WASHINGTON — A University of South Carolina professor is this year’s recipient of the Rita Lloyd Moroney Award from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), recognizing excellence in published works involving USPS history.

Allison Marsh, a professor in the department of history, University of South Carolina, Columbia, was honored with the Senior Prize for the article “Greetings from the Factory Floor: Industrial Tourism and the Picture Postcard,” published in the October 2008 issue of Curator: The Museum Journal.

Sheila Brennan also was recognized, receiving the Junior Prize for her work, “Stamping American Memory: Stamp Collecting in the U.S., 1880s-1930s.” Brennan wrote the paper as her Ph.D. dissertation in 2009 while a graduate student at George Mason University in Virginia.

The U.S. Postal Service sponsors two annual prizes for scholarship on the history of the American postal system, the Rita Lloyd Moroney Awards. Scholarship by senior scholars (faculty members, independent scholars and public historians) is eligible for a $2,000 award. Scholarship by junior scholars (undergraduates and graduate students) is eligible for a $1,000 award.

The awards are intended for scholarship on any topic on the history of the American postal system from the colonial era to the present — including the history of the imperial postal system that preceded the establishment of the American postal system in 1775.

The award is named after Rita Lloyd Moroney, who began conducting historical research for the Postmaster General in 1962 and served as U.S. Postal Service historian from 1973 to 1991. Additional information on these awards and application instructions are at www.usps.com/postalhistory/moroney.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no direct support from taxpayers. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.