CAROL LINDSAY
KWAPIL AWARD
PRESENTATION
for
CAROL LINDSAY
Carol Lindsay, right, library director for The Star in Toronto,
Canada, celebrating with friend and colleague Barbara Semonche.
Link to Carol's 1987 Henebry Award celebration.
News Division of SLA Awards Banquet
at the
Platt Park Center (formerly The Cincinnati Club)
Cincinnati, Ohio
6:30 - 10:00 p.m. Monday, June 7, 1993
[Note: Presentation remarks by Barbara Semonche.]
Before I begin my assignment this evening, I’d like to take a few moments to recall an earlier SLA conference. The one in 1968. Twenty-five years ago, in a Los Angeles hotel, a tragedy occurred. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. News Division members attending the conference at that same hotel responded in a characteristically professional manner. Shifting quickly from their typically news research roles, they became reporters providing their newspapers back home with on-the-scene accounts. Several of those News Division members are here tonight. They are Carol Lindsay, Jim Scofield, and Andy Ippolito. Some of our members, notably Jim Doohan, former librarian with the Kansas City Star, earned byline credits. With such outstanding leadership, the image of news librarians was changing even then.
It is a special privilege for me to present Carol Lindsay, librarian for The Star in Toronto, with the Joseph F. Kwapil Memorial Award. This award, the highest recognition of the Division, is given for major achievement in the field of news librarianship and outstanding service to the News Division. She joins two other Canadian newspaper librarians, David Rhydwen and Shirley Mooney Aabjerg, as Kwapil Award winners. Tonight is the time when the Division can enthusiastically acknowledge Carol’s professional accomplishments.
With a grateful nod to this evening’s other eminent honorees, Kathy Trimble, Jo Kirks and Yvonne Egertson, John Cronin, our gracious Cincinnati hosts and our inestimable Awards Committee, I begin.
Tonight is, indeed, a very special occasion. It is our Division’s 16th Awards Banquet. And this is perhaps the largest single gathering of the best brains in news fact-finding and information analysis since Joseph Kwapil and five other newspaper librarians lunched at the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1923. I hasten to add that Carol Lindsay was NOT there. Her professional contributions came much later.
Carol Lindsay is a native of Toronto, Canada earning her B.L.S. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Library Science. Subsequently she became an editorial assistant with Maclean’s magazine; production assistant, research and staff writer, at the Toronto Star Weekly; assistant librarian, Globe and Mail;, chief of research for public affairs, Canadian Television Network before moving to The Star in 1967. Her path to newspaper librarianship is diverse and challenging. She spent her entire professional life in journalism. Few can match Carol’s extraordinary range of experiences in magazines AND newspapers AND television.
She was Chair of the Newspaper Division from 1972-73 (this is her twentieth anniversary!) at which time she presided over the first Division-sponsored Newspaper Library Basics Seminars. She was president of Toronto’s SLA Chapter serving from 1977 to 1978. Carol was also one of the authors of the first Guidelines for Newspaper Libraries published by ANPA in 1975. She has served in all Division offices. Her committee work includes just about every major one in the Division. She has been speaker, discussion leader, instructor and panelist at many of our conferences. In 1987, Carol was honored with the Agnes Henebry Roll of Honor Award.
In 1923, just about the time when the Newspaper Group was launched, The Star founded its library. At least, that’s when the first librarian was appointed. He was an Anglican priest who, it seems, had a theological disagreement with his bishop and so had taken a job with The Star as a reporter some ten years earlier. In addition to running the library, the reverend gentleman also found time to officiate at christenings, weddings and funerals of Star staff and their families. Carol’s library duties, multifaceted as they are, do not, as far as I can determine, include any of the above special services. But if called upon, doubtless she could with all her considerable intelligence, aplomb and artistry, rise to the occasion. However, her professional interests definitely run to the secular rather than the religious.
An example might suffice. Julie Kirsh, Carol’s counterpart at the Toronto Sun, offers an interesting perspective. Upon visiting Carol in her Star library office, Julie was overwhelmed, nay stunned, even speechless by the spectacular view of the glittering Lake Superior through her enormous wide-angle window. Sailboats and seagulls arabesquesed in clear, azure expanse. Competing for the visitor’s attention was the rest of Carol’s spacious, well-appointed office. The only conclusion Julie could draw from this highly unusual state of affairs was that Carol had somehow negotiated the publisher, gracefully and cheerfully, out of HIS office. Something, I gather, that is typical of Carol’s subtle, skillful, good-humored management style. And perhaps yet another indication of her growing professional influence.
Further testimony to Carol’s inimitable talent comes from The Star’s Assistant Managing Editor, Phil Bingley.
"Carol Lindsay has been synonymous with two facts of life at The Toronto Star since 1967 – a superbly efficient library and a warm, friendly library staff. This is no coincidence: Carol is responsible for both. Anyone who knows how critical a library can be to the success of a newspaper will appreciate why we feel so fortunate to have had Carol as our chief librarian for more than a quarter of a century. She has literally taken our facility by the scruff of the neck and brought it into the modern era, first with new microfilm equipment in 1985 and [later] a completely computerized information system [called ALIS]. Need help with a problem or simply some friendly advice? Carol Lindsay provides it all each day with grace and good humor."
From former Kwapil-Award winner, Homer Martin, we discover something else about Carol. She keeps lions. Not in her residence, of course, in the Toronto Zoo. She is one of the chief supporters of a pride of African lions. Further, she visits them regularly. And she has been involved in building new quarters for them. [Elegantly appointed, I’m sure.] And did you know that this support is reciprocated by the lions? For when The Star, which is justifiably proud of her, published a story in April 1987, the headline read: Librarian at Star Wins Award for Leadership, it was accompanied by a photo of two of her lions. The two lions even braved a late-season snowfall to put in an appearance with their benefactor. Imagine the response when word circulates of Carol being honored with the Kwapil?
There is another side to Carol. A somewhat "mysterious" side. She who can ferret fleeting facts from ephemeral sources, who can track down the most elusive historical facts and figures, who documents esoteric elements of Ernest Hemingway’s life and career [Hemingway was a reporter with The Star], who delves into such philosophical questions as what constitutes the soul of Canada, who can discuss foreign trade treaties, currency exchange rates, cathedral architecture, choral music, English poetry, and, doubtless, ice hockey scores, has one teensy problem, hardly worth mentioning except for the growing insistence these days on full disclosure. The truth is: Carol gets lost. Well, not lost exactly, after all, she knows where she is. It’s just that other people can’t always locate her in the place and at the time she said she’d be. Doubtless Carol is on yet another quest, travelling far and wide for new information and old treasures.
The lion-hearted Mr. Kwapil would have approved of Carol being honored in his name. Although they never met, they obviously shared some strong convictions about the place of libraries in newspapers. To quote Mr. Kwapil in the early 1920s:
"The morgue is a big factor in modern journalism. The average editor and publisher do not realize this, and often think that almost any one can fill the post of librarian. Then they wonder why they do not get results from a department, the head of which ranks with file clerks instead of with the editors… I should say that every dollar judiciously spent on the morgue will add at least ten to the physical valuation of the newspaper property on the whole."
(from Carol, sixty years later, in June 1980)
"The unpleasant truth is that management too often perceives the library as merely an overhead cost, and to management overhead is always too high. At the best of times it cuts into revenues and so reduces profits, and when times are tough, overhead can result in net loss.
"In these days of shrinking profits, management’s top priority is to cut costs, and the library that is viewed only as "overhead" is going to be right up there at the top of the list – along with personnel and public relations – when ways to cut costs are being considered. Such a negative view on the part of management is fostered by the library whose staff have lost sight of their objectives, whose energies are solely devoted to collection growth, file integrity and preservation of materials, rather than aiming to provide the best possible service to users."
One can’t properly acknowledge Carol Lindsay without recognizing her mentor, former Globe & Mail librarian, David Rhydwen. David, no longer with us, has been an acknowledged leader, innovator and pioneer of newspaper library methods, of editorial user information services, and of information science technology applications. In 1984 he was awarded the SLA John Cotton Dana Award.
Carol has learned much from her mentor, her colleagues and her friends. Truth to tell, she has taught those of us in the News Division even more in the past quarter century. She has always been on the cutting edge in a timely fashion of what’s new, what works and what lies ahead.
Regardless of whether the tools of the twenty-first century news librarian remain scissors, file cabinets and telephones, or become computers, scanners, optical discs and personal digital assistants, the vital ingredient will always be the individual’s commitment and professionalism.
For those of us who know Carol, who worked on national committees with her, toured news libraries all over the country with her, shared meals, swapped stories, undertaken research with her and grew to admire her wit and wisdom, recognize how truly extraordinary her professional commitment is.
For me, Carol is simply the very best combination of "Northern know-how" and "Southern charm" in the Division.
Still, for Carol it seems, categories are too small. Author, editor, researcher, world traveler, raconteur, manager par excellent, and champion news librarian, she truly is in a unique, highly disinguished class of her own.
She doesn’t regard her work as what she does, but as who she is.
In the past, if the Division needed someone to lead, serve, write, edit, fact-check, research, analyze, critique, cajole, guide, organize, support, or enhance, Carol was the one who volunteered.
Now, as the Division seeks someone to praise, reward, honor, and recognize as a prime example of the very best in our profession, it is Carol Lindsay who is selected.
Carol, please come to the podium and receive your Joseph F. Kwapil Award.
It reads: "To Carol Lindsay, presented in appreciation of professional excellence in the news library field and distiguished activity in Division programs and projects."
Canadian newspaper librarians
celebrating at the 1984 SLA Conference in New York
are pictured left
to right: Julie Kirsh, Shirley Mooney Aabjerg, David Rhydwen
(receiving
SLA's John Cotten Dana Award), Carol Lindsay, and Baltimore
Sun librarian, Clem Vitek.
1987
News Division Awards Banquet: Laguna Nigel, CA
Carol Lindsay and Shirley Mooney Receive Henebry
Awards
Shirley Mooney (left) and Carol Lindsay on the balcony.
Carol Lindsay, left, receiving the Henebry Award from Homer Martin.
News Division's 1987 honorees and their presenters: (seated left to right) Shirley Mooney (Henebry Award), Jim Scofield (Kwapil Award), Carol Lindsay (Henebry Award), Barbara Newcombe (Henebry Award), (standing left to right)Jesse Scofield, Mr. Aabjerg (Shirley Mooney's husband), Kathy Trimble, Rich Ploch, Kathy Foley, Carolyn Hardnett, and Homer Martin.