Richard's vision for CLNet reaches far beyond the UCLA community and effectively meets the intellectual, cultural and information needs of the Latino community at large. CLNet was entirely developed with grant funding secured by Richard's successful fund writing proposals. The effort Richard has invested into creating CLNet goes far beyond the day-to-day work of UCLA librarians. CLNet represents the results of imagination and perseverance in a new arena.

One colleague of Richard's has identified him as "...an electronic populist who believes these services should be available as widely as possible..." Another colleague attested "...it would be a mistake to consider Richard primarily as an excellent 'Chicano' librarian but rather. . .as an outstanding professional librarian who has adopted the field of Chicano Studies as the area he wanted to promote and develop." Still another wrote "With unflagging energy Richard read the books and the manuals, he talked to programmers and technicians, and he taught himself what he needed to know to establish and develop CLNet."

For his dedication to excellence and commitment to providing access to scholarly resources to the University and to the community at large, Richard is richly deserving of being recognized as the 1996 LAUC-LA Librarian of the Year.

Members of the 1995/96 Committee of LAUC-LA Distinguished Librarian Award are Professor Albert Boime - Art History; Debe Costa -College Library; Rita Costello - Rosenfeld Library; Ray Soto -Bibliographers Group and Suzanne Shellaby - University Archives.