2006 Award of Merit
The American Society for Information Science and Technology is pleased to give the 2006 Award of Merit to Blaise Cronin. The award recognizes the scholarly achievements and service contributions of a vigorous intellect and exemplary leader.
Blaise Cronin is one of the most widely published and highly cited individuals in the field of information science, as a number of recent studies have documented. He is rooted squarely in the Anglo-American information science tradition, holding both a Ph.D. and a D.S.Sc. (a higher doctorate — the only individual in the field to do so) in the subject.
Cronin is author/editor of more than 300 books, reports, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, conference proceedings and other materials, a remarkable achievement in itself but all the more so considering the fact that he has been a dean / chair for the last twenty years. He is an influential thinker, prolific author, and program builder, one who is unafraid to espouse difficult positions or unpopular causes.
Cronin is highly visible nationally and internationally within the scholarly and professional information science communities. He has worked as a researcher, consultant, or lecturer in more than thirty countries and with many prestigious organizations and given numerous invited and keynote addresses at academic and professional conferences worldwide.
In the late 1980s he built the Department of Information at the University of Strathclyde Business School into a high-profile and innovative unit, positioning it as a leader in the areas of information management and hypertext. During that time he was a founding co-director of Crossaig, an electronic publishing start-up that was subsequently acquired by 1ST. Since assuming the deanship of the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University in 1991 he has transformed its organizational structure, curricula, faculty, and research orientation. The school is now recognized as a research leader in a number of areas.
For the past five years Professor Cronin has served as Editor of ARIST, continuing and enhancing its tradition of rigor, authority, and production excellence. He has been an active member of the JASIST editorial board since 2002.
Distinguished scholars in information science write:
It is to me always a pleasure to read Cronin’s publications because he brings to bear a surprising multidisciplinary grasp of issues, can identify crucial variables that have escaped other scholars, and exerts keen insights. Long ago, I gave up trying to categorize his intellectual style. He is a convergent and divergent thinker, a specialist and polymath, a futurist and historian, an innovator and traditionalist, a qualitative and quantitative analyst, and is both literal and metaphorical in his scholarly approach. But I have found him to be dependably cosmopolitan in all his work.
Blaise Cronin is prolific. His work on scholarly communication is well-known and heavily cited and his thoughtful commentaries have advanced our science and our community. As dean of a major information science program, he has shaped the lives of faculty and students and achieved status among deans who are defining the emerging Information Science programs of the 21st century.
Blaise Cronin is intellectually curious, a provocateur, and asks many of the questions no one else dares ask. And he is not afraid of the reactions and answers he may get. He makes those around him think more deeply about what they do. In these ways, he has had and continues to have a strong influence on the field of information science and those who practice it.
It is Professor Cronin’s ability to see things globally that distinguishes him from others. In an age when specialization has become a necessary evil, he has achieved perspective. While most people focus on the technology that is the driving force behind these changes, Professor Cronin concentrates on their social significance, displaying insights that have caught the attention of prominent and distinguished information specialists throughout the world.
It is our pleasure and honor to give the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2006 Award of Merit to Blaise Cronin.