2023 LORI Grant Awards Announced

OLIS awarded 15 Library of Rhode Island (LORI) Grants totaling $255,000 to RI libraries through the 2023 LORI Grant Program. LORI Grants are supported through the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and funded through the IMLS Grants to States program under the Library Services and Technology Act.  The 2023 LSTA sub-grants are for the period of May through September 2023. 

Grants

 

Ashaway Free Library

Located in: Town of Hopkinton

Website: Ashaway Free Library

Project Title: Growing Lifelong Readers: Bridging the Gap between Early Education and Adulthood

Grant Award: $5,000

Project Director: Heather Field, Library Director

The Ashaway Free Library will update and enhance the juvenile fiction collection with high-interest materials to better engage young readers. The new collections will be informed by conversations with elementary- and middle-school-aged patrons and their families and kids will be invited to participate in a reading challenge featuring the new titles.

Cranston Public Library

Located in: City of Cranston

Website: Cranston Public Library

Project Title: Library Collections Diversity Assessment

Grant Award: $9,000

Project Director: Edward Garcia, Library Director

The Cranston Public Library will conduct a diversity assessment of its collection and purchase recommended materials. Library staff are committed to building collections that reflect the community and represent a wide range of experiences. Using Ingram Library Services “iCurate inClusive" product, staff will learn where there are gaps in the collection and purchase recommended materials that reflect the diverse composition of the community.

Cranston Public Library

Located in: City of Cranston

Website: Cranston Public Library

Project Title: Library Outreach “Branch7”

Grant Award: $19,555

Project Director: Edward Garcia, Library Director

Cranston Public Library is launching “Branch7”, a new library outreach van. The library will be outfitting a vehicle with storage, filling it with materials, and wrapping it with visible branding so that it can bring meaningful library experiences to neighborhoods that are far from the library’s physical locations. Starting in summer 2023, “Branch7” will deploy to strategic locations in underserved neighborhoods to provide access to essential library services like registering for library cards, checking out materials, and participating in the summer reading program.

Community Libraries of Providence

Located in: City of Providence

Website: Community Libraries of Providence

Project Title: BiblioDiversity

Grant Award: $23,700

Project Director: Cheryl Space, Library Director

Community Libraries of Providence will host Wild Lives Bibliodiversity rainforest experiment to connect Providence children and families to wildlife in the home country of one of the city’s largest immigrant communities, Guatemala. During the several-class series children will take a front-seat role as they investigate the secret lives of animals, learning and using skills in tracking, scientific illustration, camera trapping, and storytelling.

Douglas & Judith Krupp Library, Bryant University

Located in: Town of Smithfield

Website: Krupp Library

Project Title: Scaling Virtual Reality Programming

Grant Award: $12,622

Project Director: Laura Kohl, Director of Library Services

The Krupp Library will create an enhanced and portable Virtual Reality (VR) lab with VR, Extended Reality (XR) and Augmented Reality (AR) equipment to engage users who are part of the Bryant community and beyond. Providing VR experiences to secondary and undergraduate students related to their areas of study allows for a unique opportunity to build knowledge, skills, and empathy. High school students attending summer camps focused on topics including Economics, International Business, and Data Analytics will use the expanded equipment in the library's Data Visualization Lab.

East Providence Public Library

Located in: City of East Providence

Website: East Providence Public Library

Project Title: Improving Library Services to Multilingual Communities and English Language Learners

Grant Award: $17,250

Project Director: Meredith Bonds-Harmon, Library Director

The East Providence Public Library serves a diverse, multilingual community and this project will focus on improving the library’s collection, services and physical space for this community. For youth, the library will expand its non-English picture book collection and offer several bilingual story time programs. In addition, the library will offer a pilot program under an experienced social worker to connect recent immigrants, English language learners, and multilingual individuals to resources, and expand the popular chess program to create a multilingual chess area to bring the community together.

Exeter Public Library

Located in: Town of Exeter

Website: Exeter Public Library

Project Title: Work and Career Support Hub

Grant Award: $15,000

Project Director: Tien Tran, Library Director

Exeter Public Library will create a new resource hub to support residents with work and career goals. Central to the resource hub will be a modern privacy pod providing individuals with a comfortable space for work, study, and virtual interviews and meetings. To increase visibility for and supplement this new facility, the library will purchase and feature a small collection of books and office supplies catering to resident’s career and business needs and launch a profile photo service to deliver a coherent suite of resources that will engage and benefit working residents.

Middletown Public Library

Located in: Town of Middletown

Website: Middletown Public Library

Project Title: MPL's Digital Literacy Service Program: Engaged, Enthused, Productive

Grant Award: $19,987

Project Director: Theresa Coish, Library Director

The Middletown Public Library will enhance learning programs for all ages and abilities by providing increased access to technology. Technology-based programs for early literacy learning, youth engagement, and adult digital literacy will be scheduled weekly from June to September. These programs will build on the library’s existing programs, such as 3D printing workshops, Dungeon & Dragons programs, and more.

Pawtucket Public Library

Located in: City of Pawtucket

Website: Pawtucket Public Library

Project Title: Patron Tablet Kiosk

Grant Award: $15,316

Project Director: Christine Jeffers, Assistant Library Director

Pawtucket Public Library’s Tablet Station Kiosk will enhance users’ library experience by making it easy to access a wide range of digital content anywhere they choose in the library, as well as providing access to the Internet for virtual sessions for such things as self-learning, educational classes, meetings, job interviews, occupational testing, medical appointments and more.

Providence Public Library

Located in: City of Providence

Website: Providence Public Library

Project Title: Preservation and Public Access to PPL’s Organizational Archives

Grant Award: $11,665

Project Director: Kate Wells, Rhode Island Collections Curator

Providence Public Library will archive its century and a half’s worth of organizational records and make them available for research and public access. This work will help preserve the library’s history and the history of libraries in Rhode Island for ongoing access as the library prepares for its 150th anniversary.

South Kingstown Public Library

Located in: Town of South Kingstown

Website: South Kingstown Public Library

Project Title: Narragansett Times Newspaper Digitization

Grant Award: $22,555

Project Director: Laurel Clark, Library Director

The South Kingstown Public Library holds both microfilm (1855-2010) and print (2011-present) formats of The Narragansett Times. This local newspaper covers the cultural happenings and news of southern Rhode Island, serving the communities of South Kingstown, Narragansett, and the surrounding areas of Washington County.  The library will continue previous digitization efforts and digitize print issues from 2011-2020, which will be added to the library’s existing searchable platform. The library will also engage with the Tomaquag Museum to deliver programs on indigenous history featured in the paper.

Warwick Public Library

Located in: City of Warwick

Website: Warwick Public Library

Project Title: Library of Things

Grant Award: $8,828

Project Director: Aaron Coutu, Library Director

The Warwick Public Library will expand its offerings of non-traditional items with a new Library of Things and create a shelving option that will allow patrons to have easy access to see what is available at any time. The collection will focus on four areas of interest: Crafting & Home Economics, Hardware & Tools, Medical & Health, and additional STEM Kit items to provide learning opportunities for the community. The library will partner with area organizations to further highlight the collection through programming while also helping to connect the community with those organizations, including Kent Hospital, Warwick Health Equity Zone (HEZ), RI Community Food Bank, a local vegan group, and area craftspeople and tradespeople.

West Warwick Public Library

Located in: Town of West Warwick

Website: West Warwick Public Library

Project Title: WWPL Innovation Lab

Grant Award: $24,722

Project Director: Colin McCullough, Library Director

West Warwick Public Library will create an “Innovation Lab” within the library. This dedicated space will provide a collaborative space, open to all ages and all library departments, where the community can come to together to share ideas and work on a range of projects and programs (both library-directed and patron-directed) using a variety of cutting-edge tools and resources.

Westerly Library & Wilcox Park

Located in: Town of Westerly

Website: Westerly Library & Wilcox Park

Project Title: Access to History

Grant Award: $25,960

Project Director: Brigitte Hopkins, Library Director

The Westerly Library and Wilcox Park will digitize approximately 150 reels of the Westerly Sun, to be searchable and hosted on the Community History Archive site. The library will share the digitized reels with the community by holding a public programs demonstrating how to use the database, publishing an article in the local paper to reach a wide audience, providing one on one tutorials to patrons in addition to the group program, and producing written materials as well.

Woonsocket Harris Public Library

Located in: City of Woonsocket

Website: Woonsocket Harris Public Library

Project Title: Woonsocket Call Digitization

Grant Award: $25,000

Project Director: Margaret McNulty, Assistant Director

The Woonsocket Harris Public Library will expand access to current library-use only materials through digitization of the library's microfilm collection of the Woonsocket Call newspaper dating from 1962-1974. The library has previously digitized the Woonsocket Call from 1900-1962 and created a website created to host the files. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology will be utilized for keyword text searching on the library's archival website.