UCD librarian feels the love with national award

Roberto Carlos Delgadillo, a librarian at UC Davis, has been named one of the 10 winners of a prestigious national award for librarians.

The “I Love My Librarian Award” is presented annually by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The New York Times and the American Library Association to recognize the accomplishments of exceptional public, school, college, community college or university librarians.

Delgadillo, a bibliographer in the humanities and social sciences, specializes in literatures in English, Chicana/o studies, the School of Education, religious studies and military history.

Miroslava Chávez-García, chair of the department of Chicana/o studies at UCD, wrote in her nomination of Delgadillo’s “ability to make the library an easier place to navigate, particularly for historically underrepresented students.”

He works closely with professors and students alike, including creating for students databases on the latest material on rapidly changing subjects like the United States-Mexico border, Chávez-García wrote.

She quoted a colleague, Gloria Rodriguez, from the School of Education, who said of Delgadillo:

“We can honestly say the the majority of our graduates from that (education Ph.D.) program can attribute the successful completion of their dissertation research, in part, to the support, instruction and mentoring that Robert provides, along with his witty retorts and creative solutions to various research challenges.”

Chávez-García added that Delgadillo is her “go-to” source of information when she’s stumped with her own research.

He helped her find a 1930s court case involving a Mexican-American woman’s fight the state’s decision to sterilize her daughter — a case that featured prominently in a book by Chávez-García, “States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California’s Juvenile Justice System,” published earlier this year.

In addition to his close work with student and faculty researchers, Delgadillo has volunteered with organizations on campus that are working to recruit and retain Latino/Chicano students.

Delgadillo was presented with the award, which includes a $5,000 stipend, at an event held recently in New York City.

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8046. Follow him on Twitter at @cory_golden

Cory Golden

The Enterprise's higher-education and congressional reporter. http://about.me/cory_golden

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