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Simmons Professor of Library and Information Science Receives National Award

Award recognizes research and development work on digital libraries and creation of a new world digital image library and portal to be launched this summer

BOSTON (May 24, 2006) — A Simmons College professor of library and information science has received a national honor bestowed by two library and information technology organizations for innovative work on digital libraries and a new digital portal to be launched at the end of June.

Professor Ching-chih Chen of the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science received the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for research in library and information technology. The award is co-sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association, a division of the American Library Association, and OCLC Online Computer Library Center, a worldwide library cooperative.

The award is given to a person who has amassed a significant body of research in the field of library and information technology, with recognition given to research that results in a substantive positive impact on the publication, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.  

Chen in the late 1980s and early 1990s developed the acclaimed laserdisc and multimedia CD-ROM "The First Emperor of China" showing the terracotta warriors and horses at Xian. She has promoted the idea of a world digital library since 1993. Her latest work is the Global Memory Net (GMNet), a digital image library and portal that will give users an innovative way to search among the world's digital library collections for information, images and video.  Users will be able to access more than 30 digital image collections within GMNet, as well as 2,400 digital library collections from more than 80 countries.  That work, supported by the National Science Foundation, will debut in June.

Simmons College (www.simmons.edu) is a nationally recognized private university in Boston.  It includes an undergraduate college for women and graduate programs for women and men in social work, health studies, library and information science, management, and liberal arts.