The CHLA/ABSC Board created the Award for Innovation in 2008 to recognize librarians or teams who have created or demonstrated improvements in health sciences library services for their users or the profession through innovative thinking and approaches. The award is offered annually and will consist of a certificate to be presented at the annual conference. In the fall of 2009, this award was renamed the CHLA/ABSC Flower Award for Innovation to honour the memory of Babs Flower and her contribution to health sciences librarianship in Canada.

M.A. (Muriel Armstrong) Flower, known as “Babs” to the health sciences library community, was commissioned by CHLA/ABSC and the AFMC Committee on Libraries to survey health sciences libraries and services across Canada in 1987. The report which followed was most appropriately called "Libraries without Walls: Blueprint for the Future". It is now widely known as the "Flower Report". “Babs” was one of the "Group of Sixty" initial members of CHLA/ABSC who joined the Association in its first year of existence, and was responsible for local arrangements for the first CHLA/ABSC annual meeting held in Montreal. 

Potential nominees

The innovation should be unique and cutting-edge and must have had measurable impact and may include applications of new web services, creation of innovative technology tools, creation of innovative services or applications of technology in new settings for the benefit of users.

Evaluation Criteria:

Innovation: The award recognizes improvements in delivery of projects, programs, services, etc. which constitute a significant positive impact over existing methods. New methods or ideas in delivery of services or programs using new technologies will have particular merit. Innovations of any scale are welcome.

Impact: The award recognizes activities which show potential for long term impact on libraries or the profession. Impacts to the user community and enduring benefit to these users should be illustrated.

Utility: The award is intended to recognize a significant contribution to health sciences librarianship. The extent to which the innovation can be adopted by other libraries or adapted to other settings will be considered.

Nominees must be members of CHLA/ABSC, and can be nominated by managers, supervisors, colleagues, clients, or self-nominated.

Nominators need to submit:

• a detailed description of the innovative practice, including aims of the project, implementation and outcomes.
• a letter of support verifying the applications details by a manager, co-worker or client
• a covering letter providing all contact details, including full name and address of the employing organization

Nominations must be received by February 1st each year, and submitted to the CHLA/ABSC Past President, past-president@chla-absc.ca

Recipients:

• 2011: Gillian Griffith, Queen,s University, for reaching and working with outreach clients through WebEx.
• 2010: Shannon Long, Vancouver Coastal Health, for her work on using RSS feeds to create a targeted current awareness website.
• 2009: Virginia Wilson, John Yobb and Christine Neilson for SHIRP Authentication