Promoting excellence in library and information provision for the visual arts, architecture and design

ProQuest Research Award


The ProQuest Research Award is an annual grant to encourage the professional development of UK and Ireland art librarians. Its purpose is to promote research and development in the fields of art, architecture and design librarianship and it can be used for travel. The work must focus on, or be based on, the use of electronic resources in the UK and Ireland and/or elsewhere. The award is open to current UK & Ireland ARLIS members of at least 3 years standing, and the grant may be used to supplement funding from other sources.

Value: £800.00
Application details here


ProQuest Research Award 2009
The award for 2009 has gone to Georgina Payne and Kathryn Littlemore (job-share), Information Services, University of Northampton. The award will enable one of them to attend the International Visual Literacy Association Conference in Cyprus towards the end of 2010. This will further their research relating to visual literacy, student employability and the role of librarians. Visual literacy skills (the ability to consciously decode and encode visual data) are important asset s in a media-saturated social climate, yet in the UK precedence is accorded to text-based data. Teaching information literacy in our institutions is the norm, but teaching visual literacy is neglected, even though in North America it is an acknowledged skill and has recognised employability value. Attendance at the conference will enable Georgina and Kathryn to build on the visual literacy module developed by the arts library team at Northampton. They aim to create a UK librarians´ visual literacy network.


ARLIS/UK & Ireland Travel & Study Fund

The ARLIS/UK & Ireland Travel and Study Fund has been established to enable the Society to make annual grants to promote research and development in the fields of art, architecture and design librarianship. The awards will normally comprise one major scholarship and smaller travel grants.

The awards may be used to travel anywhere within or outside the UK & Ireland to visit libraries or other institutions, to attend a seminar or conference (excluding those organised by ARLIS itself), or to facilitate a research project or job exchange. The awards are open to all members of ARLIS/UK & Ireland and may be used to supplement funding from other sources.

ARLIS/UK & Ireland Travel & Study Fund 2009
The award for 2009 has been split between two people; Deborah Sutherland from the National Art Library and Catherine Worrall, Slide Library Co-ordinator at University College Falmouth Library.

Deborah, who has been an active member of ARLIS since 1999, is taking advantage of a short career break offered to all V&A staff to develop her experience as an art librarian in a museum context. She is staying in New York initially and undertaking study tours to art/museum libraries, and to research libraries with trade literature and ephemera collections. The stay will culminate with attendance at the ARLIS/NA annual conference in Boston in April. As well as learning more about art and museum libraries, her aim is to improve assistance to Readers at the National Art Library by adding to her knowledge of trade literature collections elsewhere in the world. She also wants to gain an understanding of the digitisation of ephemera collections. You can follow Deborah´s travels and discoveries on her blog

Catherine is using the award to help finance her attendance at the Visual Resources Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2010, where she is co-presenting a lecture with Vicky Brown (Oxford University), Lavinia Ciuff (American Institute in Rome), and Matthias Arnold (Heidelberg University). The paper is called ´Life on the other side of the pond: VR activity in Europe´, and she will be talking about the ´Image Space´ project at Falmouth, which she has been working on for over 18 months. The project features two local collections: degree and MA shows at Falmouth; and Cornwall artists and designers.

ARLIS is pleased to be able to help Deborah and Catherine in achieving their objectives.


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