The committee discussed existing guidelines for our three awards and decided that they seemed acceptable as currently structured. We agreed to ask the Board for permission to change the deadlines slightly: All applications will still be due October 1 but winners will be notified no later than December 1. This will allow them time to plan to attend the conference if possible. This shortened timetable will be possible if we have the applications due directly to the Chair. Committee members are encouraged to keep an eye out for potential publications to nominate for the Worldwide Books publications award.
Our lack of applicants this year may be due to a combination of general fatigue in our otherwise productive colleagues but also to insufficient publicity about the awards. As we were able to assemble two strong lists this year for our columns of publications by members, we know that this work is happening. This year we plan to send reminders to all of the new ARLIS/NA administrative listservs as well as those of relevant groups such as VRA, in addition to Update. The Serials Round Table will be asked particularly to publicize the Benjamins award this year, in order to ensure that we have a sufficient caliber of applications this year.
In considering recommendations from the strategic plan, we realized the need to further publicize the donors and winners of our awards. This year's winners were asked to thank the donors directly. In the future, we will remind winners to notify publishers as well . In addition, all awards will continue to be announced in one of our Update columns. A history of our award winners is being developed which will go on the ARLIS/NA web site as a permanent record of our activities.
The strategic plan also suggested we pursue ways to gather information on and publicize funding agencies other than ARLIS/NA for our members' research projects. We agreed that some ideas on grant sources should be a regular annual column in Update. We will draft both some general suggestions and a list of some specific sources for the next Update column.
All committee members were asked to contribute ideas for the grants and support column, as well as nominations for publications awards.
Amanda Bowen
Fine Arts Library
Harvard University
abowen@husc.harvard.edu