With thanks to the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, we are happy to be able to announce the recipients of our first research grants. These small, one time grants provide an outlet and an audience for bold questions and ideas about the future of libraries. Without further ado…

Library Futures has long been interested in the library rights of incarcerated people, and we are excited that Megdi Abebe and the up//root collective will be working with the Friends of the San Quentin Library on a zine project that will “highlight structural challenges incarcerated library workers and patrons face” by introducing readers to the workers and letting them tell their own stories.

Arthur Boston, well-known to many on social media and in the scholarly communication community, will be bringing us a more personal take on many of the issues we address. As he describes it, he'll be talking about “the personal ownership, lease, and use of digital and physical books from the perspective of a consumer, father, academic librarian, and former public librarian.”

Just what can you do with a digital music score or sound recording if you’re a library? Do you own them? License them? What can you do to make them accessible to your patrons now and to preserve them for the future? Kathleen DeLaurenti of the Peabody Institute and Kerry Masteller, music librarian at Harvard, will be creating a guide for libraries collecting musical scores and sound recordings that helps them answer these questions in the current legal landscape.

Jessica Farrell will be bringing us "How to Publish Your Academic Paper without Publishers, Bosses, Gods, or Masters” based on her experience and expertise in community-led academic publishing. The guide will cover “collaborative research, writing, editing, community peer review, selecting a publishing platform, and DIY outreach and promotion processes,” and we are excited to support work that expands how scholars can create, produce, and share their research.

And finally, Amanda Levendowski and the Intellectual Property and Information Policy (iPIP) Clinic will produce “Library LOAN: A Zine for Liberating the Modern Library.” In an increasingly digital environment that grows increasingly confusing, Library LOAN (Lending, Owning, Accessing, Networking) will help librarians understand the ins and outs and the promises and potential perils of digital collecting and lending in libraries from a legalistic framework.

Library Futures is proud to support the work of our community and to amplify the voices of those doing crucial work on equitable access in the digital age. Thank you all for being a part of it.

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