A $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support five additional Transformation of the College Library workshops, and two New Learning Spaces workshops over the next three years. Teams from more than 80 CIC member institutions have already participated in previous library workshops; the new grant will enable 100 additional institutions to participate.
      “This most welcome grant should go a long way toward meeting the high level of interest that has previously been expressed in these opportunities,” said CIC President Richard Ekman in announcing the grant and library workshops. “The workshops will focus on the dramatic changes now occurring in college libraries and are intended to help small and mid-sized colleges and universities deal successfully with those changes,” he added. The programs will address such critical issues as advancing information literacy as an element of liberal education; the role of the library in teaching and learning through collaboration between librarians and faculty members; the changing use and conception of the physical space of the library; the challenges of using technology in improving students’ learning; and setting institutional priorities for library-related costs when they increasingly exceed standard budget guidelines.
      The new workshops are being offered by CIC in partnership with the National Institute for Technology & Liberal Education (NITLE), a group of 81 colleges that collaboratively strengthen teaching and learning through instructional technologies. In addition, the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Association of College and Research Libraries are co-sponsoring the workshops, and the Appalachian College Association (ACA) and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) have endorsed them.
      Each institutional team that is accepted as a participant will receive a travel subsidy of up to $1,600. All independent colleges and universities are eligible to apply. Preference will be given to institutional teams that have not already attended one of these workshops and are members of CIC, NITLE, ACA, or the UNCF.
      Jo Ellen Parker, executive director of NITLE, said “The transformative potential of digital technologies for academic libraries is enormous, particularly for libraries on small undergraduate-centered campuses. Envisioning the 21st century library is a pressing priority for America’s liberal arts colleges.”
      In addition to the library workshops, CIC and NITLE will offer two New Learning Spaces workshops in 2006 and 2007, to be led by Jeanne Narum of Project Kaleidoscope. These types of workshops have not previously been available to most CIC members. Topics will include the overall planning process; creating spaces that support active, hands-on investigation; “cyber-infrastructures” and the library as an integrated learning center; creating and locating informal spaces that students will use; sustainability issues; and linking the development of new learning spaces to institutional planning. One of the most important lessons participants can expect to take away from this workshop series is that as colleges design new learning spaces, the problems they need to solve are tomorrow’s, not today’s.
      For more information about or to register for the library workshops, click here. Information about the New Learning Spaces workshops will be posted in June 2005.