The Brooklyn College library has received a Library of the Year award from the U.S. Government Printing Office for its leadership and mentoring activities for library staff in the greater New York City area, and for providing expert staff and public access to a wide range of electronic resources. Stephanie Walker, a professor, the chief librarian, and executive director of academic information technology, said that she was thrilled to get the award and honored to travel to Washington, DC to the awards ceremony with associate professor and librarian Jane Cramer, who oversees the library’s government documents. “People don’t realize how important access to government information is, especially since so much is disappearing and becoming more ephemeral,” Walker said. “It’s librarians who are battling the disappearance of information.” The library has since 1936 been a participant in the Federal Depository Library Program, which means it is charged with providing the public with access to information from all three branches of the federal government. Its collection includes the Congressional Record, statistics, Census data, budgets, treaties, and many other government documents. The Brooklyn College library has the largest on-site collection in the New York City metropolitan area, housing 1.3 million print materials and more than 68,000 electronic books and journals. It is considered the most advanced within the City University of New York system.
