Faculty Research Grants

Augustana College has collected and preserved a quite remarkable collection of rare books, manuscripts, and institutional archival materials with particular strengths in French Enlightenment and Revolutionary texts; Reformation imprints; the local history of the Upper Midwest with particular emphasis on Rock Island; and the history of Augustana College.

It is the goal of the library, in partnership with the faculty, to teach each student to be an effective user of knowledge and information resources. Students not only need to be effective users of the most current information in the most recent technological formats, they also need to understand their role as participants in a continuum of recorded history. To this end, the library intends to make these rich collections of materials more central to the curriculum of the College, and more accessible to students and faculty, by providing small research grants to enable faculty to explore these special collections and archives. We also hope to gain a greater understanding of the contents of some of our less thoroughly processed collections that will assist future students and faculty.

We recognize that the process of exploring these collections and working out how they might be incorporated into existing or new courses, or whether they can serve as primary resources for student or faculty research, is a time consuming task. Therefore, we have offered small stipends of $600, generously funded by alumni of the College, and enhanced access (for at least one week) to the materials and the staff of Special Collections to Augustana faculty at a time mutually agreeable to both the faculty member and the Special Collections Librarians. We will not be offering stipends for 2009 due to the limited availability of the Special Collections Librarians this particular summer.