Paul A. Willis Outstanding Faculty Award

Named for long-time UK Libraries director Paul A. Willis, the Willis Award is given annually to a UK Libraries faculty member who stands out amongst their colleagues through outstanding achievements in their primary assignment and exemplary leadership, creativity, and spirit of service. 

Faculty members are nominated by their colleagues and selected by the National Advisory Board. Winners receive a cash award and are recognized at the annual UK Libraries National Advisory Board’s Spring Celebration.

View all of our past Willis Award recipients, and learn more about our most recent winners below.

Lybarger currently serves as the Director of Cataloging & Metadata Services, a position she has held since 2021. In this position, she directly supervises the centralized cataloging unit in William T. Young Library and supports cataloging in the Little Fine Arts & Design Library, the Special Collections Research Center, and the Maps Library. She also develops and supports tools and workflows for cataloging, metadata, and database management. Lybarger first began working for UK Libraries in 1995 as an undergraduate student assistant in the former Shaver Engineering Library’s computer labs. She rejoined the Libraries in 2005 as a graduate assistant in the Digital Programs Department where she helped with the National Digital Newspaper Program. After graduating with her MSLS, she worked in Preservation & Digital Programs as project manager for the Daily Racing Form Preservation Project, leading the microfilming, digitization, and metadata creation for the historic thoroughbred racing newspaper. She joined the UK Libraries faculty in 2009 as Head of Cataloging & Metadata.

Since beginning her career at UK Libraries in 2001, Dr. Stacey Greenwell has served in a variety of roles, including Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Research, the first Director of the Hub, and the Head of Desktop Support. She is currently the Coordinator of Educational Services as well as an instructional designer and liaison to the College of Communication & Information and the Lewis Honors College. Greenwell is a Fellow of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the founder of the SLA Academic Division, and co-editor of the community’s journal, Practical Academic Librarianship. She has co-authored numerous books on librarianship and instructional design and taught academic libraries courses at UK and Syracuse University. 

Ruth Bryan serves as University Archivist at the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center, where she has worked since 2011. She leads donor relations, archival appraisal, collection management, and public services and outreach for University of Kentucky records and related collections. Bryan is a co-creator and organizer of the History Allies: Helping Protect Your Past workshops, the co-founder and organizer of UK Libraries’ web archiving program, and the co-founder and organizer of the statewide Kentucky Heritage Emergency Response Network (KHERN). She publishes and presents nationally and internationally in the areas of archival appraisal, web archiving, university history, and archival management. A Certified Archivist, she has worked as a professional archivist for 23 years.