Funding Recipient Spotlight: Professional Development Grant for the ALISE Conference

Posted in: Blog, Funding

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This is a guest post written by the grant awardee, Rachel Fu, a current MLIS student at San José State University. She used her NNLM Region 4 funds to attend and present a poster at the Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) conference.

At the conference, I attended mixers, breakout series, and poster sessions. The mixers, one for first timers and one for my university, helped me get to know more people in the field of Library and Information Science, and gain a better understanding of the different career options available to me. The many breakout series, which covered topics such as rural librarianship, law librarianship, archives, and more, allowed me to make connections between my own interests in knowledge management and other fields. For example, learning that in rural libraries (that make up almost half the libraries in the United States), librarians often also serve as the community archive for the town, as a sort of historical center. I was also able to improve on my public speaking abilities by presenting on my poster, answering questions, and discussing with other poster presenters at the conference.

The experience provided me an opportunity to talk to professors and doctorate students in the Library and Information Science field from all over the United States. I was able to meet my mentoring professor as well as professors I had only known through their textbooks, and talked with them about their career paths. Referring back to the poster session, my poster was about trends in MLIS program graduation by American Indian and Alaskan Native students in the United States from 1990-2019, but I also got to learn about projects on topics such as
computer science education in the LIS curriculum, using artificial intelligence to improve Google Maps reliability, and accessibility issues for visually impaired persons in screen readers. It was inspiring to see how many ways information science could be applied.

The professional development experience taught me about the importance of outreach and communication. I began working on establishing a website for the Center for Community Engagement and Collaboration with a focus on Ukrainian rural libraries with a professor at my university!

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If you are interested in obtaining funding for professional development, we are currently accepting applications for Year 4. Applications accepted and awarded on a rolling basis until February 16, 2025 at 5:00 pm MT or when the funds are depleted.

Please reach out to your state’s point of contact with any questions you may have.

• Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico – Dana Abbey
• Idaho, Montana, Utah – George Strawley
• North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming – David Brown
• All Region 4 states – John Bramble