Small Grants to Libraries (NEH)

America’s Music: A Film History of Our Popular Music from Blues to Bluegrass to Broadway is a six-week public program featuring documentary film screenings and scholar-led discussions of twentieth-century American popular music. The six sessions focus on these uniquely American musical genres: blues and gospel, Broadway, jazz, bluegrass and country, rock n’ roll, and mambo and hip hop. The project will provide DVDs of compelling documentary films, discussion guidelines, original essays by eminent scholars, extensive resource guides, and Web support. The project will offer participating organizations training in how to organize, promote, and run the series successfully. All libraries and nonprofit organizations selected to implement the public program will receive grants of $2,500 for project expenses. Fifty organizations (libraries and other eligible nonprofits) will be selected to receive a grant to present this series of community programs on the history of American popular music. The grantee institutions are expected to offer the programs between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013.

Amount: $2,500

Date due: March 14, 2012

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Sparks! Ignitition Grants for Libraries

The Sparks! Ignition Grants for Libraries and Museums are a special funding opportunity within the IMLS National Leadership Grants program. These small grants encourage libraries, museums, and archives to test and evaluate specific innovations in the ways they operate and the services they provide. Sparks Grants support the deployment, testing, and evaluation of promising and groundbreaking new tools, products, services, or organizational practices. You may propose activities or approaches that involve risk, as long as the risk is balanced by significant potential for improvement in the ways libraries and museums serve their communities.

Successful proposals will address problems, challenges, or needs of broad relevance to libraries, museums, and/or archives. A proposed project should test a specific, innovative response to the identified problem and present a plan to make the findings widely and openly accessible.

Amount: $25,000

Date due: February 12, 2012

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ALA Library grant to host exhibit

The American Library Association Public Programs Office, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities invite public, academic, and special libraries to apply to host "Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible," a traveling exhibition to America's libraries.

Created to mark the 400th anniversary of the first printing of the King James Bible, the exhibition tells the story of the origins, creation, and impact of the King James Bible, including its influence on English and American literature and its multifaceted impact on culture and society up to the present day. Three copies of the exhibit will travel to forty libraries from the fall of 2011 through the winter of 2013.

Successful applicants will host the exhibit for a four-week period between the fall of 2011 and the winter of 2013 and will receive a $2,500 grant from NEH for attendance at an exhibit-planning workshop and other exhibit-related expenses. Participating libraries are expected to present at least two free public programs featuring a lecture or discussion by a qualified scholar on exhibition themes.

Due: April 5, 2011

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Preservation and Access Research and Development Grants

Preservation and Access Research and Development grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources. These challenges include the need to find better ways to preserve materials of critical importance to the nation’s cultural heritage—from fragile artifacts and manuscripts to analog recordings and digital assets subject to technological obsolescence—and to develop advanced modes of searching, discovering, and using such materials. Applicants should define a specific problem, devise procedures and potential solutions, and explain how they would evaluate their projects and disseminate their findings. Project results must serve the needs of a significant segment of humanists. Eligible projects include the development of technical standards, best practices, and tools for preserving and creating access to humanities collections; the exploration of more effective scientific and technical methods of preserving humanities collections; the development of automated procedures and computational tools to integrate, analyze, and repurpose humanities data in disparate online resources; and the investigation and testing of new ways of providing digital access to humanities materials that are not easily digitized using current methods. NEH especially encourages applications that address the following topics: Digital Preservation: how to preserve digital humanities materials, including born-digital materials, for which there is no analog counterpart; Recorded Sound and Moving Image Collections: how to preserve and increase access to the record of the twentieth century contained in these formats; and Preventive Conservation: how to protect and slow the deterioration of humanities collections through the use of sustainable preservation strategies.

Amount: $350,000

Date due: May 19, 2011

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ALA Awards

The American Library Association has extended the deadline for a number of ALA-administered awards and grants, including the ALA Information Today Library of the Future Award, the Beta Phi Mu Award, the Gale Cengage Learning Financial Development Award, the Paul Howard Award for Courage, the Lippincott Award, and the Scholastic Library Publishing Award, to February 1, 2011.

The ALA Information Today Library of the Future Award honors a library, library consortium, group of librarians, or support organization for innovative planning for, applications of, or development of patron training programs about information technology in a library setting. The award includes $1,500 and a gold-framed citation.

The Beta Phi Mu Award is presented to a faculty member of a library school or an individual for distinguished service to education in librarianship. The award includes $1,000 and a gold-framed citation.

The Gale Cengage Learning Financial Development Award is given to a library organization that exhibited meritorious achievement in carrying out a library financial development project to secure new funding resources for a public or academic library. The award includes $2,500 and a gold-framed citation.

The Paul Howard Award for Courage is a bi-annual award consisting of $1,000 and a gold-framed citation of achievement honoring a librarian, library board, library group, or an individual who has exhibited unusual courage for the benefit of library programs or services.

The Joseph W. Lippincott Award is given to a librarian for distinguished service to the profession. To qualify, the librarian must display outstanding participation in professional library activities, notable published professional writing, or other significant activities on behalf of the profession. The award includes $1,000 and a gold-framed citation.

The Scholastic Library Publishing Award is an annual award consisting of $1,000 and a gold-framed citation presented to a librarian whose "unusual contribution to the stimulation and guidance of reading by children and young people" exemplifies outstanding achievement in the profession.

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