For immediate release | April 25, 2013

Pattuelli and Lopatovska win the 2013 Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant

CHICAGO - M. Cristina Pattuelli and Irene Lopatovska are the winners of the 2013 American Library Association (ALA) Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant for the project entitled “E-reading in the Academy: Investigating Adoption and Use of E-books in Academic Libraries.”

The $3,000 grant supports innovative research that could lead to an improvement in library services to any specific group of people. The award was donated by Eric R. Baber, Newton, Kan., in honor of his father, who was library director at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University) for 27 years. Baber died in January 1991, leaving ALA an endowment to support the award in perpetuity.

The focus of the Carroll Preston Baber Research award is on a pressing national issue that is of importance to library service, and the award committee felt that this project fit the criteria well.

“E-books, e-book use, and e-book collecting are high priority issues in libraries in 2013,” award Chair Mary Popp said. “The proposed research project by M. Cristina Pattuelli and Irene Lopatovska is well-planned, uses a nicely varied array of research methodologies to identify both qualitative and quantitative results, and builds on an already completed pilot project."

"Although it is limited to academic libraries," Popp continued, "this project can be tied to the work of other research initiatives, including the recent work by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, to provide a broad picture of the way users connect with electronic books. The committee looks forward to the publication of the results of the research.”

Guidelines for the Baber Grant, including a list of previous winners, are available at: http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/ors/orsawards/baberresearchgrant…

Contact:

Norman Rose

Program Officer

Office for Research and Statistics (ORS)

nrose@ala.org

800-545-2433 ext. 4283