SF-424S: Application for Federal Domestic Assistance/Short Organizational Form 1-4 Items 1 4 on form SF-424s are filled in automatically by Grants.gov. 5. Applicant Information a. Legal Name: Beauchamp Branch Library b. Address: 2111 South Salina St. Syracuse, NY 13205-1335 c. Web Address: http://www.onlib.org/web/locations_hours/branches/beauchamp.htm d. Type of Applicant: (dropdown box option) e. EIN/TIN: (the nine-digit number assigned by the IRS) f. Organizational D-U-N-S : (...durrrr...) g. Congressional District: NY-025 6. Project Information a. Project Title: The Syracuseum Video Editing Classes b. Project Description: A public library will collaborate with a local history project that trains community members to perform and collect oral history interview videos. The library will host the oral history training seminars and in return, will be granted permission to use the resulting videos of local oral histories in a series of video editing classes. The classes will be taught by a trained librarian and the final products, the edited videos, will be shared with the community online and as part of the library's local history collection. c. Proposed Project Start Date/End Date: January - November 2011 7. Project Director Claire Enkosky, Library Manager of Beauchamp Branch Library 123 Etcetera St. Yadayadaville, NY 12345-0123 8. Primary Contact/Grants Administrator check the Same as Project Director box 9. Authorized Representative Claire Enkosky, Library Manager of Beauchamp Branch Library 123 Etcetera St. Yadayadaville, NY 12345-0123 For Grants.gov applications, the Signature of Authorized Representative and Date Signed boxes will be populated on submission of the application. Submission of the application by the authorized representative certifies compliance with relevant federal requirements, as the signature would on a paper application.
Abstract As Library Manager of Beauchamp Branch Library in Syracuse, New York, I want to assist local organizations in promoting cultural heritage, while fostering community appreciation for the library and its varied programs. The formal partners in this case are the Black Syracuse Project, the Black History Preservation Project, and the South Side Initiative Office. We have successfully worked with them in the past to produce digitized copies of personal photographs and want to expand this collection development opportunity to include videos. These partners offer free oral history training to organized groups of at least twelve interested community members. Beauchamp Public Library will advertise this new education opportunity and attract the necessary number of students. Beauchamp will host the series of oral history training seminars in large room on the second floor of the library building. The Black Syracuse Project has experience with these training seminars and already owns the equipment necessary to lend to the students for recording interviews. This series of training seminars will be held from February to March of 2011. Following the completion of the training, the students are obliged to perform four recorded oral history interviews with community members. They will complete these interviews by July, at which point Beauchamp Public Library will begin its own series of video editing training classes, taught by one of its own librarians. The librarian will be professionally trained in Adobe Premiere in January of 2011, prior to the oral history training. The proposed project addresses several problems at once. First, the proposed partners have a backlog of several dozen interview videos that are unedited and at least an hour long each. They must be edited to a manageable size and more appealing quality. Second, Beauchamp's collection policy emphasizes local history, but the collection is lacking in audio/visual material. These videos will bolster the library's outstanding collection of historical photographs. Third, this will give light to the marginalized African- American population of Syracuse, New York, and record their history from their perspective. Fourth, Beauchamp Public Library suffers from the misconception of the community that they are technologically out-of-date. A free class offering an advanced skill like video editing will attract a younger audience interested in such a technical and creative program. The innovation is the class in Adobe Premiere to simultaneously add to the library's collection. It will be evaluated by the quality of the students' output and more directly, by the response the edited videos receive on the online interface.
Program Information Sheet 1. Applicant Information a. Legal Name: Beauchamp Branch Library b. and c. Organizational Unit and Address: Beauchamp Branch Library 2111 South Salina St. Syracuse, NY 13205-1335 d. Web Address: http://www.onlib.org/web/locations_hours/branches/beauchamp.htm e. Type of Institution: Public Library 2. Grant Program or Grant Category Select the appropriate designations listed under l. Sparks! Ignition Grants : 1. Select the appropriate funding office: Library 2. Select Sparks! Ignition Grants as the grant category. 3. Request Information a. IMLS Funds Requested: $10,350 b. Cost Share Amount: 4. Museum Profile (Museum Applicants only) 5. Project Partner Names Black Syracuse Project Black History Preservation Project South Side Initiative Office
Narrative Assessment of Need The problem this proposal addresses is the growing collection of unedited and unprocessed recordings gathered by local community history projects. The proposed partner, the Black Syracuse Project, has several dozen video recordings of oral histories of local residents. These videos are so long and unpolished that they are ignored by the vast majority of the public. They are at least an hour long each and often have long pauses or other aspects that make them unappealing to watch in entirety. They need to be edited and properly processed with metadata in order to be accessible to the greater public or useful for researchers. Beauchamp Public Library can solve this problem by training interested library users in video editing using computer software, simultaneously fostering community pride and technology confidence. Beauchamp already has a collection of local African-American history artifacts (primarily photographs) and would like to expand this collection to include videos. Another problem Beauchamp faces is the community s misconception that the library is technologically out-dated. Some members of the population have suggested that the library is only for books. In particular, this has affected the young adult and teenage populations, who shy away from the library. Beauchamp already offers basic computer training classes. These classes have proven successful at helping patrons feel more comfortable with computers. An extension of this existing service to familiarize library users with an advanced computer application like Adobe Premiere could attract new populations of users, like local high school students interested in media and technology, and help rebrand the library as a place for creative and applied technology. Salinas Public Library of Salinas, California, has pursued a similar endeavor in their innovative Digital Arts Lab and found it to be highly successful at encouraging new population segments to visit the library. Before Beauchamp invests as much as Salina Public Library has in such extensive technology, we would like to test patron response. Project Design The Black Syracuse Project offers free oral history training to organized groups of at least a dozen community members. Beauchamp Public Library will advertise this new education opportunity and attract the necessary number of students. Beauchamp will host the series of oral history training seminars in large room on the second floor of the library building. Following the completion of the training, the students are obliged to perform four recorded oral history interviews with community members. The Black Syracuse Project has experience with these training seminars and already owns the equipment necessary to lend to the students for recording interviews. The library s function at this stage of the project is as advertiser and host, which will help publicize the library as a center of cultural heritage preservation. After the training is complete and recordings are collected, the Black Syracuse Project will give copies of the videos to Beauchamp Public Library, as well as copies of the older videos in their collection (the Black Syracuse Project already has over thirty videos collected, so this proposed project is not concerned with the success rate of new oral history video collection). Beauchamp will advertise and organize a series of classes for interested community members to learn how to capture, edit, and produce movies using a computer application like Adobe Premiere. In teaching this technology to students, the librarian will be using the oral history videos, so that the lessons are experiential and effective. In experimenting and practicing with this new technology, the students will gain invaluable confidence in computer usage which can help them market themselves for future opportunities. The products of the classes will be polished and valuable additions to Beauchamp s local history collection. Beauchamp will make compilation DVDs of the students work to be circulated or possibly
sold for minimal price as a funding source. These DVDs will be a highly visible advertising mechanism within the community as an innovative form of participative librarianship. Innovation and Impact The goals of the project are: To collaborate with community organizations to preserve cultural heritage and encourage community pride To add to the library s local history collection To make existing collections of community history videos more accessible and appealing to the public and researchers To attract new community members to the library To teach library users a new skill set that they can apply to future endeavors To re-brand the library as a modern and technology-friendly community center The objectives of the project are: To attract the interest in at least twelve (12) library users as participants in a Black Syracuse Project Oral History training seminar. To host the training seminars for the necessary time of one a week for seven weeks over the course of February and March of 2011. To garner and share the results of the training with the Black Syracuse Project. To attract the interest of at least eighteen (18) library users in a series of classes about Adobe Premiere. To train those library users in capturing, editing, and producing videos using the Black Syracuse Project oral histories over the course of eight (8) free classes, ninety minutes each, in concurrent sessions running from July through October of 2011. To garner and share the results of the edited videos with the Black Syracuse Project. To compile the results of the edited videos onto DVDs to give to the class participants, retain for the library s collection, and to distribute as circulated material. Evaluation Plan Evaluation of the project will be clear in several of the steps: - The number of library users attracted to the Oral History training seminars. - The number of library users attracted to the video editing classes. - The number of views of the edited videos on the website. - The circulation records for the DVDs of the edited videos. Evaluating the success of the other objectives and goals will require observation and feedback from all library staff, as well as from the participants of the different training sessions and the partnering organizations. Project Resources Budget, Personnel, and Management Beauchamp Public Library already has the necessary facilities to host the oral history training seminar taught by the Black Syracuse Project as well as the video editing classes. As for equipment, the library needs one additional mobile computer station, a projector and a projection screen to make the advanced techniques of the software visible to all six participants of each class.
Beauchamp already has a librarian skilled and experienced in computer classes: Mr. John Smith. John Smith is the only personnel to be directly involved with this project besides the library manager, Claire Enkosky. He has worked at Beauchamp for fifteen years and has an impressive resume of professional development, including several instructional design workshops. He has taught seven years of classes in remedial and basic computer usage to our patrons with high success, teaching nearly two hundred local patrons to use MS Word and Internet Explorer. His responsibilities include reference desk time, event organization, and the aforementioned computer classes. Those responsibilities will continue as usual during the duration of this project, with the exception of his professional Adobe training in January, when reference desk time rotation will be amended. The partnership we are proposing is with the Black Syracuse Project and its affiliations. Beauchamp will help them by providing a location for their training sessions, which are paid for through another ILMS grant and the South Side Initiative Office. Beauchamp will also help the Black Syracuse Project by adding another point of advertising and recognition; this will be a symbiotic relationship, as the local history project will increase positive publicity for Beauchamp, as well. Finally, the Black Syracuse Project will provide copies of videos that the students of the Beauchamp class will be able to alter and edit without issues of copyright infringement. At the end of the class, the Black Syracuse Project will have the polished videos as their reward. It will be very beneficial to both partners. Claire Enkosky will have meetings with John Smith on a regular basis to report on the professional Adobe training, the classes throughout the summer, and the progress of the project. They both will meet with Joan Bryant of the Black Syracuse Project and Linda Littlejohn of the South Side Initiative Office on a monthly basis from January to November of 2011. Timeline January Feb-March March-June July-October November November 30 John Smith goes to Boston for a three day training seminar in Adobe Premiere Beauchamp and the Black Syracuse Project advertise oral history training Black Syracuse Project hosts oral history training seminars Oral History students collect interview videos Beauchamp advertises & registers students for Adobe Premiere class Three concurrent classes (June-July, July-August, September-October) run Final products are compiled and burned onto DVDs for circulation Informal reception to celebrate the students' work and the projects' success.