Yuma News Now

Tucson, Arizona - A newly awarded federal grant means more University of Arizona students working in underserved libraries and museums in Arizona and across the nation will be certified in digital information management.

The UA's School of Information Resources and Library Science has just received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services at more than $910,000.

The funding goes to the UA school's "Promoting Diversity in the Digital Curation Disciplines" project, which is promoting enrollments in the digital information management, or "DigIn," graduate certificate program.

Funding from the institute, which provided the initial grant to start the DigIn program two years ago, comes with a matching grant at nearly $202,000.

All told, the funding amounts to more than $1 million, most of which will partially and fully fund student scholarships. Also, SIRLS received a one-year extension for the original Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, which was due to expire this month.

This is a boon not only to the school – also known as SIRLS – and will benefit its recruiting efforts and also its state and national reputation, said Peter Botticelli, an assistant professor of practice for SIRLS. 

It will also enable SIRLS to continue to "bring the education we're providing to the areas that need it the most," Botticelli said.

"We have a lot of interest nationally and, really, we are already a national program so we felt it would be advantageous to seek a grant that would help build the program and boost the number of graduates with certificates," he said.

And, Botticelli added, the funding will help drastically increase number of librarians and archivists who are able to participate in the program. SIRLS will support up to 90 students over the next three years.

The program will target students from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds from a range of institutional types and from various geographic regions. Botticelli said 29 students have already been admitted for the fall with more to come.

Under the project, SIRLS will collaborate with Georgia Institute of Technology, the Sedona Conference and also the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. One DigIn student will be selected to serve as a graduate assistant and work closely with the Arizona State Library to create a collection that will be included in the Arizona Memory Project.

The DigIn program trains library professionals on how to create, collect, manage and preserve digital information. Many of the students involved in the program are working in small, rural communities. Also, many of the students themselves are people of color who come from underserved communities, which is not only a priority for DigIn, but also for SIRLS.

The driving force behind DigIn is the idea that the role of the modern-day librarian is taking on an increased function and responsibility because, in part, of the advent of digital information and technologies.

Consider that today people have more access to and rely more heavily on digital documentation in the form of audio recordings, video and media files. This is true now more than ever before and it is expected to continue that way.

With libraries serving the public in numerous different ways than in the past, tech savvy and technology-enabled librarians are a must.

A challenge, Botticelli said, is that smaller institutions with less funding tend to struggle to stay current with digital information and, furthermore, the field itself is not as diverse as the community it serves.

But SIRLS and the DigIn program, he said, are both committed to improving the diversity within libraries and museums and across the profession.

"We are promoting greater cultural competency among all of our students and reaching out to underserved communities," Botticelli said.

"We think that this new grant will allow us to focus on a very diverse body of students to go into what is now an emerging field of digital curation and digital collection," he said. "It's an exciting chance."