The Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship provides a $4,000 grant to a qualified children’s librarian to spend a month or more reading and studying at the Baldwin Library of the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville. The Baldwin Library contains a special collection of 85,000 volumes of children’s literature published mostly before 1950. The fellowship is endowed in memory of Louise Seaman Bechtel and Ruth M. Baldwin” (ALA.org).
The deadline to apply to this year’s Bechtel Fellowship is December 1st, 2011. Application material/information is available on ALSC’s Professional Awards page. Applicants must:
- Be personal members of ALSC as well as ALA; organizational members are not eligible
- Currently be working in direct service to children, or retired members who complete their careers in direct service to children, for a minimum of eight years
- Have a graduate degree from an ALA-accredited program
- Be willing to write a report about his/her study; the report will be submitted to the ALSC Office, for distribution to the Bechtel Committee and for possible inclusion in Children and Libraries, and to the Director of the Smathers Libraries and the Director of the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature and Media at the University of Florida
- If selected, retired Fellowship winners would agree to present a minimum of three public programs based on their research project to children in libraries or schools following the completion of their Fellowship period
Please send your application to Bechtel Fellowship Committee chair Ellen Ruffin, 118 College, #5148, Hattiesburg, MS, 39406.