LJ's Man of the Year (kinda, sorta)

Here's a news item from earlier this week that I completely missed: Rick Block, cataloger extraordinaire, has been awarded Library Journal's Teaching Award for 2008. Rick has taught thousands of New York City librarians over the years, juggling a heavy load of courses at both Pratt and the Palmer School with his 9-to-5 gig as head of the Special Collections and Metadata Cataloging unit at Columbia University Libraries. John N. Berry of LJ writes:

Block's love for his work, his teaching, and his mentoring is obvious when you talk to him. His faculty colleagues see it, too. “Rick Block is the most respected and beloved adjunct member of our faculty,” says Palmer dean Mary L. Westermann-Cicio. “His classes are always full and overflowing.”

As one of the lucky former students who parlayed a Rick Block internship into, eventually, a full-time job at Columbia, I can attest to the veracity of this article! The award is well-deserved. Thank you, Rick, for your tireless effort to enlighten an army of NYC library school students in the dark arts of cataloging and metadata...and congratulations!