Campus & Community

Library’s Special Collections Research Center offering adult education research grants

Wednesday, October 28, 2009, By Pamela Whiteley McLaughlin

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at Syracuse University Library invites applicants to its Alexander N. Charters Adult Education Research Grants-in-Aid Program, now in its third year. As much as $5,000 of grants-in-aid will be awarded in 2010 to researchers in the history and practice of adult education who wish to use the collections in SCRC’s Charters Library. The actual amount of each award will depend upon the scope of the research outlined in the applicant’s proposal.

The Charters Library of Resources for the Educators of Adults is the world’s most comprehensive collection of English-language materials in the field of adult and continuing education. Among the resources available to researchers are: more than 55 discrete manuscript collections, 2,100 books, 50 professional journals, 220 newsletters, 400 sound recordings, 100 video-recordings, 10,000 photographs, and some 2,800 master’s theses and dissertations in the field. Online finding aids to the manuscript collections are available on SCRC’s website.

With more than 145,000 printed works and 2,000 manuscript and archival collections, SCRC is home to some of SU’s most valued treasures, including early printed editions of Gutenberg, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, as well as the library of 19th-century German historian Leopold Von Ranke. Holdings are particularly strong in the 20th century; they include the personal papers and manuscripts of such luminaries as artist Grace Hartigan, inspirational preacher Norman Vincent Peale, author Joyce Carol Oates, photojournalist Margaret Bourke White and industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, as well as the records of organizations such as avant-garde publisher Grove Press. SCRC regularly hosts exhibitions, lectures and classes and offers fellowships and internships in library instruction and conservation.

The application deadline is Dec. 1, and winners will be announced by Jan. 15, 2010. To apply, submit a letter of intent outlining the proposed research topic, including the term of stay, a current résumé and the name, along with contact information, of one professional reference to:

Mary Beth Hinton
Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University Library
222 Waverly Ave.
Syracuse, N.Y. 13244-2010

For more information, see http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/a/AlexanderNCharters/grants.htm.