Small Grants for training: consortially strategic professional development

New Small Grants program guidelines have now been posted, launching the training-focused piece of this program. Applications are now open for these Small Grants for Professional Development (externally organized / staff exchanges / peer training) . The last day to apply for the first application cycle is 18 November. Application cycles will reopen every 2-3 months throughout the year, but note that budgets of €500 or less are treated as Micro-grants and can be submitted at any time.

We expect to make another announcement in November when we open applications for Small Grants for Projects.

Small Grants overview

“Strategic Professional Development: Small Grants” is one of several programs funded by our new 3-year Mellon Foundation grant for “Building Leadership and Capacity for Digital Liberal Arts across AMICAL”. The Small Grants program – including both the Professional Development and the Projects pieces – aims to fund smaller, member-initiated activities that support AMICAL’s mission, in particular in the following areas:

• Strengthening innovative & effective leadership among librarians and technologists, in light of their changing and collaborative roles within evolving liberal arts institutions
• Raising the effectiveness of members’ programs for information and digital literacies
• Helping members to develop localized and collaborative forms of digital liberal arts

Small Grants can support initiatives of individual AMICAL colleagues, either from a single member institution or from a small number of member institutions in partnership. Larger initiatives, for example workshops open to colleagues from all AMICAL institutions, should be proposed to the Coordinating Committee as an AMICAL-sponsored event or project, not through the Small Grants program. Small Grants cannot be used to support participation in the AMICAL Conference or other AMICAL-sponsored events, which have their own procedures for requesting support.

Coordinating Committee officers’ revision of the guidelines

The new guidelines were revised by the Coordinating Committee officers (Nikolina Ivanova-Bell, Evi Tramantza, Fatme Charafeddine, Maha Bali and myself). Aside from aligning the guidelines with the new Mellon Foundation grant, here are some of the other key changes we introduced:

• specific recommendations are made for strengthening team applications (several colleagues coordinating their participation in an event together), to take full advantage of the potential for increased local and consortial impact
• the earlier guidelines’ preference for applications from individuals “who are engaging with the consortium for the first time, or who have a history of active engagement” has been removed, in order not to discriminate against those just who are just starting to increase their activity in the consortium.

Many thanks to the other officers for helping to ensure that the program not only reflects the goals of the new grant, but also broadly represents members’ interests and aims for fair and equitable support.

See the Small Grants guidelines for more information, including how to apply.