RRLC offers a variety of grant opportunities to members throughout the year.
RRLC Action & Innovation Grant
The Action & Innovation Grant supports projects that take action on issues impacting the community served by your organization. Projects that take action in an innovative way are preferred. Projects that collaborate with other RRLC members or community organizations will receive priority consideration.
The 2024 Action & Innovation Grant winner is:
- Rochester School Library System – Providing Books and Makerspaces for Blind and Partially Sighted Students
This project will build a collection of braille and VCI books to ensure blind and low vision students across the Rochester Region have more equitable access to school libraries. This project also seeks to improve equity across student makerspaces by creating new universally designed loanable kits that include braille items or braille overlay labels to current kits that will allow these students to more fully participate in their makerspaces.
Learn more about the 2024 Action & Innovation Grant
RRLC Collections & Access Grant
The Collections & Access grant supports member projects that improve access to collections. Projects must make collections more accessible and freely available to end users, preferably through one of the ongoing statewide projects. Projects that highlight underrepresented voices receive priority consideration.
The 2024 Collections & Access Grant winners are:
- Genesee Country Village & Museum (GCV&M) – Digitizing GCV&M’s Exhibits & Buildings with Matterport
This project will digitally capture one exhibit from the John L. Wehle Gallery titled Becoming Gendered; Garment as Gender Artifact and one building in the Historic Village to provide an immersive and accessible experience for visitors on GCV&M’s website. The intent is to preserve and share the cultural history of marginalized communities as well as offer new access to economically disadvantaged and marginalized communities.
- Livingston County Town Historian – Livingston County Newspaper Accessibility Project
This project will convert early Livingston County newspapers on microfilm to archival-quality digital images for preservation and improved access. In doing so, the project will help to ensure the preservation of and access to newspaper content relating to people, events, and experiences in small, rural communities in Livingston County.
- Perry Public Library – Complete the Perry Herald Archive: Digitizing and Re-digitizing 141 Years
This project seeks to move the existing Perry Herald digital collection to the Historical Newspapers website spanning 108 years, examining and re-digitizing papers that were in poor condition on microfilm. This will be accomplished by utilizing collections held by Perry Public Library, Wyoming County Historian and Town of Perry Historian, and digitizing the remaining portion of the 33 years that are not currently available freely online.
Learn more about the 2024 Collections & Access Grant
RRLC Capacity Building Grant
We believe in our members and we help them build capacity in order to better fulfill their missions. This year RRLC collaborated with Causewave Community Partners to provide capacity building assistance in the areas of brand development, board development, values development, marketing, communication, and fundraising planning.
RRLC is pleased to announce over $23,000 in funding was distributed to the 2023 Capacity Building Grant recipients. Learn more about the 2023 winners!
RRLC Internship Grant
We want to introduce students to the wide variety of career opportunities in libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations, and help provide meaningful work experience that helps build professional skills.
The 2024 Internship Grant winners are:
- Genesee Valley BOCES SLS – School Library Collection Development project intern
Through this project the intern will work with schools in the Genesee Valley BOCES SLS. The intern will interact with collections that have different organization systems thereby allowing the intern to learn how to work within both traditional school library organization and non-Dewey system. This experience will allow the intern to gain the skills to assess a collection while implement lasting changes to improve access and browsability.
- Wood Library – Your Adventure Begins at Wood Library project intern
This summer project enables the intern to collaborate with three librarians, each specializing in a specific age group: children, teens, and adults. In the process, the intern gains valuable public library experience. Tasks include assisting with programming, collection development, display creation, and weeding projects. The intern will also lead a program aligned with the summer reading theme: Adventure Begins At Your Library.
Learn more about the 2024 Internship Grant
RRLC Special Project Grant
We offer special project grants to members who want to undertake a project that will help the organization fulfill its mission; projects with a potential impact on the larger RRLC community are given first priority.
The 2024 Special Project Grant winners are:
- French Road Elementary School – Ocean Exploration
The goal of the project is to deepen students understanding of the ocean and its animal inhabitants. Students will research ocean zones, habitats and the animals in those habitats. They will work as a group to create an animal that could live in the habitat’s environment. Students use a graphic organizer to record facts about their habitat and to make their zone poster for technology. The students will use Book Creator to make a digital book entry about their animal. Books, supplies, and knowledge gained through this project could be shared with others in the school community. - Gates Chili High School – Library Makerspace
This project will transform a vacant cafe within the library into a dynamic collaborative makerspace. This makerspace will serve as a hub for creativity, providing students in grades 9-12 with the resources and environment needed to explore, innovate, and collaborate on various projects. This will serve as a space where teachers, students, and community members can come together and work on projects. - Literacy Rochester – Traveling Digital Classes within the Monroe County Libraries
Through this grant laptops will be purchased that will then be used to provide digital literacy classes to libraries throughout Monroe County. The goal of these traveling classes is to help community members learn digital skills through class topics such as Basic Computer Skills, Internet Skills, MyCare & MyChart, Resume Building, etc. - Frank DiMino Casa Italian Library at Nazareth University – Frank DiMino Casa Italiana Library Cataloging
The Frank DiMino Casa Italiana Library Cataloging Project is the result of a collaboration between the Frank DiMino Casa Italiana and the Lorette Wilmot Library. So far more than 1,750 books in the collection are cataloged (primarily by students). The goal of this collaborative project is for all 5,000 (plus) items in the Casa Italiana’s current library collection to be made accessible via an online library catalog where members of the Nazareth and greater Rochester community can find books and DVDs specific to Italian history and culture that they can check-out for both academic and personal use. - Fraser Hall Library, SUNY Geneseo – Noteworthy: a picture book and educational text about belonging
This grant will support SUNY Geneseo along with author Dr. Meredith Harrigan in the publication of a multi-faceted, open access, illustrated book project about personal journey, belonging, inquiry, applied learning, and a girl searching for her lost smile in a community park. The project challengers readers to critically examine the concept of belonging and how people can support belonging-related needs in various spaces. - Pine Brook Elementary School – Supporting Literacy for our ENL Learners
This grant will help to build a collection of books to support ENL (English as a New Language) students as well as celebrate and promote diverse cultures and languages. The grant will enable the library to purchase books in needed primary languages such as Ukrainian, Arabic, Spanish, and Dair which will in turn support and welcome students in their new setting.
- Rochester Institute of Technology Archives – Exploring the Urbanarium: A Deep Dive into Rochester’s Visionary Past
This grant will help to fund a multi-phase public history initiative aimed at critically examining and celebrating the significant history of the Urbanarium in order to revive the spirit of the original projects from the 1970’s, engage communities and foster dialogue around urban development, education, and the socio-cultural fabric of Rochester. - Smt. Gnanapoorani Madhvanath Memorial Library – SGM Memorial Library Cateloging Initiative
This grant will help fund the cataloging and preservation of the SGM Memorial Library’s extensive collection of rare and hard to find books related to Hinduism. The projects goal is to broaden the reach of culturally significant resources and promote educational opportunities for patrons.
Learn more about the 2024 Special Project Grant
Harold Hacker Fund for Advancement of Libraries
Each year the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library (FFRPL) offers a grant opportunity for Rochester area libraries who want to further education and professional development for library staff or to implement innovative library projects and programs. RRLC administrates this grant on behalf of the FFRPL.