Smathers Libraries Grants Program

Welcome to the Smathers Libraries Grants Program LibGuide! The Smathers Libraries Grants Program supports activities related to the submission and management of grant funds awarded to library faculty and staff. Explore these resources to assist in finding valuable information about funding opportunities, developing proposals, and managing funded awards.

On behalf of the Grants Management Committee, we are pleased to announce the Fall 2024 cycle for the SOP grants. The Special Opportunity Project (SOP) is an internal library funding opportunity. The SOP offers funding of up to $10,000 for creative, innovative programs and/or services that enhance and support the mission, vision, and strategic directions of the Smathers Libraries.

Please consider applying! This opportunity is open to all full-time employees of the Libraries. For more information, including program guidelines and forms, click here. You may also contact Jane Barnwell, Grants Manager, (barnwellj@ufl.edu)  or Todd Digby, Grants Management Committee chair (digby@ufl.edu) for more information.

October 1st, 2024 is the deadline for submissions.

Become a grant reviewer! Here are just a few ways to get involved with federal agency and other sponsors and contribute your professional expertise to the profession. It's a great way to learn more about the world of grants!

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

Lyrasis Catalyst Fund

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)

National Endowment for the Humanities

National Science Foundation (NSF) 

Merit Review: Why You Should Volunteer to Serve As An NSF Reviewer: https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/reviewer.jsp#3 

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)

US Dept. of Education: Various calls for peer reviewers are posted as funding becomes available; see this example: https://oese.ed.gov/2022-call-for-peer-reviewers/

The Grants Activities Update is a monthly report produced by the Smathers Libraries Grants Management Program to keep our community informed about the status of ongoing grant projects. Proposals are tracked and categorized by whether they have been recently submitted, recently awarded, recently declined, pending, or active. The purpose of the report is to provide sufficient and transparent information about the status of all proposals. Information includes the title of the project, amount requested, amount contributed as cost share, proposal abstract, project team members, start and end dates, sponsor name and program, and a link to the full proposal hosted in the UF Institutional Repository.

Alachua County Big Read – (Cash: $14,933; cost share: $14,963) The University of Florida (UF), in partnership with the Alachua County Library District and local community organizations, will use the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston, as a lens through which to explore the intersections of environment, people, and history in Alachua County and the surrounding area. UF and community partners will provide a range of programs celebrating "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and its connections to local communities. Beginning with a kick-off event, programming will engage community members of Alachua County and UF in conversations about the novel, its themes, and how they relate to where we live. Members of the public will learn how to access the UF archives, including Zora Neale Hurston’s papers. Through a series of panels and presentations, participants will have the opportunity to explore themes of Black geographies and community heritage. 7 book discussions will be offered in multiple languages and formats. Three workshops will explore writing about the immigrant experience, crafting opinion pieces, and life writing. There will also be a screening and discussion of the film adaptation, a public read-out, a birthday party for Zora Neale Hurston, and a teen art and poetry project.  Project team: J. Hofer (PI), J. Ewert (Co-PI), F. Turcotte, B. Uhler. (Start date: 09/01/2024; end date: 06/30/2025) National Endowment for the Arts – Big Read

Concerts at Noon – ($7,182) 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. (Project Team: J. Mauldwin (PI)) (Start date: pending; end date: 12/31/2024) NEFLIN – Innovation Grant

Florida Ethnic and Under-Represented Communities Digital Newspaper Project – (Cash: $275,743; cost share: $49,351) The University of Florida requests $275,743 to select, digitize and make available to the Library of Congress approximately 100,000 historic newspaper pages through the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Titles for digitization will be selected for their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, and geographic diversity to better reflect Florida history in the first half of the twentieth century. Areas of focus include significant multilingual papers from counties unrepresented in Chronicling America; Cuban papers from Miami and Tampa; Jewish newspapers from Jacksonville; and papers from Tarpon Springs, an area with a significant Greek population. These electronic resources will provide context and support for research into the historical basis of racial issues that continue today and seem particularly relevant with current scholarly and public discussions. (Project team: P. Reakes (PI), M. Jerome (Co-PI), with S. Tew, L. Perry, A. Charnas, D. Durden, N. St. Croix, P. Collins (Start date: 09/01/2023; end date: 08/31/2025) National Digital Newspaper Program – National Endowment for the Humanities

Establishing evidence-based recommendations for high impact open access publishing of UF research  – (Cash: $110,745; cost share: $0) Does making academic work openly available increase the positive impact of that work? Does the type of open access publishing influence that impact? Scholars have numerous choices when deciding how best to share results of their research. This study aims to inform those choices, providing evidence-based recommendations to maximize the impact of disseminating scholarship to targeted audiences and comply with funders’ public access mandates. In this study, we will use UF IFAS research as a basis for a cited references analysis, starting with citing works and working backwards to identify publishing models used. The innovative research design will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess achievement of dissemination goals. Quantitative citation data from Dimensions, Scopus, and Web of Science will be analyzed, as well as the impact of non-traditional dissemination as measured by Altmetrics attention scores. Qualitative data from author surveys and focus groups will enrich the understanding of scholars’ publishing decisions as a function of intended audience, funding agency expectations, and other factors. Outputs of this project include recommendations for UF faculty to effectively disseminate scholarship, maximizing the impact of their research and their research dollars. Analytical methods developed from credible data sources can be modified for use by a variety of disciplines and useful in comparison of UF research to peer institutions. (Project team: T. Cataldo (PI), S. Stapleton (Co-PI), Sadie Hundemer (Co-PI) (IFAS, Agricultural Education and Communication). (Start date: 07/01/2023; end date: 6/30/2025) Libraries Research Seed Grant

Preserving the Journalistic Recordings of Burning Spear Media, 1971-1999 – (Cash: $49,751) 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. (Project team: A. Hines (PI), J. Hofer (Co-PI)) (Start date: 9/1/2023; end date: 8/31/2024) Recordings at Risk – CLIR