Todd Van Dusen was enthusiastically nominated for his impressive career. He “has developed a curatorial knowledge and interest of Canadian motion picture film and broadcasting history to match his comprehensive knowledge of obsolete video recording methods and equipment.”

He is someone that literally worked his way up the Archives, beginning in the 1970s when he worked in the shipping and receiving department. He then became the resident operator of their new telecine equipment in the 1980s, and for over 20 years worked transferring archival footage for in-house preservation and reference projects as well as outside documentary projects. Despite his breadth of work (having transferred countless hours of materials for the archive and even playing a lead role in the planning design and acquisition of new a digital scanning suite) Todd remains unsung to the larger archival community, and even to his own institution. He is heavily relied on, but rarely recognized, finding it sometimes even difficult to get funding to attend the annual AMIA conference.

In November of last year, Todd was one of only a few staff members who were hand selected to be part of a high-security tour of the Gatineau Preservation Centre for US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. This wasn’t a typical tour, but it was entirely typical that Todd was selected, and by all reports was considered to be a memorable highlight of the Presidential Tour in Ottawa. A recent evaluation described Todd in these words - "Virtually all of the work performed by Mr.Van Dusen is scrutinized by clients of the LAC. Mr. Van Dusen transcends all of the aspects of competencies in personal integrity, reliability, judgement, leadership and effective interpersonal skills that are required in his unique position.”

The Dan and Kathy Leab Award was established to acknowledge the contribution of archivists who seldom have the opportunity of being recognized outside their institutions. Award recipients have worked in a moving image archive or with a moving image collection, and have made a significant contribution to their institution or the field as a whole. Contributions are either in the form of a notable achievement or special project, or through the noteworthy performance of daily tasks carried out over a long period of time. The award is given without regard to AMIA membership.

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The Leab Award will be presented Saturday, December 3, 2005.