Welcome to the Library Society of the World’s Shovers and Makers awards.

Each March, Library Journal profiles a few dozen librarians as part of their Movers and Shakers awards. As in past years, their 2009 Movers and Shakers are great choices. These are people doing inspiring work who deserve some recognition.

But at the Library Society of the World (LSW), we are into inclusiveness. We believe that there are many more library people who deserve recognition or have inspiring stories to share than could ever be featured in an issue of Library Journal. We also have a do-it-yourself ethic. You can join the LSW just by creating an account on thelsw.org. So simply adding our hand-picked list to the Library Journal’s hand-picked list wouldn’t be in the right spirit.

So here’s the deal. Everyone can be a Shover and Maker. To make it official, you need to go to the Be an S&M Winner page, read the guidelines, and write up your Shover and Maker profile. It can be a sentence or two, or you can go on for paragraphs. But ideally, you will tell everyone about something you have done that you are proud of or excited about.

The only real rule is that you have to write your own Shovers and Makers profile. That way no one can complain that they didn’t get the award (since it’s up to them) and we will all get a little experience in shameless self-promotion.

So now is the time. You can go right to the Be an S&M Winner page and write up your profile which, once approved for publication, will appear as a post on this blog. Or you can check out the about page for a little more about this site (some of it is a repeat of this post). After you have written your own profile, please help spread the word about Shovers and Makers by sending your friends and colleagues to shoversandmakers.net. If you have a blog or other website, you can use our badges to help promote Shovers and Makers.

That’s it. It’s up to you now. Congratulations!

P.S. It seems entirely likely that there will be some problems with this site for the first day or two. If you notice anything broken, please leave a comment on this post or email nerdboys@shoversandmakers.net.