The Rose L. Vormelker Award
Presented to an SLA member in good standing who is mid-career for beyond exceptional services in area of mentoring students and/or working professionals. 

Recipient of the 2007 The Rose L. Vormelker Award

Eileen Abels
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA.

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Click below to watch a short video about Eileen Abels and learn why she is the 2007 recipient of the Rose L. Vormelker Award.

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Described by her nominators as "a keystone of the library science program, functioning as a bridge between coursework and the real world, between students and faculty, and between the academic world and professional organizations," Abels is an associate professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

For more than 15 years, Abels was a faculty member at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, as well as an affiliate associate professor at the Robert H. Smith Business School's Department of Decision and Information Technologies, because of the connections she built between the two schools.

At Maryland, Abels proposed and initiated the Virtual Business Information Center, administered jointly by University of Maryland College of Information Studies, the Smith School, and the University Libraries. VBIC is a collection of electronic and print business resources intended to provide research assistance to the faculty and students at the Smith School of Business and general users seeking authoritative business information.

Prior to joining the faculty at Maryland, Abels held positions with Price Waterhouse, Boston Consulting Group, and the Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas.

She is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences on user needs and information-seeking behavior. Abels received a bachelor's degree in French from Clark University, a master of library science from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. from UCLA.

Past Recipients of the Rose L. Vormelker Award

Larry L. Wright (1998)
G. Lynn Berard (1999)
Barbara Semonche (2000)
Elizabeth Stone (2000)
Judith J. Field (2001)
Billie Connor-Dominguez (2002)
Nettie Seaberry (2002)
Robert V. Williams (2003)
Anne Caputo (2004)
Doris Helfer (2004) 
Carol Berger (2005)
Tony Stankus (2005)
Barbara Beverley (2006)