Libraries to Honor SLIS Graduate

Each year at this time, the University holds the Lyman T. Johnson Awards Banquet to honor current students and alumnus with awards. The 2009 Lyman T. Johnson Award nominee for the UK Libraries and the School of Library and Information Science has been selected and will receive one of the one of the Torch Bearer Awards at the banquet on October 30th.

The award will be going to James R. O’Rourke, Sr., MS in Library Science. Unfortunately, Mr. O’Rourke is deceased, but his award will be received by his son, Dr. James R. O’Rourke, Jr. The information about Mr. O’Rourke which follows was prepared by Reinette Jones for our submission. Our thanks go to Reinette and Dennis Carrigan (SLIS) who select our nominee each year.

This recognition is long overdue for James O’Rourke, Sr. and his contributions to the field of library and information science. He is being recognized posthumously. James Ralph O’Rourke, Sr. was born in 1913 in Tuscaloosa, AL, and died in North Carolina in 1999. After double-checking our files, it is believed that he was the first African American graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science, in 1957. He served as head librarian at Stillman Junior College [now Stillman College] in Tuscaloosa, AL, before being named head librarian at Kentucky State University Library, where he served from 1949-1970. He was a graduate of Stillman Junior College, Talladega College, earned his B.S. in Library Science at Atlanta University, and his M.S. in library science at the University of Kentucky.

James R. O’Rourke, Sr. was one of the first African American members of the Kentucky Library Association. He was author of several articles and co-author of the Student Library Assistants of Kentucky Handbook. He and a fellow librarian established the Student Library Assistants program in 1952, the only state-wide program in the U.S. that trained high school students in library techniques. The program also provided scholarships for high school seniors who intended to go to college. Mr. O’Rourke was the commencement speaker at various high schools in Kentucky. He traveled around the state providing library training to public library employees and held an annual workshop to help those same employees gain state certification. He was the last chairman of the librarians’ division of the Kentucky Negro Educational Association, from 1952 until the organization was subsumed into the Kentucky Education Association in 1957.

James R. O’Rourke, Sr. was also a civil rights advocate and served as a member of several organizations. He was the presiding chair of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in Lexington, KY., and was co-chairman of the Kentucky Committee on Religious and Human Rights. Mr. O’Rourke was a member of the Black History Committee of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and a co-contributor to the Commission’s publication, Kentucky’s Black Heritage.James R. O’Rourke, Sr. was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He left Kentucky a few years after his retirement from Kentucky State University in 1970.