Policy and procedure for allocating sponsorship

Applicants seeking sponsorship must:

a)    Complete the sponsorship application form;
b)    Send this with a supporting letter (on official headed notepaper) from a Director, Head of Department or Head of Unit at their employer organisation or university/college department;
c)    Indicate the relevance of the conference to you and/or your workplace;
d)    Indicate if your institution can contribute financially.

To be eligible for a sponsored place, applicants must meet all of the following criteria:

• Be either a library practitioner or a student of Library/Information Science
• Be able to demonstrate that attendance at the conference will meet specific objectives for their service, development or research
• Be able to confirm that their organisation or university/college is unable or only partly able to fund their attendance
• Confirm their willingness to write an informal report of their experience of the conference, to be published in the professional press and on the conference website.

In the event of a competition for sponsored places, the sponsorship committee will assess the applications using the following criteria:

• Eligibility according to the criteria listed above
• An assessment of the significance of the contribution which attendance at the conference will make to the objectives of the applicant’s organisation or constituency
• An assessment of the significance of the contribution which attendance at the conference will make to the applicant’s personal and professional development
• An assessment of the contribution the applicant’s attendance will make to the success of the conference as a whole.
• Priority will be given to those who have had a paper accepted and particularly to first time presenters.

The decision of the sponsorship committee will be final. Levels of sponsorship awarded may vary and as such, if your application is successful, the final amount will be negotiated with you.

Any enquiries can be directed to m-libraries-conference@open.ac.uk.

Please note the closing date for applications for sponsored places is March 4, 2014.

Grateful thanks to OCLC for its support to this sponsored delegate places: