Contact: Jenni Terry
Press Officer
ALA Washington Office
(202) 628-8410
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For Immediate Release
September 29, 2010

ALA, Center for Library and Information Innovation receive grant to develop E-government Web resource for libraries

Washington, D.C. – The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a $581,609 grant to the American Library Association (ALA) and the Center for Library and Information Innovation (CLII) of the University of Maryland’s iSchool to develop a Web resource to help libraries and governments better assist their users to successfully engage in e-government activities. Project partners also include the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Information Institute at Florida State University.

“This project is an important step to growing and creating collaborations between the government and libraries in an ever changing electronic environment to ensure that the public is receiving the best possible service,” said Jessica McGilvray, assistant director of the ALA’s Office of Government Relations.

Developed jointly by ALA and CLII, this Web resource will include service and resource content, tutorials, best practice approaches to government-library collaborations, embedded expert government information digital reference, guidance on the provision of e-government services, the ability to share and exchange practices, and tools to facilitate local customization of e-government service provision and resources in libraries. This Web resource will facilitate the ability of libraries to:

Provide essential e-government services to their residents and communities;
Work with agencies to develop collaborations to facilitate services to individuals; and
Develop a range of collective support tools, templates, and training materials that help libraries of all types engage in e-government services rather than each library working on its own.

Building on the work of the ALA Ad-Hoc Subcommittee on E-government Services and others, the project explores government-library collaborations to deliver e-government services to users. The project’s initial focus is on immigration and taxation as the two content areas to develop the resource, and has support from the Internal Review Service, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Government Printing Office, five state library agencies (Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas), and several public and academic libraries.

“The broad coalition of libraries, librarians, government agencies, and researchers working on this project will offer a unique opportunity to explore collaborations that allow agencies and libraries to meet the e-government needs of people in their communities,” CLII Director John Carlo Bertot said.

For more information, please see clii.umd.edu.

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John Carlo Bertot, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
Center for Library & Information Innovation
College of Information Studies
University of Maryland
4105 Hornbake Building, South Wing
College Park, MD 20742
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web (Bertot): http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jbertot/
Web (Center): http://clii.umd.edu
Phone: 301.405.3267
Fax: 301.314.9145

Editor, Library Quarterly (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/lq/current)
Editor, Government Information Quarterly (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf/)