Category Archives: History

Walls, Wells, or Welcomes: Libraries in the Lives of Immigrants, Old and New

The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) seeks papers for its Research Forum at the 2019 ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., June 20-25, 2019. The theme of the Forum will be re-examining the relationship between libraries and immigrants/immigration, in any country, any region of the world.

One of the most divisive topics in our current society is immigration policy and the issues and concerns stretch backwards throughout library history as well. Libraries have been present in the lives of immigrants in the United States (and potentially other countries) as institutions that were unfamiliar or unwelcoming (walls), sources of wisdom (oftentimes through immigrant children), and/or a welcome to a new community. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Acculturation, libraries, and the American middle class;
  • The role of immigrant children in helping their parents become introduced to libraries and to reading;
  • Specialized services introduced and developed to support immigrants’ information needs;
  • Working with the “foreign population,” in urban or rural settings;
  • The development of classification systems that were affected by immigration;
  • Readers’ advisory services for immigrants;
  • Children’s and/or youth services and the “foreign born;”
  • Libraries and internment/detainment camps.

LHRT welcomes submissions from researchers of all backgrounds, including students, faculty, and practitioners. Proposals are due on February 15, 2019.  Each proposal must give the paper title, an abstract (up to 500 words), and the presenter’s one-page vita. Also, please indicate whether the research is in-progress or completed. The abstract should include a problem or thesis, as well as a statement of significance, objectives, methods/primary sources used for the research, and conclusions (or tentative conclusions for works in progress).

LHRT Research Committee will select up to three authors to present their completed work at the Forum. Completed papers are due May 15, 2019, and the Research Forum will likely occur on Sunday, June 23, 2019. All presenters will be notified of the submission outcome no later than May 31, 2019, and must register to attend the conference.

Questions and submissions should be directed to Dr. Cindy Welch at cwelch11@utk.edu.

Politics of Libraries Conference

April 23, 2017
University of Alberta – School of Library and Information Studies
https://politicsoflibraries.github.io/

The spring of 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the turbulent spring of 1968 where social and political movements resulted in protests and strikes across many Western democracies. In France in May of 1968, where unrest was most pointed, some declared the month to be the “début d’une lutte prolongée” or “beginning of a prolonged struggle.” While the protests and strikes seemed to indicate a progressive momentum in the waning period of the so-called ‘golden era’ of the Fordist social contract, the response to the social protests of 1968 (and political radicalism that followed) was the emergence of economic and political neoliberalism. Looking back on 50 years since 1968, we aim to question not what failed in the spring of 1968 nor how a new political and economic order arose, but what is the state of the politics of libraries in 2018? What struggles continue and what new ones must be undertaken?

Reflecting on this 50th anniversary, an interested group of librarians, information professionals, students, and academics is hosting a conference questioning the politics of libraries in 2018, discussed over one day in April 2018 at the University of Alberta. In the spirit of 1968, we invite practitioners, scholars, activists, students, and other members of the general public interested in library allied information services to submit proposals on the issue of the politics of libraries in 2018. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Neutrality in libraries
  • Hegemonic and counter-hegemonic roles of libraries
  • Resistance in library services and work
  • Neoliberalism and its relationship to libraries
  • Precarity in library work

Please submit proposals (not to exceed 400 words) for individual (20 minute presentations) and group/panel contributions using this form by midnight January 30, 2018.

All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process undertaken by the conference organizers. Notification on the status of submissions will be made by mid-February, 2018.

Libraries: Culture, History, and Society

We are delighted to announce that Libraries: Culture, History, and Society is now accepting submissions for our premiere issue to be published in Spring 2017.

A semiannual peer-reviewed publication from the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association and the Penn State University Press, LCHS will be available in print and online via JSTOR and Project Muse.

The only journal in the United States devoted to library history, LCHS positions library history as its own field of scholarship, while promoting innovative cross-disciplinary research on libraries’ relationships with their unique environments. LCHS brings together scholars from many disciplines to examine the history of libraries as institutions, collections, and services, as well as the experiences of library workers and users. There are no limits of time and space, and libraries of every type are included (private, public, corporate, and academic libraries, special collections and manuscripts). In addition to Library Science, the journal welcomes contributors from History, English, Literary Studies, Sociology, Education, Gender/Women’s Studies, Race/Ethnic Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Architecture, Anthropology, Geography, Economics, and other disciplines.

Submissions for volume 1, issue 1, are due August 29, 2016.  Eric Novotny and Bernadette A. Lear of Penn State University Libraries are co-editors.

Manuscripts may be submitted electronically through LCHS’s Editorial Manager system at http://www.editorialmanager.com/LCHS/default.aspx. They must also conform to the instructions for authors at http://bit.ly/LCHScfp1.

We are excited to see this journal become a reality and welcome your thoughts (and submissions!) as we create a new platform for studying libraries within their broader humanistic and social contexts.

For further questions, please contact the editors:
Bernadette Lear, BAL19@psu.edu
Eric Novotny, ECN1@psu.edu

ACRL E-Learning Webcast

Engaging the Digital Humanities: Collaborating throughout the Research Lifecycle
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Central time
Proposal Deadline: Friday, February 12, 2016
Dear Colleagues,
The ACRL Digital Humanities Interest Group and the ACRL Digital Curation Interest Group invite presentation proposals that speak to the theme of “Engaging the Digital Humanities: Collaborating throughout the Research Lifecycle.” The selected presentations will be featured during our ACRL E-Learning Webcast on March 23.
Librarians are playing ever more integral roles in the Digital Humanities research lifecycle. Librarians contribute concretely to the conception, development, dissemination, preservation, and curation of digital humanities research. These activities often require collaborations between librarians working in a diverse range of roles including but not limited to subject liaisons, digital humanities and digital scholarship librarians, metadata librarians, and digital curation librarians.
We invite presentation proposals based on first-hand experiences dealing with a wide array of data formats, tools, methods, and digital platforms utilized in Digital Humanities research, and placed in the context of the latest research literature.  By focusing discussion on practical challenges and solutions, it is our hope that your presentations will provide the library community with strategies that can be cross-purposed to a wide range of institutional contexts.
When crafting your proposal, please consider focusing on one or more of these learning outcomes:
  1.  Participants will learn how to identify the stages of a Digital Humanities research project in order to better collaborate with researchers.
  2.  Participants will learn about the use of data in Digital Humanities research in order to identify data curation needs.
  3.  Participants will learn how to identify the skills they need to engage in Digital Humanities research.
  4.  Participants will learn how to identify Digital Humanities research collaborators in the library.
Proposals should be no longer than 400 words, and can be submitted here:
Proposal submission form:  http://bit.ly/dhlifecycle
Proposals are due on February 12, 2016.
Notice of acceptance will be sent by February 17, 2016.
If you have questions, please contact Thomas Padilla at tpadilla@mail.lib.msu.edu.
Thomas Padilla, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Michigan State University
Harriett Green, English and Digital Humanities Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Suzanna Conrad, Head of Digital Services & Technology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Brianna Marshall, Digital Curation Coordinator, University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

Libraries and Immigrants: Historical Perspectives

The IFLA Library History Special Interest Group and the  Library Services to Multicultural Populations Section  invite proposals for papers to be presented at their joint session on  “Libraries and Immigrants: Historical Perspectives”  during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Columbus, Ohio, USA, 13-19 August 2016 and you can find more detail on our proposed session at  http://2016.ifla.org/cfp-calls/library-history-sig-joint

The closing date for abstracts at 31 January 2016

Regards

Dr Kerry Smith, FALIA

Convenor IFLA Library History SIG