University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information researcher Shannon Crawford Barniskis was awarded a three-year, $410,294 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an independent agency of the United States federal government charged with supporting libraries and museums.

Crawford Barniskis, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Information Science, received the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Early Career Research Development grant for “The Trustee Project,” which aims to learn about the experiences of public library trustees.

To run the operations of a library, a library director or manager works with a board of local citizens, or trustees. The trustees have financial and policy-making powers that govern how a library will function. Because there is currently a lack of national research on library trustees, Crawford Barniskis’ research aims to understand the trustee in terms of demographics and values as well as how they are oriented into their roles as trustees.  

With this funding, Crawford Barniskis will conduct a nationwide survey, interviews and host a symposium for practitioners and scholars to gather experiences, voices and ideas.

“Such collaboration is invaluable to draw on many experiences, many voices and many ideas that I could certainly not experience or express on my own,” Crawford Barniskis said.

The findings will benefit the diverse populations public libraries serve in communities, including small, rural and socioeconomically marginalized communities. This grant will also allow her to disseminate her findings to scholarly conferences and journals.

Don Helme, the College of Communication and Information’s associate dean of research and professor in the Department of Communication, says Crawford Barniskis’ research has the potential to help public libraries in cultivating their library boards of trustees in ways that best reflect the needs of their community, while promoting equitable access for all community members.

This project was made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services Award Number RE-256642-OLS-24.