partridge Award will be presented to Ms. Parham at the 2018 Conference on Inclusion and Diversity in Library and Information Science (CIDLIS) at the University of Maryland on November 9. CIDLIS is hosted by the Information Policy & Access Center and the College of Information Studies of the University of Maryland.