$allDocs won't contain all records, only the first. <> in scalar context will return one 'record'. Use something like:

local $/ = "<hr>\r";
my $rxExtractDoc = qr
   {(?xms)
           (<h4>Award\s\#(\d+)(.*?)<hr>)
   };

while(<>) { # read one record at a time
    if($allDocs =~ m{$rxExtractDoc}g ) {
        my %award = (); # award hash
        $award{'record'}= $1;
        $award{'A_awardno'}= $2; 
        $award{'entireaward'}= $3;
   #    $award{'entireaward'}=~ s/\n//g;
        $award{'entireaward'}=~ s/\t//g;
        $award{'entireaward'}=~ s/\r//g;

        # ... rest of code
    }
}
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And yes, <> will read from STDIN or filenames from command line.

I hope this helps.