The intention of this contest is to encourage and reward good work in the field of library and information studies, humanistically understood, through a monetary award and public recognition.

The contest is open to librarians, library students, academics, and others.

Acceptable paper topics cover the full range of topics in the field of library and information studies, loosely defined.

Papers submitted may be unpublished, pending publication, or published in the year of the award.

Single and multiple-authored papers will be accepted.

Any type of paper may be entered as long as it is not a report of an empirical study. Examples of accepted forms would be literature review essays, analytical essays, historical papers, and personal essays. The work may include some informal primary research, but may not essentially be the report of a study.

Submitted papers may be part of a larger project.

The minimum length is 4000 words. The maximum length is 15,000 words.

Criteria for judgment:

Clarity of writing
Originality of thought
Sincerity of effort at reaching something true
Soundness of argumentation (where applicable)
Relevance to our time and situation

The award shall consist of $1000 and a certificate suitable for framing.

Entries must be submitted in MS Word format by September 1st. Entries may be submitted to inquiries@libraryjuicepress.com.

The winning paper, and possibly a number of honorable mentions, are announced on November 1st.

Papers will be judged by a committee selected for their accomplishments in the field, and in order to represent a range of perspectives.

Although we are a publisher, submission of a paper for this award in itself does not imply any transfer, licensing, or sharing of your publication rights.

Call for Submissions – Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize

The submission period for the 2013 Braverman Award is now open. Submitted papers should be about some aspect of the social responsibilities of librarians, libraries, or librarianship. Papers related to archivists, archives, and archival work are also eligible.

The winning paper will be published in the Summer 2013 issue of Progressive Librarian. The winner of the contest will also receive a $300 stipend to help offset the cost of travel to and from the 2013 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago, IL from June 27- July 2. The award will be presented at the annual PLG dinner at ALA.

Additionally, the following requirements must also be met:

• Contestants must be library and/or information science students attending a graduate-level program in the United States or Canada.

• Entries must be the original, unpublished work of the contestant, and must be written in English. Entries may not exceed 3,000 words and must conform to MLA in-text citation style.

• To facilitate the blind review process, each entry must include a cover sheet providing the contestant’s name, full contact information (address, phone number, e-mail address), name of the institution where the contestant is enrolled, and the title of the paper. No identifying information other than the title should appear on the paper itself.

• Entries must be submitted electronically, in Microsoft Word or RTF format, to bravermansubmissions@gmail.com. Entries must be received no later than 5:00 p.m. CST on International Workers’ Day or May Day, Wednesday, May 1, 2013.

• The $300 stipend is available only to help defray the cost of ALA conference attendance in 2013; if the winner of the contest is unable to attend, the money will remain in the Braverman Prize endowment fund and may be donated to a progressive cause at the discretion of the selection committee.
Any questions regarding the contest or the selection process can be directed to the chairs of the selection committee, Megan Browndorf at margaret.browndorf@ndsu.edu or Kelly McElroy at kellymce@gmail.com.

NASIG’s 28th Annual Conference: June 6th to June 9th 2013 in Buffalo, NY

“The Art of Information/The Architecture of Knowledge”

http://www.nasig.org/conference_registration.cfm

NASIG 2013 continues the organization’s tradition of offering conferences that have strong, engaging programs and numerous opportunities to discuss issues and network in a relaxed environment with colleagues—publishers, vendors, print and e-resources providers, and librarians.

- Need to learn more about e-resources, scholarly communication issues, RDA, linked data, DDA, collection management issues for both electronic and print resources, licensing, copyright, IRs, discovery services, workflows and much more? The NASIG conference is the place to be!

Featured Speakers:

- Bryan Alexander (National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education), “Libraries and Mobile Technologies in the Age of the Visible College”

- Megan Oakleaf (Associate Professor of Library and Information Science, Syracuse University), “The Value of Serials in Academic and Special Libraries”

- Siva Vaidhyanathan (Robertson Professor in Media Studies, University of Virginia), “Googlization and the Challenge of Big Data”

Preconferences:

- June 5, 1pm-5pm: Library as Publisher (Timothy S. Deliyannides, University of Pittsburgh)

- June 5, 1pm-5pm and June 6, 8am-noon (2 parts): RDA & Serials: Transitioning to RDA within a MARC 21 Framework (Valerie Bross (UCLA), Les Hawkins and Hien Nguyen (Library of Congress))

- June 6, 8am-noon: Copyright in Practice: A Participatory Workshop (Kevin Smith, Duke University)

There will be networking opportunities, a Vendor Expo and fun optional events. For a full list of conference activities and information on Buffalo, see the conference website at:

http://www.nasig.org/conference_registration.cfm

Got questions? conf-plan@nasig.org

Please note that the deadline has been extended to midnight Friday, February 15th

*Call for Participation (NASKO 2013) *

*Transition Cultures, Transition KO: Evolving Exploration, Critical Reflection, and Practical Work *

ISKO C/US invites submissions of abstracts for its Fourth North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO 2013) to be held June 13-14, 2013, in Milwaukee, WI, USA.

*Conference Venue*: Continuing Education Center, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

*Conference Dates:* June 13-14, 2013

*Deadline for Proposals*: *January 31, 2013*

“The essence of Transition is in its name. It describes the era of change we are all living in. The Transition idea is about us all being an engaged, active part of that change.”
–Transition Towns Movement

Transition is a grassroots movement that pulls on communities to improve local and global conditions in a sustainable way. Similarly, the KO community contributes to the greater good both locally within our own institutions and globally through interoperable systems, standards, and technologies. In the spirit of transition, the Fourth North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO 2013) conference invites participants to come together to forge and strengthen the connections that will shape the future of knowledge organization.

Proposals for research papers, position papers, posters, unconference topics and a doctoral symposium are welcomed. Acceptable languages for conference submissions include English, French or Spanish. Graduate students are especially encouraged to submit proposals.

Topics to explore include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Theory of KO
• History of KO
• Legacy and emerging KOSs
• Epistemological status of KO
• Domain Analysis approach to KO
• New challenges in teaching KO
• KO research sustainability
• The future of KO
• Sociocultural studies of KO

*Proposal categories:*

*Research and Position Papers:* Proposals should include a title and be no more than 1500 words long. Proposals should situate themselves within the extant literature of knowledge organization, and have a clearly articulated theoretical grounding and methodology. Those that report on completed or ongoing work will be given preference. Diverse perspectives and methodologies are welcome.

*Posters:* Proposals should include a title and be no more than 650 words long.

*Unconference Sessions:* Proposals of topics for sessions driven by attendees. The unconference will include 30-minute breakout sessions with two or three topics per session, depending on attendance. The proponents of the topics selected will be hosting the session and deliver a final lightning talk.

*Doctoral Symposium:* This is an opportunity for doctoral students to discuss their research in progress in a 15-minute presentation. Proposals should consist of a 500-word abstract with citations (citations not included in word count) and a one-page CV. Students will also have the opportunity to attend a general advising session to discuss their CVs, service commitments, and how to approach the job market.

*Proposal format:*
Proposals should include the name(s) of the author(s), their complete mailing and e-mail addresses, and their telephone and fax numbers. Please send proposals in Word or .rtf format to *nasko2013@gmail.com *

*Publication: *All accepted papers will be published online. The papers most highly-ranked during the peer-review process will, with permission of the authors, be published, in full, in a future issue of Knowledge Organization.

*Important Dates*
February 15, 2013: Submission deadline.
March 8, 2013: Notification to authors.
May 8, 2013: Final copy submission.

*Bursaries for students*
ISKO C/US will offer a limited number of bursaries for students presenting at the conference. Application guidelines will appear on the ISKO C/US website later this year:
http://iskocus.org/

*Planning Committee:*
Cristina Pattuelli, Pratt Institute, New York
Kathryn La Barre, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Richard Smiraglia, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee
Hur-Li Lee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee

*Program Committee:*
Arsenault Clément, Université de Montréal
Clare Beghtol, University of Toronto
Melanie Feinberg, University of Texas, Austin
Melodie Fox, University of Washington
Jonathan Furner, University of California, Los Angeles
Lynne Howarth, University of Toronto
Michèle Hudon, Université de Montréal
Elin Jacob, Indiana University, Bloomington
Barbara Kwasnik, Syracuse University
Aaron Loehrlein, University of British Columbia
Elaine Ménard, McGill University
Elizabeth Milonas, Long Island University
Hope Olson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Joseph Tennis, University of Washington
Nancy Williamson, University of Toronto

See website for details: http://iskocus.org/nasko2013.php

Media in Transition 8 (MiT8)

Conference dates: May 3-5 (Fri.-Sun.), 2013 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Submissions accepted on a rolling basis until Friday, March 1, 2013. Please see the end of this call for papers for submission instructions.

The distinction between public and private – where the line is drawn and how it is sometimes inverted, the ways that it is embraced or contested – says much about a culture. Media have been used to enable, define and police the shifting line between the two, so it is not surprising that the history of media change to some extent maps the history of these domains. Media in Transition 8 takes up the question of the shifting nature of the public and private at a moment of unparalleled connectivity, enabling new notions of the socially mediated public and unequalled levels of data extraction thanks to the quiet demands of our Kindles, iPhones, televisions and computers. While this forces us to think in new ways about these long established categories, in fact the underlying concerns are rooted in deep historical practice. MiT8 considers the ways in which specific media challenge or reinforce certain notions of the public or the private and especially the ways in which specific “texts” dramatize or imagine the public, the private and the boundary between them. It takes as its foci three broad domains: personal identity, the civic (the public sphere) and intellectual property.

Reality television and confessional journalism have done much to invert the relations between private and public. But the borders have long been malleable. Historically, we know that camera-armed Kodakers and telephone party lines threatened the status quo of the private; that the media were complicit in keeping from the public FDR’s disability and the foibles of the ruling elite; and that paparazzi and celebrities are strategically intertwined in the game of publicity. How have the various media played these roles (and represented them), and how is the issue changing at a moment when most of our mediated transactions leave data traces that not only redefine the borders of the private, but that serve as commodities in their own right?

The public, too, is a contested space. Edmund Burke’s late 18th century invocation of the fourth estate linked information flow and political order, anticipating aspects of Habermas’s public sphere. From this perspective, trends such as a siege on public service broadcasting, a press in decline, and media fragmentation on the rise, all ring alarm bells. Yet WikiLeaks and innovative civic uses of media suggest a sharp countertrend. What are the fault lines in this struggle? How have they been represented in media texts, enacted through participants and given form in media policy? And what are we to make of the fate of a public culture in a world whose media representations are increasingly on-demand, personalized and algorithmically-designed to please?

Finally, MiT8 is also concerned with the private-public rift that appears most frequently in struggles over intellectual property (IP). Ever-longer terms of IP protection combined with a shift from media artifacts (like paper books) to services (like e-journals) threaten long-standing practices such as book lending (libraries) and raise thorny questions about cultural access. Social media sites, powered by users, often remain the private property of corporations, akin to the public square’s replacement by the mall, and once-public media texts, like certain photographic and film collections, have been re-privatized by an array of institutions. These undulations in the private and public have implications for our texts (remix culture), our access to them, and our activities as audiences; but they also have a rich history of contestation, evidenced in the copybook and scrapbook, compilation film, popular song and the open source and creative commons movement.

MiT8 encourages a broad approach to these issues, with specific attention to textual practice, users, policy and cultural implications. As usual, we encourage work from across media forms and across historical periods and cultural regions.

Possible topics include:

- Media traces: cookies, GPS data, TiVo and Kindle tracking
- The paradoxes of celebrity and the public persona
- Representing the anxieties of the private in film, tv, literature
- MMORPGs / identities / virtual publics
- The spatial turn in media: private consumption in public places
- Historical media panics regarding the private-public divide
- When cookies shape content, what happens to the public?
- Creative commons and the new public sphere
- Big data and privacy
- Party lines and two-way radio: amplifying the private
- The fate of public libraries in the era of digital services
- Methodologies of internet and privacy studies
- Creative commons, free software, and the new public sphere
- Public and civic WiFi access to the internet
- Surveillance, monitoring and their (dis)contents

Submit an Abstract and Short Bio
Short abstracts for papers should be about 250 words in a PDF or Word format and should be sent as email attachments to mit8@mit.edu no later than Friday, March 1, 2013. Please include a short (75 words or fewer) biographical statement.

We will be evaluating submissions on a rolling basis beginning in November and will respond to every proposal.

Include a Short Bibliography
For this year’s conference, we recommend that you include a brief bibliography of no more than one page in length with your abstract and bio.

Proposals for Full Panels
Proposals for full panels of three or four speakers should include a panel title and separate abstracts and bios for each speaker. Anyone proposing a full panel should recruit a moderator.

Submit a Full Paper
In order to be considered for inclusion in a conference anthology, you must submit a full version of your paper prior to the beginning of the conference.

If you have any questions about the eighth Media in Transition conference, please contact Brad Seawell at seawell@mit.edu.

Call for Papers for Forthcoming Book: In Solidarity: Academic Librarian Labour Activism and Union Participation in Canada

EDITORS:
Jennifer Dekker, University of Ottawa (jdekker@uottawa.ca)
Mary Kandiuk, York University (mkandiuk@yorku.ca)

PUBLISHER: Library Juice Press

EXPECTED PUBLICATION DATE: 2014

BOOK ABSTRACT:
With a focus on Canada, this collection will document the labour-related struggles and gains of academic librarians. It will provide historical and current perspectives regarding the unionization of academic librarians, an exploration of the major labour issues affecting academic librarians in both certified and non-certified union contexts, as well as case studies relating to the unionization of academic librarians at selected institutions. The volume will strive to include a broad representation of academic librarian labour activists and those who have rallied to the support of academic librarians in the workplace.

OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK:
This edited collection will gather the common experiences of Canadian academic librarians and situate them in a national framework with respect to unionization. It will examine the issues that have led to the formal organization of academic librarians, the gains that have been achieved, and the ramifications of those gains. A limited number of chapters exploring relevant issues from a non-Canadian perspective are also being sought in order to provide insight and comparisons in a broader context.

POSSIBLE TOPICS:
The editors invite chapters that describe activities undertaken by academic librarians, unions, and related associations that further the goals of librarians in the academy from a labour perspective. Examples of topics that would be of particular interest to the editors include:
• Academic freedom cases involving U.S. academic librarians, for the purpose of comparing these to the Canadian setting;
• Librarians and governance on Canadian and / or U.S .campuses;
• Faculty or academic status of librarians in the U.S., including a comparison with Canada;
• Successful mobilization or political strategies for unionization or labour actions of academic librarians;
• Case studies of academic librarians asserting their collective rights in such a way that might provide inspiration or guidance for other groups;
• Labour action or the experience of strike within the academic library environment.
In particular, the editors would like to encourage chapters that explore the experiences of academic librarians from a labour perspective using a methodological framework as appropriate. Proposals that examine the issues from a theoretical framework are also welcome.

TARGET AUDIENCES:
The editors believe that this book will be of interest to academic librarians, labour historians, and those interested in academic labour or unionization of library workers.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Authors are invited to submit abstracts and proposals of 300-500 words to jdekker@uottawa.ca and mkandiuk@yorku.ca by January 15, 2013. Notifications will be sent by February 1, 2013. A draft manuscript ranging from 1,500-7,000 words will be due by June 1, 2013. Submitted manuscripts must not have been published previously or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Following review, articles will be returned via e-mail for revision before final acceptance. All materials will be edited as necessary for clarity. All submissions should include at the beginning an abstract of no more than 150 words, highlighting the scope, methodology, and conclusions of the paper. Authors should follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed. (2010). We welcome contributions from scholars and practitioners alike. If you wish to discuss your contribution please feel free to contact us.
Submission of proposals should include:
Name of author
Title
Affiliation
Contact information
300-500 word abstract

The 2013 LACUNY Institute -
Libraries, Information, and the Right to the City

April 5, 2013
John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Keynote Speakers:

Christine Pawley – Former director of the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin – Madison and historian of print culture in America.

Jessa Lingel – Doctoral student at Rutgers and author of “Occupy Wall Street and the myth of the technological death of the library.”

In recent years movements of scholars and activists have advanced a concept known as “the right to the city.” As the noted geographer David Harvey puts it “the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” Situated at the heart of a global metropolis the Library Association of the City University of New York
(LACUNY) is in an excellent position to initiate this dialogue.

The 2013 LACUNY Institute committee welcomes proposals that examine how library and information professionals engage in such social transformations. The majority of the world’s population now resides in urban areas making questions surrounding the city central to understanding the shape of the 21st century. The goal of the 2013 institute is to create a dialogue about how library and information professionals can (or should) move beyond being guarantors of access and become engaged in communities’ production of knowledge. We consider “the city” to be the public sphere broadly defined (i.e., proposals that examine these issues in small communities are welcome). The massive technological transformations of recent years have changed the nature of both libraries and the public sphere. At the 2013 LACUNY Institute we would like to explore the roles of libraries and information in the polis of the future.

Here are few examples of subjects that would be considered appropriate:

Librarians and social movements
Libraries and public services
The ethics of representation
Services to traditionally marginalized groups
Critical information literacy
The ethics of user generated content
The ethics of neutrality
Libraries and civic engagement
Open access and the public’s right to information

We look forward to your participation in the spring of 2013!

Submission of proposals for papers should include:

name(s) of presenter(s)
title(s)
affiliation(s)
contact information
abstracts of 300-500 words.

Presentations will be 20 minutes with time allocated for questions and discussion.

Full papers will be published in a special issue of Urban Library Journal.

Submit a 300 to 500 word abstract to this webform or email a word document with the above information to 2013lacunyinstitute@gmail.com
Deadline: December 21, 2012
Notification of acceptance: January 25, 2013

Beta Phi Mu/LRRT Research Paper Award for 2013

This award is being jointly presented by The Beta Phi Mu International Honor Society and the American Library Association’s Library Research Round Table to recognize excellent research into problems related to the profession of librarianship. Any ALA member is eligible for this $500 award, and all methodologies and research topics/questions are eligible for consideration. The criteria to be followed for the selection of an award winner are:

. Importance of the research question or problem
. Adequacy of the review of relevant literature
. Appropriateness of the methodology used
. Effectiveness of the application of the methodology
. Addition of the findings to the knowledge and/or praxis in the field of librarianship
. Articulation of the conclusions emanating from the study
. Clarity and completeness

The page limit for submissions will be thirty (30) double-spaced pages plus bibliography. Only complete papers will be considered and submissions should be made electronically to the contact person below. The submissions must not have been published prior to March 1, 2013 and should follow APA style. Individuals may submit only one paper. Jointly authored papers are acceptable, but all authors must be ALA members, and will split the award of $500.

The deadline for submission is March 1, 2013. All submissions that meet the deadline and the criteria (including length of paper) will be considered. The papers will undergo a blind-review process by a joint BPM/LRRT award committee and the winner will be notified by May 1, 2012. Please include a title page with title of paper and author contact information including name, institutional affiliation, mailing address and email address.

The award will be presented during one of LRRT’s research programs at the ALA Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, June 27-July 2, 2013.

Email Submissions as Word documents only to:

John M. Budd
Beta Phi Mu-LRRT Research Paper Chair
School of Information Science & Learning Technologies
303 Townsend
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
buddj@missouri.edu

Class and Librarianship: Essays at the Intersection of Information, Labor and Capital.
Edited by Erik Sean Estep (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Nathaniel F Enright (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). To be published by Library Juice Press in 2013.

The current crisis of capitalism has led to the renewed interest in Marxism and its core categories of analysis such as class and exploitation. In our own discipline—Library and Information Science—voices and ideas that have long been confined to the critical margins have been given buoyancy as forms of critique have gained traction.. Our volume will allow for a fresh look at at the interaction of information, labor, capital,class, and librarianship.

Questions that can be explored in contributions include, but are not limited to: class differences in the workplace, faculty and staff relations at libraries, poverty and public libraries, information science pedagogy and class, the commodification of information, information and class struggle, class bias in classification systems and the class politics of mental or digital labor.

We welcome contributions from scholars and practitioners alike. If you wish to discuss your contribution with us please feel free to do so by contacting Erik Estep (hobsbawm17 at gmail.com) or Nathaniel Enright (natenright at gmail.com).

Abstracts of no longer than 500 words are due on August 30. We will let you know if you make the cut by September 30. Final papers due February 1 2013.

Call for Papers: Identity Palimpsests: Ethnic Archiving in the U.S. and Canada

Forthcoming volume in the series Archives, Archivists, and Society.

Series editor: Richard J. Cox. Publisher: Litwin Books, LLC, Los Angeles, CA Volume editors: Dr. Dominique Daniel, Assistant Professor, Humanities Librarian for History and Modern Languages, Kresge Library, Oakland University (daniel [at] oakland.edu) and Amalia S. Levi, Ph.D. student (2014), iSchool, University of Maryland (amaliasl [at] umd.edu).

Deadline for submission of abstracts: August 30, 2012

Format: Contributions should be approximately 7,000 words (for theoretical contributions), and approximately 3,500 words (for practical contributions), prepared in Word, and should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, notes and bibliography documentation system.

Description

Litwin Books invites original papers for a new volume in its Archives, Archivists, and Society series. The book?s main objective is to assess the ways ethnic identities and other forms of belonging are affected by, and also affect, current practices in ethnic archiving. The book will both provide a historical overview of the ways ethnic organizations and communities have collected, preserved and provided access to their heritage; and examine contemporary practices and theories in the context of a cultural heritage sector that is today defined by the digital medium and the Web. For the purpose of this book institutions involved in ethnic archiving may include libraries, archives, historical societies and museums that document the history of immigration and ethnicity in the United States and Canada. The book will contain both theoretical and practical contributions by practitioners in the field and scholars in history and archival science.

Archives shape the way we understand the past and we see the future. This has repercussions for the construction, writing, and representation of minority and diaspora histories in the North American context. Considering the variety and diversity of ethnic populations in North America, these repercussions reach beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans as well. In an age of citizen-archivists, and citizen-historians, the changing ways we understand authority in archival settings signal a paradigm shift. Archivists and historians are called to reexamine and redefine their roles and professions in this process, while ethnic minorities have explored new, culturally specific and technology-rich ways to preserve, promote and display their heritage.

Archival science has long challenged the image of the archivist as a neutral guardian of the historical record and recognized her role as an active shaper of archives, but historians have yet to discuss implications for historical research. We invite contributions that bring new theoretical insight into the impact of the “archival turn” on ethnic archiving, that suggest ways historical research may be affected, and that begin to outline implications for the archivists? practice. Contributions that explore the impact that archivists have on the very ethnic identities they are trying to preserve are particularly welcome.

Theoretical contributions

At the theoretical level, the contributions can adopt a contemporary or historical perspective. Topics can include, but are not limited to:

- the impact of ethnic studies and evolving theories of ethnicity on archiving practices
- new developments in archival theory that have or could have implications for ethnic
archiving
- the effects of ethnic archiving on historical research, and ? the emergence of memory and postcolonial studies as lenses for understanding identity formation, and diversity in a post-9/11 world.

Practical contributions

For practical contributions, essays that do not only focus on particular institutions, but also provide comparative studies among cultural heritage institutions will be preferred. Practical contributions could deal with heritage institutions run by minorities themselves, and also others run through mainstream or official channels (government, academic, etc.). Topics include, but are not limited to:

- what is „ethnic archiving? today and who should be entrusted with the curation of ethnic collections in heritage institutions
- the purposes of archiving for ethnic minorities
- methods of ethnic archiving, and
- web and digital technologies that have been used in innovative ways for ethnic archiving.

Timeline

Please send 500-word abstracts and a brief CV with relevant publications by August 30. Notification of acceptance will be sent by September 30, 2012. Accepted authors should submit articles for review by January 30, 2013. Deadline for submission of final articles with revisions is March 30, 2013.

For more information or questions, please contact Dominique Daniel (daniel [at] oakland.edu) or Amalia S. Levi (amaliasl [at] umd.edu).

Call for Papers

TITLE: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond (An Edited Collection)

EDITOR: Melissa Morrone is a librarian at Brooklyn Public Library and has been involved in Radical Reference as well as other social justice groups.

BOOK ABSTRACT: In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to join conversations in other disciplines as well as in the broader culture. People who work in libraries and are sympathetic to or directly involved in social justice struggles have long embodied this idea, as they make use of their skills in the service of those causes. Following in the tradition of works such as Activism in American Librarianship, 1962-1973; Revolting Librarians; and Revolting Librarians Redux, this title will be a look into the projects and pursuits of activist librarianship in the early 21st century.

POSSIBLE TOPICS: Essays should describe specific activities undertaken by the library worker and how the work was received by fellow activists and/or the constituents of the project. Such activities may include:

- Programming and collection development that gives voice to underrepresented communities and subjects.
- Conducting community-based reference or other information services outside of any institutional affiliation.
- Setting up libraries or archives in political organizations and contexts.
- Doing research on behalf of social justice campaigns.
- Training people in technology and content creation with the goal of community empowerment.
- Other creative ways of using library and information skills to support activist causes, both inside and outside of conventional library settings.

Essays should also include analysis of the ways in which these activities are in sync with but may also challenge the “core values” of librarianship.

OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK: This edited collection, to be published by Library Juice Press in June 2013 asks: How and to what end are people using their library skills in the service of wider social justice causes? What do these activities say about the future of library work, both inside and outside of traditional institutions?

TARGET AUDIENCES:
- People interested in going into librarianship who want an idea of nontraditional and activist areas in which librarians operate.
- Practicing library workers seeking inspiration for ways to combine their expertise with their political interests outside the library.
- Practicing library workers who want articulations of how their work fits into a broader context of power structures, politics, and social justice.
- Activists interested in collaborations with library workers and/or projects related to literature, information, education, and documentation in social movements.
- People in other fields who want to draw connections between their own work and social justice goals, and are looking for supportive literature.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Please submit abstracts and proposals of up to 500 words to informed.agitation AT gmail by July 15, 2012. Notifications will be sent by September 1. A first draft from 1,500-7,000 words will be due by November 15, and final manuscripts will be due by January 15, 2013.

CALL FOR PAPERS

2nd Milwaukee Conference on the Ethics of Information Organization

June 15 – 16, 2012
Milwaukee, WI

Information organization, like other major functions of the information professions, faces many ethical challenges. In our literature, ethical concerns have been raised with regard to, topics such as, the role of national and international tools and standards, provision of subject access to information, deprofessionalization and outsourcing, education of professionals, and the effects of globalization. These issues and many others like them have serious implications for quality and equity in information access. The Information Organization Research Group and the Center for Information Policy Research of the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee join in presenting this second conference to address the ethics of information organization.

Like the first Ethics of Information Organization conference held in Milwaukee May 2009, this conference (June 2012) welcomes papers on ethics and any element of information organization from cataloging standards to tagging; subject access; technology; the profession; cultural, economic, political, corporate, international, multicultural and multilingual aspects.

INVITED SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE:
Opening Speaker: Jens-Erik Mai
University of Toronto

Closing Speaker: Richard Smiraglia
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Other invited speakers will be announced

We invite submission of proposals for papers which will include: name(s) of presenter(s), title(s), affiliation(s), contact information and abstracts of 300-500 words. Presentations will be 20 minutes. Time will be set aside for questions as well as broader discussion. All abstracts will be published on the Web site of the UW-Milwaukee Information Organization Research Group. Full papers will be published in a special issue of Knowledge Organization.

ABSTRACTS DUE: February 15, 2012
NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE BY: March 15, 2012
FULL PAPERS DUE: July 15, 2012

Submit proposals via email to: Hope A Olson, Conference Chair (holson [at] uwm.edu)

CFP poster available here

Call for Chapters

Piracy: Leakages From Modernity

Edited by Martin Fredriksson (Linköping University) and James Arvanitakis (University of Western Sydney)

Published by Litwin Books

We are inviting proposals for chapters for an anthology on Piracy planned to be published by the end of 2012.

‘Piracy’ is a concept that seems everywhere in the contemporary world. From the big screen with the dashing ‘Jack Sparrow’, to the dangers off the coast of Somalia; from the claims by the Motion Picture Association of America that piracy funds terrorism, to the political impact of pirate parties in countries like Sweden and Germany. While the spread of piracy provokes responses from the shipping and copyright industries, the reverse is also true: for every new development in capitalist technologies, some sort of ‘piracy’ moment emerges.

This is maybe most obvious in the current ideologisation of Internet piracy where the rapid spread of so called Pirate Parties is developing into a kind of global political movement. While the pirates of Somalia seem a long way removed from Internet pirates illegally downloading the latest music hit or, it is our assertion that such developments indicate a complex interplay between capital flows and relations, late modernity, property rights and spaces of contestation. That is, piracy seems to emerge at specific nodes in capitalist relations that create both blockages and leaks between different social actors.

These various aspects of piracy form the focus for this book, preliminary entitled Piracy: Leakages from Modernity. It is meant to be a collection of texts that takes a broad perspective on piracy and attempts to capture the multidimensional impacts of piracy on capitalist society today. The book is edited by James Arvanitakis at the University of Western Sydney and Martin Fredriksson at Linköping University, Sweden, and published by Litwin Books, USA. It is open for recently unpublished articles from all academic disciplines and we particularly welcome contributions by young and emerging scholars.

If you want to contribute to this book please send an abstract of no more than 1000 words to Martin Fredriksson (martin.fredriksson [at] liu.se) or James Arvanitakis (j.arvanitakis [at] uws.edu.au). Deadline for abstracts is December 1, 2011.

Martin Fredriksson
Linköping University

James Arvanitakis
University of Western Sydney

CFP: Queers Online: LGBT Digital Practices in Libraries, Archives, and Museums

(An Edited Collection to be published as part of the Series on Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies)
Litwin Books and Library Juice Press

Rachel Wexelbaum, Editor

Emily Drabinski, Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Series Editor

Contact Information:
Editor: Rachel Wexelbaum, Collection Management Librarian, Saint Cloud State University:
rswexelbaum [at] stcloudstate.edu

Book Abstract
In the 21st century, there are more LGBT information resources than ever before. The challenges that arise both from the explosion of born-digital materials and the transformation of materials from physical to electronic formats has implications for access to these resources for future generations. Along with preservation concerns, making these numerous digital LGBT resources available to users becomes more difficult when they swim in an ocean of websites, EBooks, digitized objects, and other digital resources. Librarians, archivists, and museum curators must engage in a range of new digital practices to preserve and promote these numerous LGBT resources.

A “digital practice” in libraries, archives, and museums includes, but is not limited to, the digitization of physical objects; the creation of online resources and services that improve access to these objects; the use of online catalogs, databases, and metadata to categorize such objects; and the online social media and Web 2.0 tools used to connect users to these resources. Information professionals engaged in digital practices must also understand the information needs, online searching behaviors, and online communication styles of their patrons in order to make them aware of the digital resources that may be of use to them.

This is the first book to specifically address the digital practices of LGBT librarians, archivists, and museum curators, as well as the digital practices of seekers and users of LGBT resources and services. More broadly, this collection aims to address these issues in the context of the technical, social, economic, legal, and political challenges of creating LGBT-specific digital collections, electronic resources and services.

Objective of book
This book, to be published in Library Juice Press in Spring 2013, proposes to consider the following questions:

1. What advances have been made in the digitization of LGBT books, art, music, film, primary sources, and other LGBT physical objects?
2. What types of LGBT-specific online resources and services have been created to promote visibility of LGBT-specific content, as well as to organize and market such content?
3. What LGBT-specific institutions have created electronic LGBT resources and services of interest to libraries, archives, and museums? What mainstream institutions and vendors have created electronic LGBT resources and services of interest to libraries, archives, and museums?
4. What are the technical, social, economic, legal, and political challenges of creating LGBT-specific digital collections, electronic resources and services?
5. What are the digital practices of seekers and users of LGBT resources and services, and how do they influence the development and marketing of online LGBT resources and services?

Target audience
Professionals and non-professionals involved in the work and study of libraries, archives, and museums, as well as publishers and content providers for such institutions, will find this book helpful in building awareness of electronic LGBT resources and services, in libraries, archives, and museums and the practices that connect users to them.

Suggested topical questions

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• What are the histories of LGBT digital objects and practices in libraries, archives, and museums? How does LGBT information seeking change in a digital environment? How does digitization affect the organization of LGBT resources?
• How are libraries, archives, and museums responding to the shift to mobile content and services? How are institutions making resources and services accessible through mobile devices (mobile phones, EReaders, tablets, and apps)? How does the shift to mobile information improve access to LGBT digital resources?
• How does digitization change the ways LGBT populations access information? Are there differences related to race, gender, class, immigration status, or geographic location? Do LGBT populations with special needs (Deaf, visually impaired, physically handicapped, others) use particular technology/online resources/digital resources to find LGBT-specific information?
• How do electronic formats, including ebooks, electronic databases (e.g., GLBT Life), digitized museum and archives collections, and open web resources (e.g., www.outhistory.org), change the LGBT research landscape? How do these new formats change traditional library functions, including collection development, reference, outreach, and instruction?
• What problems and possibilities are presented by metadata about LGBT-related materials in a digital environment? What are the critiques of LGBT-related subject vocabulary/subject headings in online catalogs and/or databases that could restrict access to information or mislabel it?
• What LGBT-specific digitization projects for print and non-print materials have taken place in your library, archives, or museum? What were the challenges that you faced during the process? How are digital collection marketed, and how is usage calculated? How are digital collections kept updated?
• What kinds of digital projects exist to preserve and make accessible LGBT primary sources (personal papers, manuscripts, oral histories, government documents, ephemera, etc)?
• How are LGBT-specific Web 2.0/social web tools used in libraries, archives, and/or museums?

Submission procedure

Please submit abstracts and chapter proposals of up to 500 words and a short author’s statement to rswexelbaum [at] stcloudstate.edu by April 1, 2012. Chapter authors will receive notification of acceptance by June 1, 2012. Final manuscripts of between 3000 and 5000 words will be due September 1, 2012. Final edited chapter manuscripts will be due to Library Juice Press January 1, 2013.

Call for Submissions: Special Issue on Archival Education and Human Rights

InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

In a recent article in American Archivist, a group of some two-dozen archival faculty and doctoral students from programs around the world called on archival educators to develop a new educational framework that both reflects and reflects upon pluralist approaches to archival theory and practice.1 This article added to an ongoing conversation in archival education regarding the ethical imperative of faculty to engage students with culturally sensitive curricula and to promote a social justice agenda in and outside the classroom. At the same time, a growing body of archival studies literature has addressed the intersection of archives and human rights, interrogating the role of records and recordkeeping institutions in both facilitating human rights violations and holding oppressive regimes legally and historically accountable for such violations.

This special issue of InterActions seeks to bring together these two streams of archival thought in hopes of explicating the role of human rights and social justice in archival education. How are we to conceive of human rights at the nexus of archival education, research, and action? What ethical responsibilities do archival educators have in addressing human rights concerns in the classroom? What pedagogical strategies might educators employ in order to include discussions about human rights and archives within the context of professional training and practices, and the theories that undergird them? InterActions seeks to include a range of submissions, including (but not limited to) research articles, literature reviews, book reviews, exhibition reviews, featured commentaries, and position pieces. Submissions should incorporate critical perspectives that aim to bridge multiple discourses around the theme of the issue. All submissions will be subject to double-blind peer-review and authors are expected to adhere to the deadlines to ensure the timely publication of the special issue.

Possible research questions:
- How might “human rights” be defined in the context of archival education? What are the opportunities and difficulties of adopting an orientation toward human rights in archival education?
- What is the relationship between a social justice agenda and a human rights framework in the archival classroom? What roles might information technologies play in working toward classroom agendas for extending and supporting human rights?
- What theoretical positions might be taken up when considering the current and future state of research in the domains of human rights and archival education?
- What philosophical, pedagogical, political, and/or ethical questions are at play that might provide opportunities for strategic action?
- How might archival educators incorporate human rights genealogies and/or frameworks?
- What are the implications of globalization on discourses on human rights in archival education?
- How might archival education and/or human rights intersect with the roles and responsibilities of educational institutions within the public sector?

Timeline:
- Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2012
- Tentative deadline for peer reviews of submitted manuscripts: March 15, 2012
- Tentative deadline for revisions to submitted manuscript: April 30, 2012
- Publication date for the Special Issue on Human Rights: Early June 2012

Please submit manuscripts at http://escholarship.org/uc/gseis_interactions or directly to the email addresses below. Any questions or inquiries about the special issue may be directed to:
- Andrew J Lau (UCLA; Information Studies Editor for InterActions):
andrewjlau@ucla.edu
- Michelle Caswell (University of Wisconsin, Madison; Guest Editor):
mcaswell@wisc.edu
- InterActions: interactions@gseis.ucla.edu

InterActions is a peer-reviewed on-line journal committed to the promotion of interdisciplinary and critical scholarship. Edited by students in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, the journal brings together senior and emerging scholars, activists, and professionals whose work covers a broad range of theory and practice. InterActions is published twice yearly with funding provided by the UCLA Graduate Students Association and the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

For more information, please visit http://escholarship.org/uc/gseis_interactions.