Programs & initiatives

Supporting the collaborative development of libraries, learning technologies and curricular resources

Major programs, and some recent initiatives under development, are listed below.

Programs without links below will have information posted in the coming months. Contact us with questions about any of these activities.

AMICAL-organised professional development events

AMICAL Conference

Our annual conference on libraries, technology and learning at international American universities, hosted by a different of member institution each year.

Events

All our events, including our in-person workshops and online events.

Funding opportunities

Small Grants

Grants to support individual staff and faculty members for professional development but also local and collaborative projects related to digital scholarship, digital collections, digital pedagogy, and library innovation.

Workshop Grants

Financial support for the organization and delivery of thematic professional development events targeting participation by multiple member institutions.

Other programs or initiatives

Library partnerships in international liberal arts education

A joint project—coordinated by Jeff Gima, AMICAL Director and Kara Malenfant, senior staff member at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)—to support AMICAL members in sharing, with each other and with colleagues in the U.S., their experiences of library collaboration with faculty and technologists.

OCLC programs

Membership in the OCLC cooperative & access to core WorldCat-based library services (RESPOND program) and group pricing on other OCLC services.

Institutional research & assessment

  • Cooperative participation in ECAR (EDUCAUSE) and other surveys related to technology use and information literacy.
  • Coordinated studies of library user communities at member institutions, using ethnographic methods, surveys, etc.
  • Collection and sharing of institutional research data for benchmarking.
  • See our archive of past studies & surveys and library satisfaction surveys.

Licensed resources

Group pricing on e-resources (library databases), as well as access to other technology resources.

Information literacy

Surveys, focus groups and other studies of information literacy instruction at member institutions.

Digital initiatives

AMICAL is currently developing guidelines and professional development resources to support the development of digital collections supporting local teaching and learning activities.

Community

We help bridge AMICAL members across institutional, geographic and professional boundaries primarily through our community forum: AMICAL Connect.