Congratulations to CLA’s 2021 Mary A. Grant Volunteer Service Award Recipient, Pat Lawton. The Mary A. Grant Volunteer Service Award Presentation will be held during the Business Meeting at the CLA Virtual Conference on April 30, 2021 via Zoom from 4:45 – 5:00 pm Eastern.

The Mary A. Grant Volunteer Service Award was established in 1996 and is presented by the CLA Executive Board in recognition of outstanding volunteer service to the Association by a CLA member.

Pat currently serves as Special Projects Librarian and Head of the Digital Access Projects and Outreach Services at the Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame and as Digital Projects Librarian for the Catholic Research Resources Alliance. She is an active member of the Catholic Library Association and Archival Resources for Catholic Collections. Pat has presented and published widely on collaborative and digital initiatives, with a special focus on ensuring the survival and discovery of religious archives.

Prior to her tenure at Notre Dame, Pat was a faculty member in the School of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh and taught cataloging, the organization of information, and knowledge management courses online and face to face for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds a BA in English and the MLS from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.