dec10b.indd


December 2010  649 C&RL News

Jessica McGilvray, assistant director of 
ALA’s Office of Government Relations, is 
serving as ALA’s lead staffer on this project. 
She says she anticipates a host of possibilities 
to unfold as the groups delve into the project. 

This Web resource will facilitate the ability 
of libraries to: 

• provide essential e-government services 
to their residents and communities;

• work with agencies to develop col-
laborations to facilitate services to individu-
als; and

• develop a range of collective support 
tools, templates, and training materials 
that help libraries of all types engage in e-
government services rather than each library 
working on its own.

Building on the work of the ALA’s Com-
mittee on Legislation’s (COL) Ad-Hoc Sub-
committee on E-government Services and 
others, the project explores government-li-
brary collaborations to deliver e-government 
services to users. 

The project’s initial focus is on immigra-
tion and taxation as the two content areas 
to develop the resource, and has support 
from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. 
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the 
Government Printing Office, five state library 
agencies (Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, 
New Jersey, and Texas), and several public 
and academic libraries. 

CLII Director John Carlo Bertot says the 
project will enhance libraries’ abilities to ad-
dress needs as they arise. 

“The broad coalition of libraries, librar-
ians, government agencies, and researchers 
working on this project will offer a unique 
opportunity to explore collaborations that 
allow agencies and libraries to meet the 
e-government needs of people in their com-
munities,” Bertot said. 

For more information, please see the 
Center for Library and Information Innova-
tion Web site at clii.umd.edu. 

Jenni Terry is press officer at ALA’s Washington Office, 
e-mail: jterry@alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eJenni Terry

ALA, Center for Library and 
Information Innovation receive grant 
This fall, the Institute of Museum and Li-
brary Services (IMLS) awarded ALA and the 
Center for Library and Information Innova-
tion (CLII) of the University of Maryland’s 
iSchool a National Leadership grant. 

The grant, which totaled $581,609, is 
for the launch of a three-year pilot project 
to create a Web site that will enable the 
government and libraries to more effec-
tively communicate about government 
information.  

This project is an important step toward 
growing and creating stronger collabora-
tions between the government and libraries 
to ensure that the public is receiving the 
best possible service. This year, one of 
ACRL’s top legislative priorities is to make 
possible more economical and feasible 
maintenance of government information 
and the provision of the best service pos-
sible to library patrons based on a variety 
of formats as needed. This project, which 
officially began at the start of this month, 
supports that goal. 

Other project partners include the Uni-
versity of Illinois-Chicago and the Informa-
tion Institute at Florida State University. 
Also participating in this project is Govern-
ment Information Online (GIO).

Developed jointly by ALA and CLII, this 
Web resource may include service and 
resource content, tutorials, best practice 
approaches to government-library col-
laborations, embedded expert government 
information digital reference, guidance on 
the provision of e-government services, 
the ability to share and exchange practices, 
and tools to facilitate local customization 
of e-government service provision and 
resources in libraries.