With the help of a university fund, political science Associate Professor Jeanne Nienaber Clarke was able to publish a biography of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Interior Secretary, Harold L. Ickes.

The Author Support Fund helps faculty members defray publication costs passed on to writers by publishers.

Clarke's book, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, contains photographs which require permission of the owners and copyright fees to be paid for their use in the book.

"Big publishing houses sometimes work with the author on those fees," Clarke said. "But the university presses don't have as much money to cover that."

Awards from the support fund will not exceed $1,500, but will more likely be in the range of $500 to $1,000, said Senior Vice Provost Martha Gilliland. Clarke said her award was $750 and also covered the cost of having an index done for the book. Only manuscripts accepted for publication and submitted with reviews by the publisher will be considered for awards.

Eligible faculty include those who conduct research, Gilliland said.

Ten to 20 awards are given out annually totaling $5,000 to $10,000 a year.

A review committee is selected to choose the works, which will likely "bring distinction to the author(s) and to the university," a memo about the fund stated.

Guidelines for the awards state that the strongest applications are those with a likelihood of the costs being passed on to the author by the publisher, such as Clarke's book, which contains high quality photos.

"This occurs quite often in the area of social science and the humanities," Gilliland said. "Books with photos and graphics are expensive to publish."

Other guidelines include preference given to first books, respected publishing houses, outstanding reviews and authored rather than edited manuscripts.

Those likely to be excluded are "for-profit" textbooks, fiction and translated books.

To Clarke, the moral support provided by the fund was as important as the money.

"It was good because someone else thought the project was worthwhile," she said.

Clarke said she became interested in Harold L. Ickes, the subject of her book, through her environmental policy research.

"(Ickes) was a key figure in resource policy," she said. "He enlarged the scope of conservation in the Interior Department."

Ickes served as secretary of the interior for all 13 years of Roosevelt's presidency, the longest of anyone in that position.

The 414-page book sells in the UA Associated Students Bookstore for $39.95 and is located in the UA authors section in general books.

The application deadline for the 1996-97 academic year is Nov. 15.

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