Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2011, 6.2 88 Evidence Based Library and Information Practice News/Announcements Ken Ladd receives 2011 Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award 2011 Canadian Library Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-sa/2.5/ca/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. The Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (CACUL) is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2011 Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award is Ken Ladd, who is honoured for his 2010 paper entitled, “An examination of the failure rate and content equivalency of electronic surrogates and the implications for print equivalent preservation,” published in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (5:4). This well-written and detailed study addresses an important subject for both libraries and the scholars we serve. In his paper, Ladd asked whether there was evidence to suggest that libraries need to preserve print equivalent journal collections. Print collections would be preserved for possible digitization to replace poor quality or defective electronic copies. His research sought data on the “failure rate” of electronic surrogates of print journals (how often content was incomplete, missing, or illegible), and how often damage or other irregularities in print journals limited their use for digitization purposes. His project compared the content of randomly selected journal titles, volumes and issues from seven e-journal archives and their print equivalents held at the University of Saskatchewan Library. The archives were obtained from five vendors representing humanities, social sciences, technology, science, and medicine. The study examines several types of failure for print journals and their electronic surrogates, and presents a wealth of data demonstrating the need for preserving print equivalent journal titles for at least the short (less than 5 years) to medium term (up to 10 years), during which time poorly digitized materials can be identified, replaced, and digitally preserved. Ladd notes that, while online surrogates of image-rich scholarly papers are more likely to have quality issues, the study found that some text-only PDF scholarly documents were illegible. He cautions against the disposal of text-heavy titles, as our assumptions about the quality of online surrogates may be incorrect. He notes a significant absence of supplemental content in electronic surrogates. Finally, his observations about the number of print journals that could not be used for digitization suggest that the number of copies required for a full set of preserved journals over a specific time period may be greater than anticipated. The Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award is named for Dr. Blackburn, the first President of CACUL (1963-64). The award Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2011, 6.2 89 annually recognizes notable research published by CACUL members. The Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award will be presented at the CACUL Annual General Meeting on Friday, May 27, during the CLA National Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (CACUL) is a division of the Canadian Library Association (CLA). CLA is a national association representing the interests of public, academic, school and special libraries, professional librarians, library workers, and all those concerned about enhancing the quality of life for Canadians through information and literacy. For details, visit www.cla.ca. http://www.cla.ca/� / Evidence Based Library and Information Practice News/Announcements Ken Ladd receives 2011 Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award