Librarian Award

For immediate release:

Cal State L.A. Librarian Receives
21st Century Librarian Award

Los Angeles, CA – Yongyi Song (Alhambra resident), technical service and collection development librarian at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at California State University, Los Angeles, was recently selected for the National 21st Century Librarian Award for 2004 by Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Song will be one of only two librarians in the nation to be honored on Sunday, October 10, at the Marx Hotel & Conference Center in Syracuse, New York. (The other award is for the 21st Century New Librarian.)

Song, a native of Shanghai, has long devoted himself to preserving the true history of China’s Cultural Revolution and combating government censorship through myriad publications, including bibliographies, source books and the “Chinese Cultural Revolution” CD-ROM database. Song was twice jailed by the Chinese authorities; once during the Cultural Revolution for organizing an underground reading club, and again in 1999, for collecting primary sources on the Revolution.

Prior to his appointment at Cal State L.A., Song served as bibliographer and librarian for East Asian Collections at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA; Chinese bibliographer at the University of Pittsburgh’s East Asian Library; assistant cataloger for the Kinsey Institute Library at Indiana University; and instructor of comparative literature and library assistant at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Among his many books and articles, Song is a coauthor with other librarians of several books and monographs, The Cultural Revolution: A Bibliography, 1966-1996 (Harvard-Yenching Library, 1998) and Heterodox Thought during the Cultural Revolution I and II (M.E. Sharpe, 2002).

Song received a master’s degree in library and information science from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1995, a master’s degree in Oriental literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1992, and a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Normal University in 1981.

The 21st Century Librarian awards were established four years ago to recognize librarians who have become leaders in shaping the evolution of this new information environment. The awards are a project of the Master of Science in library and information science students in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. The students manage all aspects of the award program, including the development of award criteria, judging and selection, and promotions.

WORKING FOR CALIFORNIA – California State University, Los Angeles: A comprehensive university at the heart of a major metropolitan city. The 175-acre hilltop campus is located five miles east of Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. Since 1947, Cal State L.A. has been a leader in providing quality higher education. Today, the campus comprises a faculty of internationally recognized scholars and artists, and more than 20,000 students with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds that reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Cal State L.A. is one of 23 campuses in the CSU system.