Research Grant!

Thus far my field research on Indian public libraries has been fueled by a couple of small internal grants from the University of Western Ontario. I used up these grant monies by December 2008 and in the meantime I had applied to a couple of large research grant competitions in the fall of 2008. International research and fieldwork is rewarding for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to challenge oneself in different social and cultural environments as well as the ability to foster intercultural dialogues and exchanges. However, international research by its nature necessitates the procurement of grant funds, often in very large amounts.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is the largest grant providing agency in Canada for the type of work that I do and I applied to what is known as the "Standard SSHRC Grant" competition in October 2008. I spent a decent amount of time during the summer putting the grant application together, in anticipation of receiving a 3 year grant award. After a wait of several months, I found out in April 2009 that I did not receive the award. I instead received what is called a "4A" designation - SSHRC terminology for "your research is worthy and potentially fundable, but there is no money to fund it because other grant applications that were ranked higher than yours already received all the money." I was a little disappointed, but apparently receiving a 4A designation is not a bad thing and re-submitting the following year with revisions (based on reviewer comments) is recommended. The University of Western Ontario has also chipped in with some "reapplication assistance" funds for me to start the project during the 2009-10 academic year and resubmit in October 2009. So all in all, not too bad.

On the brighter side, I applied to a grant competition internal to UWO in November 2008 known as the Academic Development Fund (ADF) Major Grant and found out in late April 2009 that I received the grant. This grant provides signficant monetary support to research projects for a one year period, with an extension for another year. I requested funds to begin fieldwork studying the roles public libraries in India can play with regard to community information provision and was lucky enough to receive my whole request. I am excited to begin this project and am planning to base my case study research in and around the Bangalore region. A lot of this summer will be spent with planning the fieldwork, submitting my research ethics application (needed to even get the grant money released to me), conducting more literature reviews, getting in touch with Indian contacts, and figuring out how to allocate work for student research assistants. I am also trying to teach myself some basic Kannada reading and writing, so when fieldwork begins in January 2010, I'll at least be able to have a functional literacy in the language. With research grants come more responsibilities, but I'm not complaining...