(via Gwen Gregory, University of Illinois at Chicago)
ACRL is pleased to announce the launch of the new Value of Academic Libraries Travel Scholarships. The Board of Directors has allocated $10,000 in fiscal year 2018 to offer travel scholarships of up to $2,000 each for librarians presenting on their work demonstrating the impact of academic libraries in the broader landscape of higher education.
“Academic librarians excel when communicating the impact of our library services, programs, and spaces, within our own community,” says Value of Academic Libraries Committee Chair Alan Carbery. To build on that “the Value of Academic Libraries Travel Scholarships initiative encourages librarians to move the conversation outward and to articulate the value of academic libraries to wider stakeholder groups. This is a fantastic opportunity for academic librarians to showcase their research to a wider audience.”
ACRL invites practicing librarians and information professionals to apply for funding to present their work at higher education conferences or disciplinary conferences where they will reach audiences outside the library field. The presentations may be based on practice-based work or formal research projects. Applications are due by December 8, 2017. We expect to announce future rounds of scholarships in summer 2018.
This program is one of several developed by ACRL’s Value of Academic Libraries Committee to support librarians in their efforts to communicate to our partners in higher education including administrators, scholars, and teachers working in all disciplines. These travel scholarships support the community in taking up a recommendation from the new ACRL report Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research (prepared by OCLC Research and released in September 2017 for download or purchase) that academic librarians effectively communicate their contributions both up to institutional stakeholders and out to other departments.
Details on the Value of Academic Libraries Travel Scholarships, including how to apply, are available on the ACRL website.