ESS De Gruyter European Librarianship Study Grant

ACRL's Awards program will be on hold for the 2021-2022 award season, during which time nominations will not be accepted or juried and no recipients will be chosen for any ACRL awards. For more information, please contact Lauren Carlton.

Note: The 2021 grant is temporarily on hold due to funding suspension from the sponsor and submissions are not currently being accepted. This page will be updated after funding resumes.


The grant supports research in European studies with an emphasis on librarianship, the book trade, resource documentation and similar information-science related topics. The grant was established in 2011 by ACRL WESS under the sponsorship of the Walter de Gruyter Foundation for Scholarship and Research [Stiftung für Wissenschaft und Forschung]. Beginning with the 2018 award season, the grant will be managed by ACRL ESS.

Award

2,500 Euro sponsored by the De Gruyter Foundation to cover travel to and from Europe and transportation, room, and board in Europe, for up to thirty (30) consecutive days.  

DeGruyter Logo

Eligibility

Each applicant must be a member of ACRL and employed as a librarian or information professional in a university, college, community college, or research library in the year prior to application for the award.

Criteria

The purpose of the grant is to support research on the acquisition, organization, or use of library resources from or relating to Europe. Current or historical subjects may be treated. The award jury will review proposals with the following in mind:

  • What is the work to be accomplished?
    The proposal should be as explicit as possible about the current state of knowledge in the area and what will be achieved by the successful completion of the study.
  • What is the need for and value of the proposed research?
    The proposal should provide persuasive evidence that the study is of practical use or scholarly value to the wider community of European Studies librarians or academic scholars.
  • What is the methodology for carrying out the proposed work?
    The research design should be as specific as possible and demonstrate why a trip to Europe is essential to the research.
  • Can the work be accomplished within the time frame proposed?
    If the study extends beyond 30 days, the proposal should specify how the additional work would be completed and funded.
  • Are the applicant’s qualifications sufficient to carry out the study? 
    The applicant should document the ability to complete the proposed research in a timely manner.

Submissions

Submissions are not currently being accepted.

Electronic submissions through the online application form are required. The application form must be completed in its entirety.

Supporting documents to accompany the nomination form include:

  • A proposal, maximum of five (5) pages, double-spaced
  • A tentative travel itinerary of up to thirty (30) days, including the proposed countries and institutions to be visited and the preferred period of study/travel
  • A travel budget, including estimated round-trip coach airfare, transportation in Europe, lodging expenses, and meal costs
  • A current curriculum vitae 

All supporting documents must be compiled by the applicant and uploaded through the nomination form as a single PDF (max size 20MB). Submissions will be acknowledged via e-mail.

Information

If you have questions, please contact Award Chair Thomas Keenan, tkeenan@princeton.edu.

View the full award committee roster here.

Obligations

  • Within six months of completion of the trip, the grantee is required to submit a report of approximately 4,000 words on the research resulting from the study trip. It is assumed that in most cases this report will be suitable for publication. If so, then ACRL is given the first right of refusal to publish it.
  • The grantee should submit an abstract of the report for publication in C&RL News and the ESS Newsletter.
  • The grantee is expected to present a report their grant-funded research at a ESS discussion group during the next ALA conference. The grantee will also be available to serve on the award jury one to two years following completion of the research trip. Recipients are strongly encouraged, but not required, to join ESS and become involved in unit activities.

2020 Recipient

Photo of Emma Popowich

Emma Popowich, University of Manitoba, for her project "A Conscience of Cloth: Blue Textiles in the Identity of the Midi"

Previous Recipients

  • 2019 – Jennifer K. Nelson, Robbins Collection, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, for her project “Iucundum mihi est reperiri typographum: A Case Study of an Early Modern Publishing Success Story.”
  • 2018 – Anna Dysert, McGill University, for her project “A Survey of the Manuscripts of Isaac Israeli: The Transmission and Transformation of 12th-Century Medicine.”
  • 2017 – Marcy Bidney, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, for her project "Where the Water Flows: Documenting Collections of late 19th and early 20th century Nautical Charts."
  • 2016 – Patricia Figueroa, Brown University, for her project "Voices from La Movida: Indexing Spain’s Underground Magazines from the Transition Period."
  • 2015 – Katharine C. Chandler, Free Library of Philadelphia, for her project "Whimsical Penwork: The Carthusian Graduals of the Chartreuse de Champmol."
  • 2014 – Marta Mestrovic Deyrup, Seton Hall University, for her project "C’era una volta: a guide to print materials published by and about the Italian minority communities of Dalmatia and Istria in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
  • 2013 – Daniel M. Pennell, University of Pittsburgh, for his proposal to annotate 400 Romanian reference titles that are held at three libraries in Bucharest, Romania.
  • 2012 – Liladhar R. Pendse, Princeton University, for his project to construct a bibliography and subject analysis of Indo-Portuguese periodicals held by the National Library of Portugal and other libraries in Lisbon.

**From 1986-2011 this award was funded by Martinus Nijhoff International and later Coutts Information Services, an Ingram company.

  • 2011 – Mara Degnan Rojeski, Dickinson College, for her project to construct a bibliography of the pamphlets of the Deutscher Fichte Bund, a propaganda organization active in Hamburg, Germany from 1914-1941. 
  • 2010 – Timothy Robert Shipe, University of Iowa, for his proposal, “The Franco-Romanian Literary Avant-garde in Bucharest Libraries.”
  • 2009 – Gordon Anderson, University of Minnesota, for his proposal to complete the Svenskamerikanska Bibliografi [Swedish American Bibliography].
  • 2008 – Michelle Emanuel, University of Mississippi, for her proposal to survey major film libraries in the Paris region in order to analyze and evaluate the collections and services provided to visiting scholars, with some focus on the films of Francis Veber.
  • 2007 – Thea Lindquist, University of Colorado, for her proposal, "From the Ashes: Identifying, Documenting, and Rebuilding the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek's Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruitbearing Society) Collections"
  • 2006 – Documenting a Vanishing Culture: German-language Literature from Czechoslovakia, 1945–1990, Dale Askey, Kansas State University
  • 2005 –  "The Bibliotheques Municipales of France as Sources for Medieval History of Monastic Institutions: The Case of Arles," Charlene Kellsey, University of Colorado
  • 2004 – Translation of the subject thesaurus of the Pictorial Archive of the German Colonial Society ( Bildarchiv der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft) from German to English by Helene S. Baumann, Duke University
  • 2003 –  Two Libraries, Two Peoples: Die Deutsche Bibliothek and Die Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin since German Reunification Michael Olson, Harvard University
  • 2002 –  German Acquisitions in Hungarian Research Libraries: Cooperative Collection Development in the Twentieth Century, James P. Niessen, Rutgers University
  • 2001 –  Collecting the Nineteenth Century: the Book, the Specimen, the Photograph as Archive, Sue Waterman, Johns Hopkins University
  • 2000 – Documenting the Dissemination of the Gregorian Calendar Reform in France During the Wars of Religion, Jeffry Larson
  • 1999 – Towards Reconstructing the Fate of Viennese Jewish Libraries in the Nazi Era, Richard Hacken
  • 1998 – The End of Monastery Libraries in Bavaria and the Birth of Modern Library Science, 1802–1814, Jeffrey Garrett
  • 1997 – Books in German-Occupied Europe: The Rosenburg Files, Sem C. Sutter
  • 1996 – Women in International Migration 1945-1995, Eleanore O. Hofstetter
  • 1995 – The World of Johann Amerbach: Early Printing in its Social Context, Barbara Halporn
  • 1994 – Outstanding Journal Publishing in German Academic Librarianship, Stephen Lehmann
  • 1992 – Forging Links with Italian Fine Presses and Avant-garde Publishers, Martin Antonetti 
  • 1991 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as Book-Selector for the Northern Germanic Languages, Nancy S. Reinhardt
  • 1990 – Acquisitions and Distribution of Enemy Scientific and Technical Journals during World War II, Pamela Spence Richards
  • 1989 – Preserving the Written Record: Preservation Programs at European Libraries, James H. Spohrer
  • 1987 – Refugee and Exile Publishing in Western Europe, Michael Albin
  • 1986 – Price Indexes of European Academic Library Materials, Frederick Lynden