The Committee thoroughly revised the Distinguished Professors Policies and Procedures for 2017-2019 and forwarded its recommendations to the Provost’s Office.
The recommendations for criteria relating to Distinguished Librarian are:
Criteria for Selection – The scope of librarianship extends beyond the library's physical walls to the opening of limitless electronic networks and to the fostering of information literacy and skills in navigating the information universe. Through such endeavors, librarians create a new place and new roles for themselves in the academy. Librarians demonstrate unique talents and skills as faculty who promote and facilitate access to information for the widest community and assist all sectors of the community to make informed judgments about the nature and quality of the information they seek, find, and use.
The pathways to the rank of Distinguished Librarian are many and diverse. To attain the rank of Distinguished Librarian, a candidate must exhibit all of the following qualities and levels of accomplishments.
• Candidates must have made contributions to the profession of librarianship that are of national or international significance.
• They must have achieved stature and distinction beyond their own library, beyond their own college or university, and indeed, beyond SUNY to offer leadership. They may achieve this stature and distinction through formal scholarship, research, and publications, or other paths including forging alliances, creating resources of networks, or shifting the understanding of core precepts of the field. In all cases, the impact of the contributions of candidates must be transformational. Candidates' achievements at this level must have contributed to transforming the profession of librarianship and the work of librarians. Candidates must have broken boundaries, expanded potentials, and engendered positive change in academe.
• Candidates must have demonstrated leadership in realizing the potential for access to world-wide information resources, in changing the nature of information seeking, and/or designing or developing systems which facilitate the creation, navigation, access, and effective use of the burgeoning information environment.
• Candidates will have performed with excellence and innovation in a domain of librarianship, including but not limited to information and knowledge creation, resource sharing, information literacy, data management, technical services, services to the public, system or facilities design, or leadership of administration.
• Candidates' careers will be models for librarians and will provide inspiration to their colleagues. They will have earned the respect of members of the information professions as well as their professorial counterparts by the quality, vigor, and innovative nature of their thinking, their standards of performance, and the effectiveness of their initiatives.
