NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 27 number 2 - Winter 2007

Susan Osborne Receives 2006 NCSU Libraries Faculty Award

By Bob Sotak, Collection Management

Susan Osborne, associate professor of special education with an emphasis on mental retardation and learning disabilities and coordinator of the graduate program in special education for curriculum and instruction, received the eighteenth annual NCSU Libraries Faculty Award. This award is presented annually to an NC State University faculty member in recognition of outstanding contributions that support the Libraries’ mission and its role within the university. The award was presented to Osborne at the Friends of the Library’s Fall Luncheon on October 16, 2006.

Osborne’s contributions to the Libraries are many, most notably in the area of scholarly communication. She was influential in establishing the Scholarly Communication Center and in hiring its scholarly communications librarian. She served on NC State’s University Library Committee (ULC) for many years and was a member of its scholarly communication subcommittee, serving as subcommittee chair from 2001 through 2005. As chair she helped to publicize to faculty important initiatives such as the Public Library of Science and the Tempe Principles and became deeply involved in the Research Library of the Future panel discussions. She also served as the subcommittee’s liaison to the ULC.

Osborne played an important role when the subcommittee sponsored the Copyright Ownership Task Force, the Copyright Ownership Town Meetings, and other colloquia. She accompanied librarians to town meetings and provided a faculty member’s support and viewpoint on important scholarly communication issues. In 2001 she led a presentation of the “Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing” given to the NC State faculty at a General Faculty Meeting. This presentation among others helped to make faculty members much more aware of the significance of scholarly communications issues, such as copyright and fair use, especially as it applies to their academic research and teaching. In addition, she has raised scholarly communication issues with the publisher of her society’s academic journal. Discussing these issues with publishers provided valuable support to librarians in their interactions with publishers.

Not only is Osborne a vocal and ardent supporter of the Libraries’ mission in promoting scholarly communication initiatives, but she and her husband, Stephen Reynolds of NC State’s physics department, are supporters of the Friends of the Library and regularly attend its events. One Faculty Award nominator praised Osborne as an ideal supporter of the Libraries. Another cited her efforts to advance the Libraries’ goals. All in all, Susan Osborne has tirelessly supported the Libraries and promoted its role as an essential component of the university’s mission.