August 20, 2021
Hands and Bright receive federal grant awards
East Carolina University Library Science faculty Dr. Africa Hands and Dr. Kawanna Bright received prestigious federal awards from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Dr. Africa Hands
Dr. Africa Hands received an Early Career Development grant totaling $213,303. She will be the principal investigator on a project titled Public Library Support of College Literacy in Appalachia (Project CLiA). The project will look into how public libraries in Central Appalachia support the college literacy of nontraditional prospective students through information and services. Dr. Hands will looks into efforts across four states: Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. This region has lower rates of educational attainment and income and higher unemployment than other regions of Appalachia. Her goals for the project are to highlight the nature of public library support for nontraditional prospective students and to identify libraries that may serve as exemplars to library practitioners who want to serve nontraditional college-bound patrons.
Kawanna Bright
Dr. Kawanna Bright is the co-PI on a $478,044 project with Dr. Amy VanScoy (PI) at the University of Buffalo and Dr. Mónica Colón-Aguirre (co-PI) now at University of South Carolina. The project, titled Identifying Opportunities for Retention of BIPOC Librarians Using Survival Analysis, will investigate the retention of librarians who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The research team will use a statistical technique called survival analysis to determine when and why BIPOC librarians are likely to leave the profession. Interviews will follow the analysis to contextualize the results and discussions with key stakeholders to identify potential directions for improving retention of BIPOC librarians in the profession. The findings will equip supervisors and professional organizations with knowledge that will help make their retention efforts more specific and their interventions more timely and effective.
These grants were part of 78 awards totaling $22,711,204 given by the Institute of Museum and Library Services nationwide. The awards were made through National Leadership Grants for Libraries and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.
Article from the IMLS website and grant releases.