2010 Recipient
Miranda Remnek
The ASEEES Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Distinguished Service Award, which was established in 2010, honors ASEEES member librarians, archivists, or curators whose contributions to the field of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies librarianship have been especially noteworthy or influential. The effect of these contributions may be the result of continuous or distinguished service to the profession, but may also be the result of extraordinarily active, innovative, or collaborative work that deserves national recognition.
The Committee on Library and Information Resources of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES CLIR) has conferred the first Distinguished Librarian Award to two of our field’s leading lights: Miranda Remnek and Edward Kasinec. This new prize was established in 2010 to recognize outstanding leadership in the field of Slavic, East European and Eurasian librarianship and to show formal appreciation for a recipient’s sustained impact in promoting and strengthening the profession. Both winners amply meet these criteria.
Co-Honoree: Miranda Remnek
Miranda Remnek (MLS, MA, Ph.D.) has taken on a superhuman amount of work in promoting electronic applications and clarifying their relationship to research in Slavic and East European Studies. She has served as chair of AAASS Bibliography and Documentation Committee (B&D, the forerunner of CLIR), co-chaired the Digital Projects Working Group, and founded what is now known as the ASEEES Subcommittee on Digital Projects. In the process, Miranda helped our organization to create the institutional foundation for the study of Slavic digital humanities in North America and beyond. As Head of Slavic and East European Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she hosted the Slavic Librarians’ Workshop and created the first digital text workshop for Slavists, a major event that has has attracted a broad range of scholars, librarians, and students. She has coordinated multi-university digitization projects in the United States, and shared her skills in workshops with our colleagues in Russia and Eastern Europe. Through her publications and her professional activity, Miranda has kindled interest in and a commitment to new forms of electronic communication and research. Her work on the development and use of digital texts in Slavic and East European scholarship and teaching have made an enduring impact in the field and will continue to shape the directions of Slavic digital scholarship and research in years to come.