The School of Information Sciences has honored John P. Wilkin as the Distinguished Alumnus for 2007. Alumni Board President Roger Myers announced the award at the school’s annual Alumni & Friends Day on March 3. The award honors graduates who have demonstrated professional achievement or leadership attributable to their education at the School through publications, teaching record, and service to the profession.
Myers noted that the Alumni Board had an impressive slate of nine nominations to consider, but that Wilkin’s nomination stood out.
Since graduating from the School in 1986, Wilkin has spent the majority of his professional life at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was given a paid internship there immediately after graduating from SIS. His accomplishments are many and impressive; highlights of his professional service include:
Since 2003, Mr. Wilkin has served as Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology at the University of Michigan and presently, is serving as co-interim University Librarian.
Since 1996, Mr. Wilkin has served as the Head of the Digital Library Production Service at the University of Michigan and is responsible for campus- and Internet-wide public information services, focusing primarily of full-text resources, continuous tone and bitonal images.
As Head of the Humanities Text Initiative, Mr. Wilkin created and coordinated the Humanities Text Initiative. This initiative included text creation, systems development, education, technical direction of campus SGML initiatives, as well as consultation for scholarly electronic projects involving the humanities.
Mr. Wilkin has authored and organized many successful grant projects including Making of America IV, The American Voice (a $420,000 grant to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for conversion of approximately 7,500 19th century U.S. imprint monographs) and Middle English Compendium (a $325,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to convert the Middle English Dictionary and mount it online)
Most recently, and one of the outstanding highlights of his nomination, Mr. Wilkin has been involved with Michigan Digitization Project: A Partnership with Google, Inc. Here, he has coordinated all phases of Michigan’s large-scale digitization effort with Google, including negotiation of contract terms, and Michigan’s portion of implementation. The resulting effort is intended to convert the entire 7 million volume collection at Michigan’s University Library, and provide Google and Michigan with a copy of the results of that work! This project is “critically transformative, enabling the University Library to build on a reconceived vital library services for the new millennium.”
John Wilkin, who graduated in 1986, could not attend the event due to a prior engagement.
