Janet Weaver, assistant curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives at University of Iowa Libraries, has been honored with the 2017 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section Award for Significant Achievement in Woman’s Studies Librarianship. The award honors a significant or one-time contribution to women’s studies librarianship.

Weaver gained the attention of the ACRL awards committee with the Migration is Beautiful website, which is constructed from the oral histories and archival collections gathered by the Iowa Women’s Archives over the past 12 years as part of the Mujeres Latinas project. She conceived the Migration is Beautiful website as a way to give back to the people who had so generously contributed their oral history interviews, photographs, and precious documents to the archives. The website provides access to hundreds of digitized documents and audio clips through historical topics and life stories. It also includes an interactive migration map created by UI GIS librarian Rob Shepard in the Digital Studio for the Public Humanities.

The ACRL committee also took special notice of Weaver’s collaboration with her UI Libraries colleagues to construct the site and the graduate and undergraduate students who helped select documents and write vignettes for it.

Weaver will be presented with her award during the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago in June.

Read the full press release from the ALA here. Explore the Migration is Beautiful website here.