Funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is enabling seventeen UK researchers to benefit from unique access to the American Library of Congress (LoC) in Washington DC.

Thanks to a relationship that the AHRC forged with the LoC two years ago, the UK PhD students will shortly be heading off to Washington D.C. hoping to enhance their research careers with access to the internationally renowned research collections held at the Library.

Rather than UK researchers going to the USA for good, this programme allows UK PhD researchers the opportunity to spend up to six months working at what is the largest library in the world and to then bring back their new-found knowledge and expertise to their British Universities. This access will enable them to develop the depth, range and quality of their research activities as well as offering opportunities for networking with other international scholars working at the LoC.

The LoC is the USA's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.

The research projects that the students are working on cover a wide range of arts and humanities topics including the holocaust, slavery in the American South, naval architecture and human rights provisions.

Professor Philip Esler, Chief Executive of the AHRC said "This is a wonderful opportunity for these young researchers to expand their intellectual horizons and to develop strong relationships with their American colleagues that can stand them in good stead in the rest of their career."

A previous Library of Congress scholar, Anneliese Mackintosh of the University of Glasgow says, "To spend an almost unlimited amount of time in a huge library, surrounded by peers, knowledgeable members of academia, and helpful research staff, encouraged my work to come on in leaps and bounds, and I felt like a different person, with a far stronger PhD, by the time I left."

The AHRC will be announcing the competition for the next round (2009) of LoC funding in November 2008 - at which time full details will be available on the website: www.ahrc.ac.uk

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Media Contact: Emi Spinner, Communications Officer, e.spinner@ahrc.ac.uk. Tel: 0117 987 6770

Arts & Humanities Research Council: Each year the AHRC provides approximately £100 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,000 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute nearly a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.

The US Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 134 million items on over 530 miles of bookshelves. Founded in 1800 the Library adds approx 10,000 items per day to the Collection. Items include over 32 million books, nearly 3 million recordings, 12 million photographs and 60 million manuscripts. The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. More at www.loc.gov.