This book offers a practical approach for those to whom grant-seeking may be new. The authors focus on demystifying the world of grant writing.

Grants have long been a tool that allow libraries to increase their reach and offer access to more communities. Libraries are seen as a trusted bridge connecting communities with information and resources. They are often at the intersection of various disciplines, projects, and funding opportunities, making librarians a natural fit to lead grant development.

The shifting realities of public, academic, and health sciences libraries today necessitate that information professionals must, more frequently, seek external funding for such projects. Yet few librarians are formally trained in grant-writing, nor in marshaling together a team of grant-seekers with varying positions, experiences, and knowledge fields. In addition, the institutional support staff that might have traditionally helped with such endeavors has frequently disappeared from rosters due to budgetary constraints within their institution, meaning that librarians seeking grants often do so without support often provided to academic researchers.

This book aims to help librarians develop grant proposals and juggle the differing demands of multiple collaborators both internally and externally. It will be of particular use to librarians seeking funding for larger projects that allow more community outreach and librarians working to develop a grant proposal with faculty and community members who may lean on them for support. It seeks to demystify the terminology and process of grant-applying, provide project management guides for undertaking large scale projects with a diverse team of partners, offer models of commonly expected writing tasks in grant-writing, and offer checklists for every step of the process, as well as suggestions for integrating AI tools in to the process in ethical, effective ways.