Mann Library

A favorite Mann Library tradition continued last week when Mann staff and friends gathered to celebrate the presentation of the Ans van Tienhoven Memorial Award to this year’s winner, digital collections specialist Jeff Piestrak. Supporting Jeff’s participation in the Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) in Prato, Italy, this award is helping Jeff to explore effective strategies for linking information resources across different Cornell programs to make their data and guidance more easily accessible to a wider audience.  

 

The late professor of animal science Ari van Tienhoven established the van Tienhoven Memorial Award at Mann Library in 1987. Named in honor of spouse Ans, who was a passionate promoter of literacy and education, the award funds travel by Mann library staff to explore new horizons with the potential to lead to further innovation at the Library. Last year’s winner, digital collections librarian Deborah Cooper, used her award to investigate issues of digital archiving at the 2018 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania,  

 

Deborah formally presented this year’s Ans van Tienhoven award to Jeff at last week’s celebration, and Mann was honored to have special friends, including members of the van Tienhoven family and former colleagues of Ans and Ari in attendance as the award baton, embodied in a beautiful glass sculpture from the Corning Museum of Glass (also a gift from the van Tienhoven family) was officially passed along. In her remarks at the ceremony, Ans and Ari’s daughter, Arianne Tepper, noted the perfect match between the award and her father’s wish to honor Ans and her “love of learning new things.” The celebration marked the 31st year of the van Tienhoven Award, for a legacy in innovative librarianship that’s going strong at Mann Library–thanks to our good friends.