When writing a grant proposal, it seems like nothing could be more complicated, time consuming and difficult. While writing the CLIR proposal, I was gathering and coordinating information and ideas from many people at the Newberry. Curators provided information about the collections; reference librarians talked to me about how and how often the collections were used; and the staff who coordinate Fellowship Programs helped me sort through decades of files to learn about scholarly activities. I had to fact check financial information with the Business Office and Human Resources and verify technical needs with IT. Documents needed to be signed, letters of support and commitment needed to be requested, and drafts needed to be written, circulated and edited.
When a proposal is funded, the first week after hearing the news is so much fun you can almost forget how much work went into planning and writing. After getting award letter from Charles Henry at CLIR, I spend a lot of time sending out “Good News!” emails to all the people who helped write the grant and I received all sorts of congratulatory messages back. There were after work drinks with coworkers and even some friends (who still don’t really understand how “cataloging” is different from “data entry”) suspect I might do something important and interesting.
It’s only after that first project meeting that you really realize how easy the writing was compared to actually doing all the work that has been planned! This is especially true if the project, like ours, is a “Pilot Project” that will introduce new workflows and staffing and requires us to develop training modules, devise new job descriptions and assemble an entire team before we can even start our production work.
Lucky for me, help is on the way! Our project officially begins on Monday, January 3rd and Eric Nygren, who will take on the key professional Cataloger role, will be ready to go. Eric is currently a Cataloging Librarian here at the Newberry and I have already worked with him on an ongoing project to catalog the Roger S. Baskes cartographic collection. In addition to his cataloging experience, Eric has the French language skills required to work with the pamphlets. Equally important, Eric has some training and project management skills that we will be relying upon and developing in the upcoming years.
Welcome to the French Pamphlet Project, Eric!