This has been a damn good week for me: first the Junior Faculty Development Award, and now this afternoon I received an email that I’ve received the OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant.
So the Junior Faculty Award is for $7500. The LISRGP is for $15K. Maybe next week I’ll get something for 30K. At this rate, by the end of the Spring semester I’ll be receiving grants in the billions.
Again, not that you asked, but the project title is: The Return on Investment of Collaborative Virtual Reference Service
And the abstract:
This proposal outlines a study to quantify the Return on Investment (ROI) associated with the implementation of a collaborative virtual reference service. Using budgetary data from participating libraries and statistics about libraries’ contributions to a collaborative virtual reference service, this study will identify the impact that participating in this collaborative service has on participating libraries, in terms of the monetary and non-monetary costs and savings incurred by individual libraries and by the entire collaborative, and the factors that affect the ROI for libraries and the collaborative. The findings of this study will enable more rational economic decision-making by libraries about their participation in collaborative virtual reference services, and the conditions under which this participation may be negotiated.
Again, I’m buying me a GA with my newfound riches. Fortunately for me, the Masters student who will be working with me on this project has an economics background. Because I sure don’t!
Here’s the SILS news release, and the OCLC news release.