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The 2008 recipient of the Catherine J. Reynolds Research Grant is Judith Downie, Humanities and Government Information Librarian at California State University-San Marcos. Judith’s research interests include the use of government documents in instruction by information literacy librarians and faculty, professional education and competencies in government documents librarianship, and the use of technologies in instruction.

The Reynolds Award will provide the funds to hire an adjunct instructor to assist Judith with some of her teaching responsibilities, which will allow her to devote more time to her research on librarians’ use or avoidance of government information. Judith is currently surveying non-documents specialists on their education and experience with documents and their reasons for not using them. So far, she has collected data through an online survey of California instruction librarians and their awareness and use of government documents. She plans to expand this survey to the national level.

Judith hopes the findings from her state and national surveys will help strengthen collaborations among librarians, their peers, and their patrons. She believes these collaborations, especially those involving documents specialists, will help improve the overall use of government documents.

Judith plans to report her research in various publications that address different librarian interests, as well as through local and national presentations. She hopes her research will bolster outreach efforts among both government documents specialists and non-specialists, and also encourage library school administrators to offer more documents-focused courses.