**Apologies for cross-posting**
2005 Tony Kent Strix Award winner is Jack Mills
The Tony Kent Strix Award, given by the UK eInformation Group of CILIP:
the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, was
awarded to Jack Mills on Thursday 30th June at the CILIP Umbrella Awards
Dinner. In his absence, the Trophy was presented by Chris Armstrong to
Vanda Broughton, a colleague and member of the team who nominated Jack
for the award. She spoke warmly of his appreciation, and thanked the
Group on his behalf.
Jack Mills has spent more than sixty years of his life in the study,
teaching, development and promotion of information retrieval,
principally as a major player in the British school of facet analysis
which builds on the tradition of Ranganathan. His work as a teacher
dates back to 1953 and his appointment as lecturer at the newly formed
North Western Polytechnic School of Librarianship. His Modern outline of
library classification was the standard textbook for British
librarianship students for very many years.
He is probably best known to the wider professional community in his
role as a researcher. In 1966/67 he was Deputy Director of the
prestigious Cranfield Project, supporting Cyril Cleverdon in the first
major exercise in information retrieval in the United Kingdom. The
results of the work at Cranfield had a major influence on British
information science, and the documentation of that project continues to
be cited in the professional literature today.
A founder member and chairman of the Classification Research Group
(1952-), he has lectured and written about, and been an advocate for
classification theory. Since the 1960s he has been the driving force
behind the revision of the Bliss Bibliographic Classification, chairing
the Bliss Classification Association Committee, and undertaking the
greater part of the work of revision as Editor of the new scheme.
In 1998, Jack Mills was acknowledged by the Conference on the History
and Heritage of Science Information as a 'pioneer of information
science'. In
2003 his contribution to the field was marked by the award of an
Honorary Fellowship from the Chartered Institute for Library and
Information Professionals.
The Tony Kent Strix Award is presented each year in memory of Dr Tony
Kent, a past Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists, who died
in 1997. Tony Kent made a major contribution to the development of
information science both in the UK and internationally, particularly in
the field of chemistry. The award is offered in recognition of
individuals or groups who have made an outstanding contribution in the
field of information retrieval.
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