The award honors a staff member at a Michigan
library "who has made an outstanding contribution to
effective and improved local library service." Linklater,
media services coordinator in the college's Van Wylen
Library, received the award on Wednesday, Oct. 4, during the
MLA's 2000 Annual Conference Awards' Banquet, held in
Detroit.

She noted that while she was honored to have been
recognized, she especially appreciated that one of her Hope
co-workers had nominated her in the first place.

"I was so incredibly touched that one of my
colleagues would recommend me for this award," she said. "I
didn't expect to receive it. The recommendation for the
award was enough for me."

Linklater was nominated for the Award of
Excellence by Mark Christel, humanities librarian. In
addition to respecting her professional accomplishments, he
noted that he especially appreciates her work with others.

"It's the people that you see when you walk in the
door that really shape your thoughts about an institution.
Lin has been an outstanding representative for both the
library and the college," he said. "Staff too seldom get
credit for what they do. I think of Lin as a mentor in
working with people."

Linklater has been a member of the Hope library
staff since 1984. She was hired as the part-time
coordinator of the department of education's curriculum
library, located at the time in the basement of Van Zoeren
Hall. From 1986 to 1994, she also directed the college's
annual Young Authors' Conference.

She contributed to the new curriculum library's
design as the college made plans for the Van Wylen Library,
which opened in 1988. Her responsibilities have since
increased to include oversight of the library's second-floor
circulation and media services desk, instructional media
center, computer laboratory and microform collection. She
supervises one part-time paraprofessional as well as 14
student assistants.

"Everything we've asked Lin to do, she has done
extremely well," said David Jensen, director of libraries.
"She's done a wonderful job developing the Media
Center from a windowless room in the basement of Van Zoeren
to a high-tech facility and service for the entire campus.
With the move into Van Wylen, she took on many additional
responsibilities. She's done a terrific job of building the
collection of curriculum materials and the children's
literature collection," he said.

"But perhaps the most important thing she's done
has been to work closely with the education faculty in
helping them to integrate technology into their curriculum,"
he said.

Linklater has worked with Susan Cherup of the
education faculty to explore the use of technology in the
college's teacher education program. In addition to making
presentations at professional conferences concerning the
topic, they co-authored an article published in the "Journal
of Computing in Teacher Education" this spring. Linklater
also had an article, "From Hot Press to HTML," in the
March/April issue of "Library Mosaics."

Prior to coming to Hope, she had been an
elementary teacher in the West Ottawa and Charlevoix public
schools, and at St. Mary's School in Charlevoix. She holds
a bachelor of arts degree from Michigan State University,
and a bachelor of science and teaching certificate from
Grand Valley State University.

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