Smathers Libraries Grants Program

We encourage you to explore the wealth of information provided by UF Research on all aspects of the research lifecycle, including proposal writing.

Concerts at Noon

The UF Architecture and Fine Arts (AFA) Library seeks to launch a new library service, hosting a concert series in which students from the School of Music and others will be able to perform in the library. To accommodate much of the music students are actively preparing, and to ensure that pianists have an instrument on which they can perform, a quality digital piano is needed for this “Concerts at Noon” series. The recitals aim to attract more students from the School of Music to the library, provide an informal performance venue, and help the library serve as a community gathering place. NEFLIN – Innovation Grant

Preserving the Journalistic Recordings of Burning Spear Media, 1971-1999

The George A. Smathers Libraries (Libraries), University of Florida, and Burning Spear Media, LLC, will partner to digitize and make publicly accessible 1495+ audio and video recordings dating back to 1971. These media document the history of the Black Power struggle through activities of the Uhuru Movement. Recordings include conferences, workshops, Freedom Schools, Sunday Meetings, homeless activism, protest marches, speeches, electoral campaign activities, and activists’ personal accounts. Collection content includes 12 sessions of the International Tribunal on Reparations to Black People in the U.S., Huey Newton’s last speeches, and presentations by Omali Yeshitela in London and Africa. Recordings chronicle the survival, continuity and growth of the movement for Black Power and African Internationalism from 1971 to 1999.The Libraries will ingest and preserve these recordings, making them freely available through UF’s Digital Collections, offering rare resources for current and future generations of students, activists, journalists, film-makers, historians and the general public. Recordings at Risk – CLIR

Health Impacts of Lead Exposure: Enhance, Engage, & Empower Community Awareness

The goals of this project are to increase community and health professional awareness of the health impacts of lead toxicity, increase public access to reliable health information to help community members make informed decisions relating to their health, and increase knowledge of National Library of Medicine resources, such as MedlinePlus, NLM Reading Club, and PubMed Central in the local community. Project activities will complement a National Library of Medicine (NLM) traveling exhibit scheduled for HSCL this fall and include community outreach in collaboration with the Alachua County Library District. Region 2 Innovation Impact – NNLM

Denied! Why 90% of Grant Proposals Don't Get Funded  

Grant proposals are declined for a variety of reasons, even though these projects have great merit. This unfortunate event can happen often and it can be devastating to project teams who have invested many hours of precious time pursuing an award for a very worthy project. It helps to know why this happens so that you can anticipate this possibility prior to submitting your funding proposal.

Learn the pitfalls you can avoid to give your proposals a more competitive chance of being awarded.

Outcomes:

1. Knowledge of reviewer comments and viewpoints
2. Greater understanding of methods used to review applications and what can happen during review
3. Learning about the most common mistakes made by applicants

How to Create Fundable Grant Proposals: ASERL Grantwriting Series- December 9, 2020 (Announcement) (Recording)  

This webinar series shares best practices including checklist examples for guidelines and workflows, funding alerts describing funding opportunities for libraries, and templates for sharing submitted and pending proposals with library employees. Behind the scenes stories will divulge unusual ways ideas were generated for fundable projects, and how ideas developed through engagement with a diverse array of experts and assets. Stories share details of what happened after project teams received their awards, and ways by which teams managed to complete projects successfully. Featured projects highlight a variety of grant-funded activities including outreach, digitization, training, acquisition of materials, planning and collaborations with diverse partners and for diverse materials.

Successful Grant Seeking For Academic Libraries – 4/30/2020  (Slides) (Announcement)

This workshop describes how to begin the grant seeking process by leveraging the expertise you already have to identify and produce collaborative and fundable grant applications. We explore the basics of grant seeking, including generating the initial idea for a project, identifying relevant project partners, finding appropriate funding sources, pre-proposal project planning, and awards management. Lessons learned from years of grant seeking are shared, as well as resources for locating funding relevant to libraries.