Research & Activities
Key Personnel & Strategic Collaborations
Key Personnel
PIs: UA SLIS [Bharat Mehra (Professor & EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice] and CSU CIMST [Kimberly Black (Associate Professor)] are strategically collaborating with state and public libraries from all the 16 southern states (and Washington, D. C.) to facilitate all grant activities.
Library representatives are serving on the RJ@PL Advisory Board (15 members) and Diversity + Domain Taskforce (10 + 10 members) to assist in work plan success and implementation. The PIs are co- editing a forthcoming book entitled Antiracist Library and Information Science: Racial Justice and Community as part of the Advances in Librarianship series. Chapter contributors have provided informal commitment (if proposal is funded) to serve in various project management roles.
Strategic Collaborations
The PI/co-PI have collaborated effectively on multiple IMLS-funded projects in the southern region; we selected personnel from our networks based on past demonstrated expertise. PI: Dr. Bharat Mehra brings experience of multiple externally funded grants of more than a million dollars awarded by the IMLS to further social justice, community development, and economic growth in the rural Southern and Central Appalachian region.
Co-PI: Dr. Kimberly Black has strong experience in equity and inclusion of diverse populations and community development from post-secondary educational programs. She has conducted her work supporting underserved communities in south and central Appalachia and the Southside of Chicago. Her work has been funded by IMLS, DoD and NSF.
Partners include state library agencies and individual public libraries (or systems) whose representatives have agreed to serve on the RJ@PL Advisory Board.
The thoroughness and vision of potential outcomes justifies the inclusion of various categorized stakeholder groups, sometimes with individuals in multiple roles and responsibilities that are summarized in Table 2.
For more details, check the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) website.
