Congrats to the 2023 Award Winners!

2023 ER&L/DLF GLAM Cross-Pollinator Awards

Erika Mei Chua Holum

Erika Mei Chua Holum (she/they) is the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Her curatorial work and research focus on intimacies and interconnected (hi)stories revealed through artistic practices, south-south relationships, ways of gathering, and archival methods following forms of historical displacements. She has contributed to projects and exhibitions worldwide, such as makibaka! Fifty Years of Filipino-American Youth Activism at Alief Art House (2021), Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020), the Second Edition of the Lagos Biennial in Nigeria (2019), and Obscura Festival of Photography in Malaysia (2018). She has previously held positions at the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago Public Libraries, Fulbright Malaysia, European Cultural Academy, and 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust. Erika holds an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois, Chicago and is completing a Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2023.

Amigos Library Services Professional Development Award Winners

• John Asbell, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
• Kirstie Genzel, California State University, Los Angeles
• Jihye Lee, Nova Southeastern University Library 
• Alma Ravenell, East Texas Baptist University
• Margaret Sylvia, St. Mary’s University
• Cait Whitehead, Salem College Library

This award is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Amigos Library Services.

John Asbell

John Asbell works as an E-Resources and Serials Librarian at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Library. The UTRGV Library serves a FTE of about 24,561 students. UTRGV has been ranked as the #1 university in Texas for performance of first-generation students (Washington Monthly, 2020). UTRGV was also the recipient of the “Seal of Excelencia” awarded by Excelencia in Education, which serves as a “national certification for institutions that strive to go beyond enrollment to intentionally SERVE Latino students.” Thank you to AMIGOS and to ER&L for providing this free registration.

Jihye Lee, MLIS, MA

Jihye Lee is the Electronic Resource Cataloging Librarian at the Alvin Sherman Library of Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As a joint-use facility, the Alvin Sherman Library provides both academic and public library services to various groups of users such as NSU students, faculty, staff, and the residents of Broward County. Jihye takes a lead role in cataloging, findability, accessibility, and maintenance of electronic resources such as e-books, streaming audios & videos, online tutorials & tests, electronic theses & dissertations, open-access e-materials, etc. She focuses on providing timely and seamless access to electronic resources for all users. Jihye holds an MLIS from Florida State University.

Kirstie Genzel, MLIS

Kirstie Genzel is the Electronic Resources and Digital Publishing Librarian at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at California State University, Los Angeles. Kirstie provides leadership in the organization and access to the library’s extensive electronic resource collections, as well as in the support and advancement of the University’s Institutional Repository (ScholarWorks), online journal systems, and other digital publishing and archiving initiatives. Before joining Cal State LA as the Electronic Resources and Digital Publishing Librarian, Kirstie worked for California State University, Long Beach as the library’s Electronic Resources Coordinator. In her current role, she is responsible for managing the lifecycle of the library’s electronic resources, including databases, journals, eBooks, and streaming media. Kirstie holds an MLIS from San José State University and a BS Business Administration, Accountancy from California State University, Long Beach.

Alma Ravenell

Alma Ravenell currently serves as Interim Director of Library Services of Mamye Jarrett Library at East Texas Baptist University. The University is located in Marshall, Texas. She has been in libraries for over twenty years, but has never had opportunity to attend an ER&L Conference. Alma has a Master of Science in Information Science from The University of North Texas at Denton. She is the wife of Don Ravenell, and mother of Mario Ravenell. Alma enjoys travel, art, reading, walking, speaking, and singing (for fun). This amazing gift to attend the ER&L Conference will be greatly cherished.

Margaret Sylvia

Margaret Sylvia has worked in several academic libraries over the years including the Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M, the Tarleton Law Library at the University of Texas, and the Louis J. Blume Library at St. Mary’s University. Her experience has been mostly in technical services, including network administration, collection development, acquisitions, serials, and bibliographic control. At the Blume Library, she set up the first computer network in the library as well as the first library website and handled system administration for those for several years. Currently Margaret is the system administrator for the Sierra system and our EZproxy system as well as being the Head of Collection Development, Acquisitions, and Government Information for the library, all of which fall under her duties as Assistant Director for Technical Services. She has a number of professional publications and presentations under her belt and is a regular reviewer for Choice and Library Journal. Margaret’s current research interests include electronic resource administration and collection development/evaluation.

St. Mary’s University was established in San Antonio as a Catholic Marianist institution in 1852 and was recently ranked by Money Magazine as the number one Catholic university in the Southwest. The Louis J. Blume Library is one of two libraries on campus, the other being the Sarita Kenedy East Law Library. The Blume Library currently provides our students access to over 75,000 online serials and almost a million physical and electronic monographs. They are a Federal Depository Library and our Special Collections Department holds the original Laredo Archives, which were recently digitized and are now available online in the Portal to Texas History. The Blume Library also houses the Learning Commons, one of the most popular student gathering sites on campus, and has its own Starbucks.

Cait Whitehead, MLIS

Cait Whitehead is a paraprofessional librarian at the Salem Library in Winston-Salem, NC, and is currently functioning in several roles, including Electronic Resources librarian. She moved from California in 2015 to attend a graduate program in religious studies at Wake Forest University. During her time as a Master’s student, she worked in the Z. Smith Reynolds library on the Wake Forest Campus and it was there that she discovered her love for librarianship. She enrolled in the LIS program at UNC Greensboro in 2018, graduated with her Masters in LIS in December 2020, and began working at Salem College in the summer of 2021. In her spare time, Cait enjoys painting, watching the birds from her back porch, and designing complicated Lego train models.

ER&L First Timer Registration Award Winners

• Amanda Nunnelly-Stewart, University of South Carolina Aiken (USCA)
• Tracie Seurer, Tomlinson Library, Colorado Mesa University

Amanda Nunnelly-Stewart, MLS

Amanda Nunnelly-Stewart, MLS is the Electronic Resources librarian at the Gregg-Graniteville Library at the University of South Carolina Aiken (USCA). She is a first-year librarian, and the Electronic Resources Librarian is a new position to the library, giving her the opportunity to take a major part in how this position serves the campus. With that, her focus has been on identifying ways to save the library money and using those savings to provide more resources to the students and faculty. Amanda has an interest in Open Educational Materials (OER) and how they can be used to save students money and was lucky enough to start working here while an OER Taskforce was just being created. She has the opportunity to work with the University of South Carolina’s repository, Scholar Commons, where she took part in helping publish the South Carolina Association for Middle Level Education Journal (SCAMLE) in the repository. Currently, Amanda manages all aspects of e-resources in the library including acquisitions and technical support. SHe received my MLS from Texas Woman’s University and is currently working on obtaining an MBA from USCA. She looks forward to meeting and collaborating with E- Resources librarians and learning new efficient workflow processes and strategies.

Tracie Seurer

Tracie Seurer joined Tomlinson Library as their Electronic Resources Librarian in 2020. She has over 15 years of experience in libraries and has spent the last 11 years managing electronic resources. Tomlinson Library is a mid-sized academic library on the Western Slope of Colorado, supporting approximately 7,400 students, many from traditionally underrepresented groups. Tracie is always looking to improve the electronic landscape for the students she serves. By maximizing the library’s web scale discovery service, they have seen a 69% increase in electronic resources over the last year.

ER&L Student Registration Award Winners

• Kaelen Bennett, University of Toronto
• Melissa Forsythe, Missouri Southern State University

Melissa Forsythe

Melissa Forsythe has worked at Missouri Southern State University Library for sixteen years in a variety of positions. She is currently the Collections & Content Specialist, working with physical and online resources. She is in her last semester of the MLIS program at Valdosta State University. Career-wise, Melissa would love to continue working in an academic library in a position dealing with eresources and collection development.