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La Barre, Tilley Receive Grant to Improve Access to Folktales

February 2, 2009

Assistant Professors Kathryn La Barre and Carol Tilley have been awarded a research grant for their project, "Folktales, Facets, and FRBR." The OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant will provide La Barre and Tilley with $15,000 toward their research.

"Folktales connect communities and people across time and space. Each culture has stories that have endured and evolved through spoken narrative and printed word," said Tilley. "Despite the persistence and efforts of adapters, compilers, storytellers, librarians, and scholars to keep these stories alive, many of these stories are hidden from potential audiences because of limitations in current bibliographic structures for representation and access."

In order to correct these limitations and increase accessibility, La Barre and Tilley will develop a next-generation catalog platform that will include enhanced folktale records that more accurately describe the rich cultural heritage available to readers. They will pay specific attention to the needs of users, analyzing the searching behaviors of scholars, storytellers, and children's caregivers.

This research is being conducted as part of GSLIS's Center for Children's Books and Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), formerly known as the Library Research Center.

La Barre and Tilley received the honor at the Association for Library and Information Science Education annual conference held in Denver, Colorado in January.

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