Dean's Achievement Award

The Dean's Achievement Award is presented annually to one information science student and one library science student who produce the highest quality masters' papers in a given year. The papers are judged by a faculty committee. A cash prize accompanies the honor, which is intended to encourage student research and writing.

2021-2022

Emma L. Stout: "Public-Private Partnerships for Digitization: A Case-Study of UNC Libraries and Ancestry"

2020-2021
Laura Carroll: “Have You Heard Any Rumors Lately? Depictions of Librarians in Video Games.”
Kennedy McGuinness: “Climate Chat: An Integrative Review of Emerging Literature in the Field of Online Climate Change Communication.”

2019-2020
Jon Clancy: Breakdowns in Human-AI Partnership: Revelatory Cases of Automation Bias in Autonomous Vehicle Accidents
Meg McMahon: A Makerspace of One’s Own? An Exploratory Study of Women and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals’ Experiences of an Academic Makerspace

2018-2019
Qu Jiaming : A Medical Literature Search System for Identifying Effective Treatments in Precision Medicine
Kimberly J. Reisler : Cognitive Authority and the Christian Worldview: An Examination of Goodreads Reviews of Christian Books

2017-2018
Julia Gootzeit: “The Zine Scheme”: A Comparison of Five Institutions’ Methods of Zine Description and an Assessment of the xZINECOREx Metadata Schema for the Creation of a Zine Union Catalog
Jesse Moore: Product, Process and Photographs: Archival Workflows and More Product Less Process (MPLP) in Large Film Photography Collection

2016-2017
Erin Dickey: "Her Own Version of History": A Case Study of the Guerrilla Girls Oral Histories at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Natalie Ornat: Reading for your Life: The Impact of Reading and Writing During the Siege of Sarajevo

2015-2016
Emma Boettcher: Predicting the Difficulty of Trivia Questions Using Text Features
Meredith Hale: Searching for Art Records: A Log Analysis of the Ackland Art Museum's Collecion Search System

2014-2015
Aaron Kirschenfeld: Yellow Fever: Describing Negative Legal Precedent in Citators

Rachel Walton: Looking for Answers: A Usability Study of Online Finding Aid Navigation

2013-2014
Curt Arledge: Filled-in vs. Outline Icons: The Impact of Icon Style on Usability
Meredith Lewis: Learning Styles, Motivations, and Resource Needs of Students Enrolled in a Massive Open Online Class

2012-2013
Kevin Michael Klipfel: Authentic Engagement: Assessing the Effects of Authenticity on Student Engagement and Information Literacy in Academic Library Instruction
Hilary Zelko: Reasoning about Relevance

2011-2012
Hannah Pierce: A Content Analysis Study of the Equivalenc of Publishers' Easy Reader Leveling Systems
Cheryl Thompson: Answering the Call for Data Curation: An Exploration of the Careers of LIS Professionals Managing Data

2010-2011
Brooks J. Breece: Local Government Use of Web GIS in North Carolina
Elizabeth S. Dorner: Motivation of Undergraduate Student Employees in Academic Libraries
Kimberly A. Hirsh: The Transformational Leadership Practices of National Board Certified Librarians in North Carolina

2009-2010
Allison M. Long: Career Choice of Young Adult Librarians in a Public Setting: A Narrative Analysis of Motivations with Implications for Recruitment
Shannon A. Walker: From Science to Librarianship: Career Motivations of the Scientist-Turned-Librarian

2008-2009
Laura Carey O'Neill: A Usability Study of E-book Platforms.
Laura Westmoreland: The Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Libraries Internship Program: Its History and an Analysis of Former Interns Careers.

2007-2008
Nicholas A. Johnson: An Investigation of the Aesthetic Fidelity of Live Websites
Ann K. Irvine: Natural Language Processing and Temporal Information Extraction in Emergency Department Triage Notes

2006-2007
Laura E. Barwick: The Opinions of Literature Faculty and Students on Back-of-the-Book Indexes in Fiction.
Phillip J. Binkowski: The Effect of Social Proof on Tag Selection in Social Bookmarking Applications.
Megan Z. Perez: From New Graduate to Competent Practitioner: Rethinking the Architecture of Post-MLS Residency Programs in ARL Libraries.

2005-2006
Cynthia S. McCracken: Bringing Order to Intranet Chaos with Information Architecture: A Case Study
Alison A. Raab: Manga in Academic Library Collections: Definitions, Strategies, and Bibliography for Collecting Japanese Comics

2004-2005
Rebecca L. Kemp: Selectors’ Choices: Statistics for Evaluating E-Resources
Susan E. Teague Rector: Accessing Information Based on a Combination of Document Structure and Content: Exploiting XML Tags in indexing and searching to enhance content retrieval of online document-centric XML encoded texts

2003-2004
Donald Chalfant: Born Digital? Appraise Traditional!: A Pilot Study on Intrinsic Value and Electronic Records of State Government.
Miriam Intrator: Avenues of Intellectual Resistance in the Ghetto Theresienstadt: Escape Through the Ghetto Central Library, Reading, Storytelling and Lecturing

2002-2003
Corey Johnson: Online Chat Reference: The Awareness of, Use of, Interest in, and Marketing of This New Reference Service Technology
Joby M. Topper: Francis Douce and His Collection: An Antiquarian in Great Britain, 1957-1834

2001-2002
Laura Agnew: Characteristics and Benefits of Online Support Groups.
Andrew Smith: Readers’ Advisory Service: Adoption and Implementation of an Innovation in Select Public Libraries

2000-2001
Anna Kemp: An Evaluation of the Business Plan and Web site of ECB, an E-commerce Business
Kristin Martin: Analysis of Remote Reference Correspondence at a Large Academic Manuscripts Collection.

1999-2000
Kelly Maglaughlin
Ron Bergquist

1998-1999
Kathleen Feeney
Stephen Kelly

1997-1998
Nora Armstrong
Kiduk Yang

1996-1997
Ryan Patrick Womack
Kristin Hays Chaffin

1995-1996
Thomas Kevin Cherry
Anandasivam Gopal

1994-1995
Lewis L. Caviness, Jr.
Ernesto M. Evangelista

1993-1994
Nancy Ryan 
Lois J. Wildmer

1992-1993 
Cheryl A. Karr
Robert G. Summer, Jr.

1991-1992
Ronald Ray Bass 
Lori Irene Drum

1990-1991
Kathryn Lesley Knieriem
Walter Dean Stine

1989-1990
Nan Marie McMurry
Andrea Louise Rohrbacher

1988-1989
Joel Brett Sutton
Paul Staley Williford

1987-1988
Leslie Carrol McCall
Daniel G. Wheeler, Jr.

1986-1987
Diane Shaw
Deborah Barreau

1985-1986
James Timothy Shaw
Susan E. Bello

1984-1985
Paul Hesling

1983-1984
David Downing

1982-1983
Cheryl Karr
Robert Summer

1981-1982
Deborah Fay Rubin

1980-1981
James Allen Curtis

1979-1980
Martha Marshall Smith

1978-1979
Priscilla Caplan

1977-1978
Alma Patricia Sweeney