For a second year, the Institute of Museum and Library Services is accepting grant applications for Accelerating Promising Practices for Small Libraries (APP). The deadline to apply is December 2, 2019.
Three categories of APP grants are available to applicants:
- Transforming School Library Practice: School libraries support learning and the development of critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration skills. IMLS is interested in furthering how K-12 school library professionals can serve as integral instructional partners to classroom teachers. Grant projects could include programs and services that prepare students for success in college, career, and life, or foster early, digital, information, health, financial, media, civic, and other types of literacies.
- Community Memory: Libraries and archives not only serve as stewards of our nation’s knowledge and collections, but also as trusted spaces for community engagement and dialogue. This project category centers on engaging local communities in the collection, documentation, and preservation of their local histories, experiences, and identities. Proposals could include events and programs to digitize materials related to community histories, such as photographs, artifacts, or texts, or oral history projects that involve community members in the documentation and preservation of local histories.
- Digital Inclusion: Libraries have an important role in promoting digital inclusion and increasing access to information, ideas, and networks. This category focuses on projects that support the role libraries play in promoting digital literacy, providing internet access, and enabling community engagement through civic data and civic technology. Grant proposals could include deploying technologies to provide residents with increased abilities to address the homework gap, increase small business development and entrepreneurship, or plan for emergency preparedness.
A pre-application webinar was held with program staff to answer questions from potential applicants on Thursday, September 12. View the recording.
APP is a special initiative of National Leadership Grants for Libraries, a program that supports library and archives services nationwide by advancing theory and practice. The funding opportunity, launched for the first time in the fall of 2018, was designed to strengthen the ability of small and/or rural libraries, archives, and related organizations to serve their communities.