Lauris Olson
Librarian & Coordinator, Social Sciences Collections
As the Penn Libraries' social sciences bibliographer - now coordinator for social sciences collections - since 1998, Lauris is responsible for selecting books, journals, electronic resources, and other media supporting Penn research and instruction in sociology, economics, linguistics, criminology, communication, and related fields. Lauris is Penn's Official Representative to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research and the contact person for the Penn Libraries' Pennsylvania State Data Center affiliate membership. Lauris coordinates collection development and management activities of subject librarians for anthropology & archaeology, business, education, gender, women's studies & sexuality, political science & international relations, psychology, and social policy & practice/social work. Lauris is also the Penn Libraries' African studies bibliographer. Lauris started at the Penn Libraries in 1991 as a Van Pelt Library reference librarian, but Lauris's presence at Penn began in 1975 as an undergraduate, earning BA and MA degrees in Anthropology here, alongside a Drexel library degree.
Grants assistance and nonprofit organization information are provided by two Candid databases that are new to the Penn Libraries.
Identify potential funders through Grants to Individuals Online, a searchable database of 10,000 grantmakers to individuals. GTI offers specialized search filters to make your hunt for scholarships, grants, and funding easier, with search fields for subject area, geographic focus, support strategy, and transaction type. Grants to Individuals features a handy "Current RFPs" service to view active funding calls. GTI's Current RFPs service can be filtered by subject and results point directly to grantmakers' web pages.
GuideStar Pro is the preeminent reporter of U.S. nonprofit organizations, their makeup, governance, and financials. Combining years of IRS Form 990 (Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax) submissions with Candid's research, GuideStar Pro covers more than 2 million nonprofits.
GuideStar Pro requires a personal login to unlock its powerful searching, saving, and cohort/peer analysis tools. Advanced search filters let you search for nonprofits by geography, organizational characteristics, and financial information. Organization search filters include subject area and populations served, IRS subsection (e.g., 50a(c)(6) Business Leagues, etc.), number of employees, reported diversity data, and GuideStar's Seal of Transparency rating. Financial searching uses detailed revenue, expenses, and assets dollar-range filters.
Grants to Individuals and GuideStar Pro complete the Penn Libraries collection of Candid's online resources. They join The Foundation Directory Online Professional, the comprehensive searchable listing of charitable grantmakers - GTI is a focused subset of FDO - and Foundation Maps, a mapdriven visualizaion tool documenting the flows of grant funds among organizations.
