I’m very excited to let you all know that 10 grant recipients have been identified by Dale Lipschultz, project manager of the ALA/Verizon grant, assisted by myself, Dr. Scott Nicholson, and our stellar expert panel! A sincere thank you goes to our generous funder, the Verizon Foundation, for proving this amazing opportunity to allow us to showcase the gaming & literacy connection.
We’ll be funding 7 public, 2 school, and 1 academic library. The libraries are in 10 different states and represent a diversity of communities. The winners were notified by telephone and follow-up email on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. The names of the libraries and projects are embargoed until ALA releases an official press release next Tuesday, April 28, which I will be posting here.
If you are at one of the 380 libraries that did NOT receive a congratulatory phone call this week, we are so sorry to disappoint you! This was an extremely competitive grant round, and we are pleased so many people participated. There were so many wonderful applications. Choosing just ten was a very difficult choice and a complicated process. Liz Danforth provided a little insight into her own rigorous experience over on her Games, Gaming & Gamers blog, hosted by Library Journal.
I hope that completing the proposal will spur some of you to action – we’ll keep posting about grant opportunities from other sources, such as the next round of Best Buy Community Relations grants announced this week; proposals are due June 15, 2009, and Fun Again grants with a rolling application deadline and monthly winners.
In the meantime, CONGRATULATIONS to our winners — you know who you are! — I’m thrilled for you, and to be a part of this. Stay tuned!