Presenter: Karen Downing, Head, Social Sciences; Foundation Center at the University of Michigan

I had the opportunity to attend Downing’s session on grant support entitled “Where’s the Money: Best Practices for Providing Grant-Seeking Services in the Social Sciences”.

According to Downing, librarians should begin by getting an understanding of the grants scene on their campus.

First, be aware of stakeholders on campus who may become partners for resource purchases and sharing; examples include the research office, development office, and medical school administrators. Next, librarians should identify the grant-seekers on campus. If possible, get a list of grant proposals and awards (University of Michigan offers theirs as a publically available search engine). In addition, obtain usage statistics on funder databases such as COS Pivot. With these pieces of information, identify gaps in proposal success and gaps in database usage. Downing also recommends getting to know faculty that have served on grant juries.

Downing did an assessment of faculty views on grant-seeking at the University of Michigan. She made two interesting discoveries: grant-seeking support was uneven across the university and interdisciplinary projects readily received funding but were difficult to manage. These discoveries may assist librarians when they are determining a niche for their services.

During the presentation Downing showed two pie charts from the Foundation Center which showed which subjects receive the most funding from private foundations and charities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest chunks of funding went to the health sciences, human services, and public affairs.

To help researchers locate funding, Downing discussed two resources she recommends: COS Pivot and the Foundation Directory Online. According to Downing, the two resources complement one another. COS Pivot’s strength is in its coverage of US federal grants and international grant resources, while the Foundation Directory has good coverage of private funding sources.

For librarians without access to these subscription-only databases, the Foundation Center’s general website (foundationcenter.org) is a useful alternative. The site features a free index of grant providers, sample grant proposals, and annual reports from various foundations.

In June, I attended the Social Sciences Librarian Bootcamp at Harvard Business School. The first part of the camp was dedicated to panels of faculty and graduate students discussing current research projects they have been working on and how library resources and staff helped them along the way.  I didn’t think anything surprising came out of the panel discussions: some researchers used archival resources, some find the library useful for data management issues, and some used librarians’ expertise to track down hard-to-find resources needed for their projects.  I found the presentation of their papers to be extremely interesting, especially the faculty panel on the theme of food.  But this was more for the subject material than for how libraries and librarians contributed to the research.

After lunch, the sessions began.  The first session I attended was one on the Boston Census Research Data Center.  There are 18 RDCs in the country, and these RDCs charge a fee for scholars to come in and use the census data that is not released publicly.  HBS pays the lab fees for all faculty, staff, and students at Harvard.  Researchers can submit proposals for their research, stating what data they would like to see and why their research cannot be done with only the publicly available material.  To begin the proposal process, researchers can contact the closest RDC.  For us, the Boston one is currently the closest location, but Yale will be establishing an RDC next year.  The website is www.census.gov/ces/main/contact.html.

The presenter gave several examples of research that had been completed using data at the RDC.  These include the effect on property values in neighborhoods near plants; what firms export where; the decision of firms to go public; and the effect of social networks on hiring and work patterns.

The second session I attended was one on the historical collections at HBS.  This was particularly interesting to me as the history librarian.  The records at HBS document business history from the late 1300s-today.  The collections consist of a print collection, the HBS Archives, the manuscript collection, and the Polaroid Collection.

The manuscript collection is where you can find much of the most unique material.  This collection includes over 1500 series from the 14th century to the present.  Many records related to colonial and early republican business records in New England are housed here, including a vast amount of material related to 19th-century whaling.  One of the graduate students (a PhD candidate at Yale) in the morning’s panel had used the R. G. Dun credit reports extensively for her dissertation on credit history.  These reports are the most commonly used material in the HBS historical collections.

The Polaroid Collection is a new acquisition and is the largest collection at HBS.  This collection includes administrative records, patent history, research and development records, photographs, prototype photos, advertisement photos, and an AV component.  It is not yet fully accessible as the staff are still processing this very large collection.

The Social Sciences Librarians Bootcamp is a conference that I find worthwhile.  There is plenty of opportunities to learn about resources that are out there, especially the freely accessible ones.  Also, it is a great place to network with other librarians in the greater Boston area who are dealing with many of the same issues we are at UConn.  I would recommend this conference to anyone interested.