Owen Clayton recommended the Newberry Library buy books that he won a fellowship to view
Owen’s top tips
- The best library fellowship bids arise organically from research, because the applicant has identified items in the library’s collection.
- Emphasise the specific material you want to access as well as how physically visiting that material will boost your research.
- Give a clear indication of the outputs from your research.
- Library fellowships are like other grants: you need to impress upon reviewers the importance of your field of research.
- Even though the application will be shorter than for a research grant, it will still require care, attention and judicious editing.
The Newberry Library in Chicago, US, is home to 1.6 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 600,000 maps spanning a range of fields but with a certain emphasis on North American history and medieval, renaissance and early modern European studies.