University Libraries faculty members receive grants, pursue research projects

The new year brings new research opportunities for the faculty at the University Libraries. Several faculty have recently secured grants allowing for pursuit of new or continued research, projects, and publishing. Here’s a snapshot of their upcoming grant-funded projects.

University Libraries Assistant Professor Lorna Dawes and Professor of English and Director of the African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) Kwame Dawes received a Ford Foundation grant of $150,000 for

Dawes

the development of an African Poetry Digital Portal. The portal will digitize and provide access to manuscripts and other artifacts related to African Poetry from antiquity to the modern era, and will support the creation of an Index of Contemporary African Poets. The University Libraries and the APBF have a strong collaborative relationship, through the joint project, The African Poetry Library Initiative, which works to establish small, user-friendly poetry reading libraries on the African continent. The African Poetry Digital Portal will also provide access to other materials related to African poetry, such as newspapers, periodicals, newsletters, audio and video recordings, Web sites, images, and more.  

Lorang

University Libraries Associate Professor Liz Lorang and Department of History Professor and Director of Women and Gender Studies Margaret Jacobs were awarded a $290,123 “Digitizing Hidden Collections” grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to support their project, “Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project.” The project will digitize, describe, and make accessible materials related to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, one of the largest U.S. Indian boarding schools, which was in operation from 1884 to 1934. It will also make these hidden records accessible to the families of American Indian people who attended the school, researchers who study the Indian boarding schools, and the general public. 

University Libraries Associate Professor Catherine Fraser Riehle 
and Nutrition and Health Sciences

Fraser Riehle

(NHS) Professor Mary Willis received an internal grant in response to the callout, “Global Perspectives in the Curriculum.” They will create a new course, “Global Research Experiences in Nutrition and Health,” that will provide students an opportunity to structure a global research experience while strengthening their research and science communication skills. The creation of this course will ensure that all NHS faculty-mentored domestic and international research experiences featuring a global component provide students with a structured, credit-bearing opportunity to examine global issues and engage in a research process from conceptualization to publication.

DeFrain

University Libraries Assistant Professor Erica DeFrain and College of Architecture Assistant Professor Miyoung Hong received $9,928 from the UNL Research Council’s Maude Hammond Fling Faculty Research Fellowship to conduct a research project titled, "How do informal learning spaces assist students in achieving their learning goals?" Recognizing the important role physical spaces play in improving students learning outcomes, academic libraries have been eager to partner and seek expert guidance from architects, however, there is very little empirical information specific to this new generation of library design, and appropriate measures of success have not been clearly articulated. By gathering usage data from the Adele Coryell Hall Learning Commons, this mixed-methods research project seeks to better understand the impact academic libraries’ informal learning spaces have on students, and how these findings can be incorporated into future construction projects.

Lu's A Dark Page in History

University Libraries Professor Suping Lu received a grant of $9,000 to conduct research at different national archives in Europe. Lu recently published his tenth book in China, the Chinese version of A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports.

Through their scholarly research and projects, library faculty bolster the University Libraries as a national leader in creativity and knowledge development. These exciting projects exemplify the Libraries’ strategic focus to: create new scholarly resources and tools for teaching and research; collaborate with campus and global efforts to enhance teaching and learning; design complementary technologies in collaboration with colleges and programs; and to promote intellectual exchange within our global learning communities.