Yesterday, I posted about the Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, Inc. to help librarians and other information professionals to attend the American Public Health Association Meeting. After I posted the information, I began thinking of several events recently that made me wonder whether there was a master list of grants and awards available to librarians. One site where librarians can look or click through a list of available grants for education, meeting travel, etc. As people looked to find alternative funding to attend MLA, many SIGs and Sections had listed their meeting and travel awards on their own websites and blogs. But from what I can tell there isn’t one master list, somebody has to look at multiple sites for possible funding opportunities.
One List to rule them all, One List to find them, One List to bring them all in the library and bind them. One List might be very helpful. I realize there many different flavors of librarians out there (medical, law, public, special, etc.) so perhaps One List might be an awful lofty goal. Perhaps one list, (think a silver ring with normal engraving not a gold ring with flame engraving) with all of the funding opportunities for medical librarians might be more possible.
There is already a Library Grants blog, (seems to have more public library related issues) but I think something like a search-able list would be more helpful in this instance. Compiling a list is only part of the job, maintaining the list would be a larger and more important task. It would only be as good as the information listed on it and if that information is lacking or out of date then the list quickly ceases to be helpful. Something like a wiki would make it possible for anybody, SIG reps, Section reps, other organizations to add their information and link to the most recent application. If a wiki is the way to go, I don’t think there needs to be one created specifically for funding opportunities, there are plenty of library and medical library wikis out there that would be appropriate.
Would this be helpful and is this something that you think librarians want? Is a wiki the appropriate tool? A wiki is only as strong as those who are adding and editing, would the appropriate people be interested in adding and editing their portions as needed? Does anybody have any other thoughts?
Have you looked at or used the Community of Science Funding opportunities tool? Doing a simple search of library I came up with 600+ results.
Michelle, I think it is a terrific idea to compile a list (a wiki) of funding resources for librarians. Thanks! Lin
The public health/health administration section of MLA is using social bookmarking and blogging tools to good effect. They might be an excellent group to approach about doing this.
It is a good idea!