The Sacrificial Lamb Award
"for those who have gone first"
The Sacrificial Lamb Award recognizes an institution that has sacrificed for the common good of the Aleph user community.
At the opening reception of NAAUG 2003 in Iowa City, McGill passed on the Sacrificial Lamb Award to Boston College, for their adventures in the Terra Incognita of NCIP, SFX and Metalib.
The University of Notre Dame was also acknowleged as the "First Lamb", and Marc Truitt was presented with his very own lamb. (Pictures have been promised.)
The History of the Sacrificial Lamb Award
(as told by Marc Truitt of Notre Dame University)
Out on Cyprus last Spring (at the Aleph Seminar 2002), the seminar organizers (a separate company hired by Ex Libris) had a bell... a brass school bell, to be precise. One of those old-fashioned things with an oaken handle. One of the organizers would ring said instrument just before the beginning of each round of meetings, presumably to call all of us errant students to order.
It was *amazingly* annoying to some of us. I don't know why. Perhaps it was the curious juxtaposition of sun and sand on the one hand and bell-ringing discipline on the other! I recall that several of us (names suppressed to protect the guilty ;) ) even plotted to *steal* the bell, which we did, briefly. We didn't actually get away with it, though.
We also discussed what we'd *do* with the bell, were our conspiracy to succeed. Someone said that we should hurl it into the sea. Somebody else said that we should make of it a trophy... and thus the seed was planted.
Memory fails about exactly how, but the idea somehow got floated (probably over prodigious quantities of the local firewater!) that we might concoct a prize that would serve a purpose analogous to the old 'Bum Steer' awards of NOTIS days, except that this one would be aimed at building a sense of community *between* sites. The idea that it should be called the 'Sacrificial Lamb Award', came from McGill's (then very fresh) 14.2 upgrade travails.
The fact that we couldn't follow through on the plan, due to the failed theft of *The Bell*, was solved via e-bay. Within literally five minutes after logon to e-bay, a near look-alike for the 'Cyprus Bell' was bid upon and won. We had a bell.
Six months later, the plaque was made. The plaque has brass plates (for the winners' names) and a little shelf, on which the bell is to be displayed. With the first plate left blank, and the second inscribed for McGill, the plaque arrived at McGill in January 2003.