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MOUG ANNOUNCES ITS 2005 DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD RECIPIENT, A. Ralph Papakhian

The Executive Board of the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG) is honored to name A. Ralph Papakhian as the fourth recipient of MOUG's Distinguished Service Award.

What follows is the text of the letter that was read during the presentation at the MOUG annual meeting in Vancouver, BC in February 2005.

February 16, 2005

A. Ralph Papakhian, Head, Technical Services
William & Gayle Cook Music Library
Indiana University, Bloomington

Dear Ralph,

It is my privilege to present to you, with the approval of the MOUG Executive Committee and on behalf of the membership, this Distinguished Service Award. Your involvement with MOUG goes back to its infancy, first documented in the mimeographed issue 3 of the MOUG Newsletter (January 1979), when Olga Buth announced your appointment as Vice-Chair with this prescient, if understated, introduction: "Ralph is an excellent candidate for this position. He is the music cataloger at Indiana University and is presently using the OCLC data base for cataloging. Undoubtedly he will bring valuable experience to this position." By the next issue, you were a co-editor of the Newsletter. A listing of your subsequent accomplishments in MOUG would be lengthy, but some highlights have been your work on committees, becoming the NACO Music Project Coordinator in 1987 and moving the project forward from its tentative beginnings to be the largest funnel project in the PCC, and service as MOUG Chair from 1994-1996. We recognize your contributions in other quarters, too--service as Executive Secretary of the Music Library Association Board from 1988-1992; receipt of an MLA Special Achievement Award in 1992 for your role in creating and shepherding the MLA-L electronic discussion list, a tool that has had a profound impact on that association; creator of the MLA Clearinghouse; and recipient of the Richard S. Hill publishing award in 2002. You've carried the torch for music cataloging into the generalist world through active participation in discussions on the AUTOCAT electronic discussion list.

Even with that impressive list of achievements, perhaps your crowning contribution to our organization has been your work in educating and inspiring music catalogers, much of it in tandem with fellow honoree Sue Stancu. As a faculty member in the Music Librarianship program in the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, your work with the Title II-C retrospective conversion project, and position as co-coordinator and instructor in the summer Music Cataloging Workshop since 1996, you've had a hand in sending forth dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people into the profession. They have been conditioned to approach work with rigor, curiosity, and creativity; among them are many recognized leaders in music librarianship and in the larger library world. To echo words from the nomination letter, "Those persons have come to know that what they do, and how they do it, matters, whatever signals to the contrary may appear. Ralph strives to preserve the best aspects of cataloging while adapting to new rules, new needs, and new technologies." They also know that they have a friend and mentor for their career.

For all you've done and for what we know is yet to come, we honor you this day. Thanks, Ralph.

Sincerely,

Mark Scharff, Chair, Music OCLC Users Group

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