I was on the SLIS awards committee a little over a year ago. I gotta tell y'all, it was a pretty sweet gig. The "best paper" competition in particular attracted some jawdroppingly amazing work that was a total privilege to read. (We gave two awards that year. Just couldn't decide. What a great problem to have, right?) The overall process left me feeling fierce pride in SLIS's best students, and also some pride in SLIS faculty and instructional staff for how well we trained and inspired them. In other words, I didn't even get an award, and I still benefited considerably from the awards' existence! - RepoRat

I was a juror for the Sunburst Award a few years ago. It was a pretty intense experience, reading 100+ books and picking the best. Fortunately the jury wasn't dysfunctional at all. We had one near-diva/divo experience, but that was it. - John Dupuis

I will also adduce my experience getting a SLIS colleague a divisional career award. I honestly hadn't *known* what an amazing, hardworking, innovative person she is. Now I know. In spades. Having expected (I will be frank) to have to puff up her letter a bit, As Ya Do, and finding in sober fact that I didn't have room to praise all her accomplishments as they deserved. - RepoRat

I've written letters of support for nominees. I think my favorite award was seeing Marge get Librarian of the Year at WLA. She was incredibly deserving and I was glad to see someone honor that. I have not yet sat on any juries. - Hedgehog

I was on the LITA/Gaylord award committee twice and chair of the LITA/Library Hi Tech award committee once (in that case, I also helped write the award and, to my astonishment, won it). These were all worthwhile situations, and the LITA/LHT award continues to be a good one. (I think the Gaylord award's disappeared.) - Walt Crawford

In a past life I was the giver or coordinator of small non-profit grants of up to 5,000. For some it was my decision alone and for the larger grants, we had committees of professionals select from a pool of qualified applicants after a thorough review of all applicants. That was really tough. Winners were happy, losers mostly understanding. - ♫410 I Coach 'em Up♫

I was on (and chaired for a year) the undergratuate awards committee at MPOW. Like RR, there are some truly amazing students who made me feel like an underachiever (now and when i was as student). - ~Courtney F

I was on an awards committee for SLA-PAM back in the late 90s. It was pretty cool to hand out awards to other deserving folk. I've also been on committees that provide travel awards to people from outside of the US to come to SLA. That is also personally rewarding to see the difference that SLA can make for people. - Yo Joe. No, go slow.

Let's see. . . I believe I nominated Dorothea Salo for her Mover & Shaker Award. :) - laura x

I was on and then chaired the NMRT Marshall Cavendish award. It was...fine. The award's morphed into something else now. I think it was fairly new at the time, and was still sort of disorganized to get together. But it did gie me some insight into awards like that. - ellbeecee

Not quite the same thing, but I've judged the Open Repositories Developer Challenge for the last couple of years (see http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/develop...). That is amazing stuff and so awesome to see some really innovative stuff developed in relatively short sprints of time. Also a wee depressing on how much doesn't actually get incorporated into repository software... - Sarah