2001 Betsy Fisher and Willa Reister

Betsy Fisher, Senior Researcher, Nashville Public Library, and Willa Reister, Reference Librarian, Knox County Public Library, are the winners of the 2001 Tennessee Resource Sharing Award, given by the Tennessee Library Association and sponsored by TENN-SHARE.

Betsy Fisher and Willa Reister are pioneers in resource sharing in Tennessee. Between them they have 50 years of resource sharing experience. This shared experience has resulted in many advancements in resource sharing throughout the state, not least among them the founding of TENN-SHARE.

Willa earned her MLS at the State University of New York at Buffalo.  Her first professional job was at the Clinton Public Library in the Clinch-Powell region.  Willa claims, “There is nothing like moving from a large library to a small library to convince you of the importance of resource sharing.”  Willa came to Knox County Public Library in 1980 as Coordinator of the Tennessee Resource Center. In 1996 she became Coordinator of the statewide Tennessee Resource Center.  She works now in the Interlibrary Loan and Reference departments at Knox County PL. 

Betsy started her library career with Nashville Public Library in 1972.  During the next four years, she worked full-time while going part-time to Peabody College to get her MLS.  In 1976 she transferred from Circulation to the Nashville Area Resource Center in 1976 and served as its Coordinator from 1981 to 1997, providing interlibrary loan and reference service to over 50 public libraries in 26 counties. She has continued to oversee the Nashville Public Library ILL office since 1997.  

Betsy and Willa helped draft the provisions of the Tennessee Resource Sharing Agreement, which made it possible for all Tennessee public libraries to receive free photocopies from the majority of academic libraries in the state. In addition, Betsy was part of the committee that drafted the first document for the Tennessee Electronic Library. 

Betsy oversaw the design and development of the delivery procedures for the Nashville Area Library Alliance Athena Project, including a method to incorporate the public schools into the project. This also involved training nearly 100 public school media specialists to use Project Athena.

Betsy and Willa are both founding members of TENN-SHARE and have served on its Board in many capacities. They are both members of TLA and of their local, regional library associations. Both in their professional jobs and in their volunteer jobs Betsy and Willa have made resource sharing in this state a reality. It is in no small part their contributions that have made TENN-SHARE the vital organization that it is today.