The third annual International Information Industry Awards, which took place last Wednesday at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London, have been widely judged the most successful yet.

Hosted by Online Information 2005 and Information World Review, the awards offer the chance for the global industry to recognise the achievements of information teams, information and content management projects, vendors and individual information professionals.

The evening was compered by Sir Trevor MacDonald OBE, and almost 400 guests were in attendance to salute excellence in the information field.

On a night where a wide range of awards were presented (see winners list below), a sombre note was struck at the beginning. The Annelie Vickers and Jeremy Lakin young achiever award was created by Onesource in memory of its former employees who were killed earlier this year in the terrorist attack on the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh.

The main criteria for the award was to find an individual who is making a significant contribution to improve the quality of information products or improve the way that information is used and applied within an organisation to improve business efficiency. Ben Lund, a member of the New Technology team at Nature Publishing Group, took the award.

The inaugural IWR Award for Technology of the Year went to collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. Its founder, Jimmy Wales, accepted the award via a pre-recorded video clip, saying the award was particularly meaningful as it came from knowledge management peers.

Online Information Conference chairman Martin White took the Lifetime Achievement award, after a long stint as a well-respected, energetic champion of the conference. White will resign from this position after next year's conference.

The BBC's Euan Semple topped off a year when he continued to drive knowledge innovation at the broadcasting corporation with a well-deserved gong as IWR's I nformation Professional of the Year.

The full winners list for 2005 was:

Project Awards

Product / Vendor Awards

Best Information / Knowledge Team Awards

Individual Awards