Hilary Thompson Chosen for the STARS Publication Recognition Award


The winners chosen for the 2020 STARS Publication Recognition Award is Hilary Thompson  and her team, Lisa Gardinier, Manuel Ostos, and Austin Smith. Their article “Borrowing Latin American Materials in the Big Ten Academic Alliance: A Case Study for Consortial Data Analysis,” was chosen because the breadth and scope of the project was impressive and the analysis was rigorous. It required a large data set and the authors overcame significant obstacles in identifying and analyzing their data set, including gathering data from some of the largest libraries and finding clever ways to identify language and place of publication. Their study resulted in specific applications, and it represents a real contribution to scholarship on a topic of high relevance to consortial collective collection building.

Hilary Thompson supervised interlibrary loan at the University of Maryland Libraries from 2012-2019. She was the 2017-2018 chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance ILL Directors and is the current chair of the RUSA STARS International ILL Committee. In the latter role, she coordinated the fourth iteration of the RUSA STARS International ILL survey, including translation of the instrument, global distribution, and data analysis.

The annual RUSA STARS Publication Recognition Award was established in 2018 and sponsored by Atlas Systems.

The selection committee includes: Amy Rebecca Paulus (Chair), Tina Baich, Nora E. Dethloff, David K. Larsen, and Heather Weltin.