Monthly Archives: October 2007

The Expert Library: Staffing, Sustaining, and Advancing the Academic Library in the 21st Century

How will the academic library change in order to remain a core contributor to the missions of the 21st century college or university, and what skills do academic library professionals need to master in order to remain vital members of the evolving campus community? How will we define the expertise that libraries and library professionals bring to the broader issues associated with research, teaching, learning, and service? How will the academic library remain an active partner with classroom faculty, IT professionals, and others on campuses where both the information environment and the expectations for higher education are in flux?

Whether you are a subject specialist who has been asked to become an expert in assessment, a bibliographer whose focus has shifted from collection building to scholarly communications, a reference librarian who has become a key contributor to instructional design efforts, or a library professional whose skills in areas like copyright management, user studies, facilities management, or digital publishing are essential to emergent library initiatives, this is your opportunity to contribute to a discussion both about how the academic library is changing, and about how the range of responsibilities for librarians and other library professionals are evolving.

This collection will focus on two ideas: 1) the 2007 statement by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) that one of the “Top 10 Assumptions for the Future of Academic Libraries” is that “the skill set for librarians will continue to evolve in response to the needs and expectations of the . . . [populations] that they serve”; and, 2) the suggestion made by James Neal (2006) that the academic library will become a venue for ongoing collaboration between professional librarians and other library professionals.

Whether focused on new definitions for library positions (e.g., Instructional Design Librarian, Assessment Coordinator, Scholarly Communications Coordinator), on new organizational structures within libraries (e.g., Undergraduate Initiatives, Digital Publishing Office, Copyright Advisory Office), on new expectations for core competencies for academic librarians (e.g., teaching effectiveness, technology skills), or on the ways in which libraries and library professionals must evolve in response to the changing nature of the academic environment and the learned professions, contributions to this collection should address the overarching question: What are the skills that librarians must have, and the roles that libraries must play, in order to remain relevant on the 21st century campus?

The editors are especially interested in proposals that fall under the following broad categories:

• Changing roles for academic libraries on campus;

• Redefining traditional roles and responsibilities in reference, systems, technical services, or instruction librarianship;

• Identifying new positions and responsibilities becoming common among libraries;

• Establishing new organizational structures designed to support new roles for library professionals or libraries;

• Recruiting and mentoring new professions and new professionals into the library; and,

• Case studies in organizational development or re-alignment of professional responsibilities.

The collection will be edited by Scott Walter (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Vicki Coleman (Arizona State University), and Karen Williams (University of Minnesota) and will be published by the Association of College & Research Libraries.

Please send inquiries or proposals (300-500 words) to Scott Walter swalter@uiuc.edu by January 2, 2008. Notification of proposal acceptance will be made no later than January 31, 2008, and completed chapters will be due by June 30, 2008.

Ingenta Research Award

Deadline date January 31, 2008 for applications.

Joan Stein, Chair, Ingenta Award Jury 2007-2008

Library Research Round Table, Past-Chair 2007-2008

Ingenta Research Award

Purpose

The Ingenta Research Award is given annually by the Library Research Round Table of the American Library Association to support research projects about acquisition, use, and preservation of digital information.

Example areas of research include:

* The analysis of online journal usage data to develop conclusions and predictive models which may be used by libraries and publishers in determining future behavior

* An investigation of the issues surrounding institutional archiving, particularly costs, preservation and securing the participation of faculty

* A study of information seeking behavior of readers and/or authors

* The development of future models for verifying the relative usefulness of publications

Other topics related to digital publications will also be considered.

Eligibility

Applications are welcome from practicing librarians, faculty and students at schools of library and information science, and independent scholars.

Criteria

The Ingenta Award Jury will evaluate applications on the basis of the following

criteria:

1. Appropriateness of the proposed project to understanding of seeking and use of digital information.

2. Significance of the problem.

3. Design of the study.

4. Qualifications of the investigator(s).

5. Realism of the timetable.

Amount

The grant consists of up to $6,000 for research and up to $1,000 for travel to a national or international conference to present the results of the research. Expenditures must directly support research; the award does not cover indirect costs or overhead. Half of the research amount will be paid within one month of the selection of the awardee; the remaining half will be provided approximately six months later upon the receipt of a satisfactory progress report as determined by the Ingenta Award Jury Chair and the ALA staff liaison to the Ingenta Award Jury.

How to apply

Send:

1. Proposal of no more than 6 double-spaced pages that provides

1. overall statement of the project

2. relation of the project to previous research

3. research questions

4. method/plan of investigation

5. timetable for the work

6. significance of the project

7. plan to disseminate the results

2. Budget (1 page)

3. Curriculum vitae (2 pages)

Deadline

All submissions must reach the ALA address on or before Thursday, January 31, 2008.

You will receive confirmation via e-mail within two days.

Before Thursday, January 31, 2008, email the Proposal, budget and curriculum vitae

to:

Letitia Earvin

American Library Association

50 East Huron Street

Chicago, IL 60611

Phone: (800) 545-2433, ext. 1-4274

Fax: (312)280-4392

E-mail: learvin@ala.org

If email attachments are not possible, applicants must send nine (9) printed copies to the address above and they must be received by Thursday, January 31, 2008.

Obligations

Authors retain the right to present and publish their findings where they choose. Ingenta reserves the right to post an abstract about the project on their website.

If you are interested in applying for this award, please consult:

http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/orsawards/ingentaresearchaward/ingentaresaward.htm

and read the following for more information:

* Schedule and Procedures

* 6-Month Report

* Final Report

Listing of previous Ingenta Research Award Recipients

Applying and Extending Qualitative Inquiry to Internet Research

As the number of academic studies utilizing qualitative research methods on internet data has increased, so have the questions and issues surrounding how one does research in/on online sites. Experienced researchers and novices grapple with multiple issues as they adapt, modify, and develop various research methods to online venues including chatrooms, instant messaging, blogs, social utilities, webpages, games, and 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life. How does one identify sites for one’s study? What sampling procedures work
best? What software is to be used in internet research? What are the benefits
and weaknesses of using particular methods? What issues arise when adapting a particular qualitative method for use in/on an online site?

We call for abstracts and papers that address these issues for a panel or series of panels, at The Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (QI2008) – Ethics, Evidence and Social Justice (http://www.icqi.org/) that will take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from May 14-17, 2008. In particular, we are interested in presentations that look at qualitative methods and the difficulties researchers encounter as they do or have done internet research. Our focus is not on results; rather we are looking for colleagues interested in sharing knowledge and discussing challenges of
the “nuts and bolts” of internet research.

The list of qualitative methods to consider includes but is not
limited to:
— Discourse analysis
— Ethnography
— Interviews and surveys
— Narratives and biographies

Interested parties should email 1000 character (approximately 150 words) abstracts for each paper or presentation by November 15, 2007 to the organizers.

Please include the following information for each author with your
submission: Author’s Name, Department, University, Address including City, State/Province, ZIP/Post Code, Country (if not US, please specify
if you need a visa for travel), Telephone/Fax, E-mail.

Lois Ann Scheidt and Inna Kouper (Organizers)
School of Library and Information Science
Indiana University
lscheidt at indiana dot edu
inkouper at indiana dot edu

WE LEARN 5th Annual (Net)Working Gathering & Conference on Women &Literacy

WE LEARN 5th Annual (Net)Working Gathering & Conference on Women &
Literacy
Building Alliances / Construyendo Alianzas

March 7- 8, 2008
Fordham Univ. at Lincoln Center
in New York City, NY

Co-Sponsored with WE LEARN by Fordham University Graduate School of
Education

Women continue to be separated by culture, language, literacy,
geography; our differences are profound. The daily lives of women in
adult basic/literacy education remain especially complex due to
inequities based on race, class, gender, and other diversities. This
year’s conference will explore the differences that divide women and
look to ways of building alliances across those differences.

WE LEARN seeks presentation proposals from students (at all levels),
teachers, researchers, and community activists addressing related
theme issues & topics.

DEADLINE for Application: Nov. 30, 2007
Please apply using the Internet form.
http://www.litwomen.org/conferences/2008/props08.html

Sponsorship, advertiser, and exhibitor information also available:
http://www.litwomen.org/conferences/2008/sponsors.pdf

Thanks.

Mev Miller, Ed.D., Director

WE LEARN
Women Expanding: Literacy Education Action Resource Network
www.litwomen.org/welearn.html

182 Riverside Ave.
Cranston, RI 02910
401-383-4374
welearn@litwomen.org

Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation

Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation (IASSIST)
Palo Alto, California – May 27-30, 2008
Deadline: December 17, 2007

The 34th International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST) annual conference will be held at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, May 27-30, 2008. This year’s conference, Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation, examines the role of technology and tools in various aspects of the data life cycle.

The theme of this conference addresses how technology can affect aspects of data stewardship throughout the data lifecycle. The methods and media by which data are collected, shared, analyzed and saved are ever-changing, from punch cards and legal pads to online-surveys and tag clouds. There has been an explosion of data sources and topics; vast changes in compilation and dissemination methods; increasing awareness about access and associated licensing and privacy issues; and growing concern about the safeguarding and protection of valuable data resources for future use. The 2008 conference is an opportunity to discuss the role of technology – past, present, and future – in all of these arenas. We seek submissions of papers, poster/demonstration sessions, and panel sessions on the following topics:

-Issues and techniques for preserving “old” data as well as information “born digital”
-Methods, technology and questions surrounding data dissemination, including best practices and innovations
-Archival and preservation challenges presented by new processes
-Metadata
-Innovation in the use of data for teaching and research
-The legal issues surrounding new technologies
-Changes in resource discovery methods
-Data services in virtual spaces
-Providing services to users with different degrees of technical “savvy”
-Tools and spaces for research collaboration

Papers on other topics related to the conference theme will also be considered. The deadline for paper, session, and poster/demonstration proposals is December 17, 2007. The Conference Program Committee will send notification of the acceptance of proposals by February 8, 2008.

Individual presentation proposals and session proposals are welcome. Proposals for complete sessions, typically a panel of three to four presentations within a 90-minute session, should provide information on the focus of the session, the organizer or moderator, and possible participants. The session organizer will be responsible for securing session participants. Organizers as well as panel participants are also welcome to submit additional paper proposals but please note that the Conference Program Committee may need to limit the number of presentations per person.

Proposals for papers, sessions, and posters/demonstrations should include the proposed title and an abstract no longer than 200 words. Longer abstracts will be returned to be shortened before being considered. Please note that all presenters are required to register and pay the registration fee for the conference. Registration for individual days will be available.

Proposals can be submitted via email to: iassist08@gmail.com

A conference website with an on-line submission form will be available shortly. A separate call for workshop proposals is also forthcoming.

For more information about IASSIST, visit the website at http://www.iassistdata.org/ .

ELPUB2008

CFP: ELPUB2008 (Open Scholarship: Authority, Community and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0)

Open Scholarship: Authority, Community and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0
12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing
25 to 27 June 2008, Toronto, Canada

Submission Deadline: January 20, 2008
http://www.elpub.net
CFP URL: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~elpub2008/call.html

Scholarly communications, in particular scholarly publications, are undergoing tremendous changes. Researchers, universities, funding bodies, research libraries and publishers are responding in different ways, from active experimentation, adaptation, to strong resistance. The ELPUB2008 conference will focus on key issues on the future of scholarly communications resulting from the intersection of semantic web technologies, the development of cyberinfrastructure for humanities and the sciences, and new dissemination channels and business models. We welcome a wide variety of papers from members of these communities whose research and experiments are transforming the nature of scholarly communications. Topics include but are not restricted to:

* New Publishing models, tools, services and roles
* New scholarly constructs and discourse methods
* Innovative business models for scholarly publishing
* Multilingual and multimodal interfaces
* Services and technology for specific user communities, media, and content
* Content search, analysis and retrieval
* Interoperability, scalability and middleware infrastructure to facilitate awareness and discovery
* Personalisation technologies (e.g. social tagging, folksonomies, RSS, microformats)
* Metadata creation, usage and interoperability
* Semantic web issues
* Data mining, text harvesting, and dynamic formatting
* User generated content and its relation to publisher’s content
* Usage and citation impact
* Security, privacy and copyright issues
* Digital preservation, content authentication
* Recommendations, guidelines, interoperability standards

Author Guidelines
Contributions are invited for the following categories:
– Single papers (abstract minimum of 1,000 and maximum of 1500 words)
– Tutorial (abstract minimum of 500 and maximum of 1500 words)
– Workshop (abstract max of 1000 words)
– Poster (abstract max of 500 words)
– Demonstration (abstract max of 500 words)

Abstracts must be submitted following the instructions on the conference website

Key Dates:
January 20th 2008: Deadline for submission of abstracts (in all categories):

February 28, 2008: Authors will be notified of the acceptance of submitted
papers and workshop proposals.

April 11th, 2008: Final papers must be received. See website for
detailed author instructions.

Posters (A1-format) and demonstration materials should be brought
by their authors at the conference time. Only abstracts of these
contributions will be published in the conference proceedings.
Information on requirements for Workshops and tutorials proposals
will soon be posted on the website.

All submissions are subjected to peer review (double-blind) and
accepted by the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted
full papers will be published in the conference proceedings.
Printed proceedings are distributed during the conference.
Electronic versions of the contributions will be archived at:
http://elpub.scix.net

ABOUT ELPUB

The ELPUB 2008 conference will keep the tradition of the previous
international conferences on electronic publishing, held in the
United Kingdom (in 1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999),
Russia (2000), the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil
(2004), Belgium (2005), Bulgaria (2006) and Austria (2007), which
is to bring together researchers, lecturers, librarians,
developers, business executives, entrepreneurs, managers, users
and all those interested in issues regarding electronic
publishing in a wide variety of contexts. These include the
human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal,
commercial, and other relevant aspects that such an exciting
theme encompasses.

Three distinguishing features of this conference are: broad scope
of topics which creates a unique atmosphere of active exchange
and learning about various aspects of scholarly communications
and electronic publishing; combination of general and technical
issues; and a condensed procedure of submission, revision and
publication of proceedings which guarantees presentations of most
recent work.

ELPUB 2008 offers a variety of activities, such as workshops,
tutorials, panel debates, poster presentation and demonstrations.
A variety of social events and sight-seeing tours will be
available to participants (at additional costs). Please see the
conference web site for details.

Conference Location: Toronto, Canada. Toronto is one of the most
vibrant cities in North-America. It has a large multicultural
population, is the largest city in Canada and the 5th-largest
city in North America. There are many world class galleries and
museums across the city and you will find authentic cuisines from
around the world at reasonable prices.

Conference Host: Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI),
University of Toronto. KMDI is a graduate research and teaching
institute at the University of Toronto, and an intellectual
incubator fostering cross-disciplinary initiatives across the
university. The work of the institute spans both the scientific
study of the ways in which media shapes and is shaped by human
activity, and the practical work of founding an interdisciplinary
nexus for design and evaluation of both media and media
technologies. KMDI has acknowledged leadership, substantial
research programs and broad participation in three major areas:
collaboration and collaboration technologies, the phenomenon of
openness and new forms of knowledge production and dissemination,
and public policy and citizen engagement.

General Chair: Leslie Chan, University of Toronto Scarborough
chan@utsc.utoronto.ca

Programme Chair: Susanna Mornati, CILEA – Inter-Academic
Consortium for ICT, Italy: mornati@cilea.it

Graduate Student Research Conference:“The ‘F’ Words of Feminist Scholarship”

The Ohio State University’s Department of Women’s Studies’

Graduate Student Research Conference:
“The ‘F’ Words of Feminist Scholarship”
futures, feminisms, fat, functionality, freak, fresh, family, fetish, fixity, fore, f*cking, fleshy, foul, field, fear, finish, foundations, failure, fertility, figures, fundamentals, fragment, findings, fold, flow, fathers, follow, fire, friendship, fight, female, fascism, feminine, fanaticism fundraising, fun, fierce, focus, finitude…

Dates: April 4 and 5, 2008
Confirmed Keynote: Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Call for Papers: The phrase, the ‘F’ word, elicits feelings of anxiety and excitement. As a euphemism for what should not be said, the ‘F’ word characterizes what is taboo or prohibited. Feminist scholarship has a strong history of challenging the ‘F’ words of disciplinary scholarship- those topics ignored, erased, and/or contested in canonical knowledges. Certainly, as feminist scholarship develops, new ‘F’ words are being created and contested. We view this conference as an opportunity to think carefully about feminist scholarship’s ‘F’ words and how an exploration of these topics and the scholarship produced about them (or the absence of such scholarship) might lead to more intimate understandings of feminist research in the academy. To this end, we invite papers, art installations, creative performances, panels, poster presentations, and workshops.
We especially encourage graduate students whose research topics and/or methodological approaches embody a contested location in the emerging canon of feminist scholarship.

Possible topics may include:
How do different disciplines create and/or control ‘F words’?
In what ways are ‘F words’ negotiated across disciplines?
What are the potential benefits and/or risks of studying ‘F words’?
How do ‘F words’ influence the future of feminist scholarship?
What is feminist about feminist scholarship?
Additional topics are very welcome!

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent by December 1, 2007. Please send abstracts to Kelly Ball (ball.1824@osu.edu).
Include your name, university affiliation, email, and presentation title. Submissions will be reviewed anonymously.
Accepted proposals will be announced via email February 1, 2008.

While we cannot provide travel funds, we will make every effort to provide housing for graduate students participating in the conference.

This conference is organized by the graduate students of the Women’s Studies Department at The Ohio State University and is made possible with the help of generous funding from the department.

Conference Organizers:
Alina Bennett, bennett.520@osu.edu
Kelly Ball, ball.1824@osu.edu

Quantitative studies for publication in Ms.

Ms. magazine is looking for groundbreaking, quantitative feminist research
for coverage in the “How We’re Doing” section of our Winter 2008 issue.

Ideally, we’re looking for studies that will be published mid-January to
March 2008, the shelf-life of the Winter 08 issue, but will consider studies
released in Fall 2007. Because we have limited space, we’re particularly
interested in study results that can be expressed in simple graphs. We will
be sure to credit the authors and journal, if applicable.

Any suggestions (in the form of published articles or early drafts of
soon-to-be-published articles) would be much appreciated! You can send them
to jstites@msmagazine.com.

Information Seeking in Context 2008

On behalf of the organization committee I kindly remind you about the
important dates of the international conference Information Seeking in
Context 2008. The conference will be held in Vilnius on September
17-20, 2008. A doctoral workshop will be held in conjunction with the
conference on September 16, 2008.

Conference paper submission deadline: February 1, 2008.

Doctoral workshop paper submission deadline: March 1, 2008.

For more information please visit the web site of the conference:
http://www.kf.vu.lt/isic2008/

Contact person for the conference
Dr. Erika Janiuniene
E.mail: isic2008@kf.vu.lt

______________________________________

Social Philosophy Conference

The 25th Annual International
Social Philosophy Conference
Sponsored by the
North American Society for Social Philosophy
July 17-19, 2008
at the University of Portland (Oregon)
Special attention will be devoted to the theme
Gender, Inequality, and Social Justice
but proposals in all areas of social philosophy are welcome
The Program Committee will be chaired by:
Professor Jordy Rocheleau
of Austin Peay State University and
Professor Richard Buck
of Mount Saint Mary’s University
A 300-500 word abstract should be sent to the program chairs.
Individuals who wish to be considered for the award for best graduate student paper should submit their entire paper and abstract. Electronic Submissions welcomed and encouraged.

Jordy Rocheleau
Department of Philosophy
Austin Peay State University
Box 4486
Clarksville, TN 37044
tel. 931-221-7925
rocheleauj@apsu.edu
Richard Buck
Department of Philosophy
Mount Saint Mary’s University
16300 Old Emmitsburg Rd
Emmitsburg, MD 21727
tel. 301-447-5368
buck@msmary.edu
The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2008
or, for those living outside the
United States and Canada, January 15, 2008
_________________________________________________________________