The 2020 Robert D. Williamson Award goes to Anna Raunik from the State Library of Queensland.
View the video of Anna’s presentation on the VALAView channel here:
Anna Raunik’s library career commenced at the Mount Isa Mines in 1983. Soon thereafter, her long relationship with the State Library of Queensland began with her appointment as its first Ethnic Services Librarian.
Over her now 35-year commitment to SLQ, Anna has moved through many career stages, initially as a Librarian, and increasingly in positions with a technology and discovery focus. In these roles, she has provided great leadership and been pivotal in positioning the State Library as an innovator, nationally and internationally.
Playing a key leadership role in the development of National edeposit (NED), a major National and State Libraries of Australia (NSLA) initiative, Anna’s commitment to access, shared and collaborative solutions, and improving the user experience contributed significant value to the project and the excellence of the end product.
Always innovative in her professional work, Anna has a future-focussed mindset when evaluating and recommending systems, to enable flexibility, new ways of undertaking workflows and processes, and requiring from vendors functionality they may not have previously considered. Three key examples of this are:
- State Library’s recognition as an innovative user of the Alma library management system, with staff participating in the Alma User Experience Working Group and early adopters programs for new functionalities.
- Implementation of “Unstacked”, an online client-curated view of the library’s collections, showing client search in real time, in a visually compelling interface. SLQ’s implementation includes additional features not part of the original software, suggested by our recipient.
- In-house solution for description of manuscript collections at the library, leveraging development work for the new website, and now providing a much improved user experience and seamless integration of client search and discovery.
Anna is a champion of open data and increasing access to collections for use and re-use. In 2010, she led the work for SLQ to donate its out of copyright digitised photographic collections to Wikimedia Commons; in 2011 Anna led the NSLA Libraryhack project to make collections available for all; and in 2014 worked on the Queensland Government Open Data Policy and Strategy, in recognition of her knowledge and expertise in this area.
The 2020 Williamson Award winner exemplifies excellence. Anna is deeply committed to constant improvement of the user experience, both at the library and online through the library website and catalogue and contributes creative solutions to sometimes seemingly intractable problems.
Anna ensures that digital excellence and a focus on an optimum client experience is always a consideration in the development and delivery of programs and services at the library.
In her current role as Executive Director Content and Client Services, Anna is responsible for delivering a world class content development service that promotes, creates, establishes and maintains the State Library’s physical, digital and virtual collections and catalogues.
