Contact: Miguel A. Figueroa

Office for Diversity & Spectrum

312-280-5295

Chicago—The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) has announced a two-year commitment to the Spectrum Scholarship Program as part of the Spectrum Presidential Initiative.  ACRL will sponsor one scholar each year for 2010 and 2011.  The ACRL Spectrum Scholarships will be awarded to a Spectrum applicant who expresses an interest in academic and research libraries.

ALA President Dr. Camila Alire, Immediate Past President Jim Rettig, President-Elect Roberta Stevens and ALA Past President Dr. Betty J. Turock, chair of the initiative, have announced the Spectrum Presidential Initiative, a special one-year campaign to raise $1 million for the Spectrum Scholarship Program.  Through this initiative, ALA aims to meet critical needs of supporting master's-level scholarships, providing two $25,000 Doctoral scholarships, increasing the Spectrum Endowment to ensure the program's future and developing special programs for recruitment and career development.    ACRL's contribution will allow ALA to continue to support master's-level Spectrum Scholarships.

Lori Goetsch, ACRL president, said, "With this gift, ACRL has donated over $70,000 to the Spectrum Scholarship Program and demonstrates the association's continued commitment to this important initiative."

ACRL is a division of the American Library Association, representing more than 12,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at http://www.acrl.org/.

The Spectrum Scholarship Program is ALA's national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address the specific issue of underrepresentation of critically needed ethnic librarians within the profession while serving as a model for ways to bring attention to larger diversity issues in the future. Since its founding, Spectrum has provided more than 600 scholarships to qualified applicants enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate program in library and information studies or an ALA-recognized NCATE School Library Media program. To learn more about the Spectrum Scholarship Program, visit www.ala.org/spectrum.

For more information about the Spectrum Presidential Initiative or to make an online donation, visit http://spectrum.ala.org. To learn more, get involved, or to make a pledge to the Spectrum Presidential Initiative, contact Miguel A. Figueroa, Director, Office for Diversity & Spectrum at [log in to unmask], or Kim Olsen-Clark, Director, Development Office at [log in to unmask].  

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Karen Weaver, MLS, Adjunct Faculty, Cataloging & Classificiation, The iSchool at Drexel University, Philadelphia PA email: [log in to unmask] / Electronic Resources Statistician, Duquesne University, Gumberg Library, Pittsburgh PA email: [log in to unmask]