Faculty of Information doctoral candidate, Asen O. Ivanov (pictured second from left), was the recipient of the Best Paper Award at the Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI) 2015, which was held in July at the University of Maryland.
Ivanov’s winning paper, “On Significance and Value: A Conceptual Assessment of the Relationship between Appraisal and Preservation in Digital Archives,” was judged to have “significance” by a jury of scholars and specialists in the field of archival studies.
Select faculty attendees of AERI 2015 chose to honour Ivanov’s paper after an intensive double-blind peer review process. The jury was asked to consider the submitted papers’ research merit, potential disciplinary and societal contribution, and presentation quality.
“There are many reasons to be happy for winning an award,” said Ivanov, who received a certificate and a $500 Amazon gift card. “But the reason I’m most happy about is that the argument I put forward in this paper was appreciated by the archival science community. This motivates me to continue developing my research in this direction.”
Besides Ivanov’s victory in the Best Paper competition, iSchool students were also well represented among the winners of the AERI 2015 Best Poster competition. Jamila Ghaddar (pictured right), won the First Runner Up Award, Ivanov won the Second Runner Up Award, and Rebecka Sheffield (pictured second from right above, and at right), took home the Audience Award.
Since 2009, the Archival Education and Research Institute has brought together faculty and 
doctoral students working in archival studies for a weeklong event. In addition to paper presentations and poster sessions, this year’s program also included workshops on grant writing, curriculum development, digital humanities, and other topics.
The Faculty of Information will host AERI in Toronto in 2017.
