Category: Books

Call for Proposals: Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene Colloquium II (LAAC II)

The Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene Colloquium II (LAAC II), sponsored by Library Juice Press,will take place at University of California, Davis on March 24 and 25, 2027.

Proposals for LAAC II should pull on collective wisdom to address the intersection of information science and the environmental crisis. We encourage submissions that explore how we can channel joy and passion into our work on climate, conservation, and sustainability while navigating the logistical and ethical complexities of the Anthropocene and generating new questions.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Intersectional Environmentalism: Centering equity, justice, and diverse voices in library and archive climate action.
  • Technological Impacts: Fostering literacy regarding the environmental costs (water, power, and waste) of AI and large-scale digital infrastructure, cycles of obsolescence, and AI.
  • Grassroots & Community Efforts: Highlighting local initiatives and radical collaborations outside of traditional institutional frameworks.
  • Resilience & Restoration: Strategies for disaster preparedness, recovery of cultural heritage, and institutional sustainability.
  • Radical Imagination: Shifting our professional paradigms to “see things differently” and move beyond a business-as-usual approach.
  • Questioning Worldviews: Deep questioning of worldviews that may have implications for our guiding assumptions as information professionals.

Proposals should include:

  1. a title
  2. a 300-word abstract
  3. preferred session format (see below for details)

We particularly welcome proposals that emphasize a connection to the natural environment and foster communal learning.

Session Formats

We invite proposals for a variety of session types to ensure a dynamic and inclusive program:

  • Full Sessions: (1–1.5 hours): In-depth presentations, panel discussions, or interactive workshops.
  • Lightning Talks: Brief, high-impact presentations (5–10 minutes) on specific projects or “seed” ideas.
  • Breakout/Roundtable Sessions: Facilitated discussions focused on collective problem-solving.
  • Poster Sessions: Visual displays of research or case studies to be shared during dedicated networking time.
  • Tours & Site Visits: Proposals for guided explorations of relevant local sites or ecological features.

Proposals Due: August 1, 2026

For more information see https://libraryjuiceconnections.org/events/laac-ii/ (More details coming soon)

Call for Chapter Contributors: Loss, Time, and Embodiment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Understanding and Reconciliation

Loss, Time, and Embodiment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Understanding and Reconciliation

Mitchel Stimers, PhD & Luma Mahairi, PhD, PharmD, Editors

We are seeking a contributor for the following chapter in our forthcoming two-volume interdisciplinary collection:

Volume I: Humanities and Social Sciences: Chapter 2: History: Erasure, Memory Wars, and Historical Grief

This collection is built on a conviction that loss takes genuinely different forms depending on the disciplinary position from which it is observed. We are not looking for a chapter that applies history to the topic of grief. We are looking for a scholar who can write from inside the discipline’s own way of seeing: one for whom the archive, the gap in the record, the contested account, and the silenced testimony are not illustrations of loss but the terrain in which a specific form of loss becomes visible in the first place.

History and oral history bring to this collection something no other field can offer: the capacity to show how loss is structured into the record itself, how erasure operates not only as an event but as an ongoing condition of what can be known, remembered, and mourned. The discipline encounters grief not as a private emotion but as a collective and political phenomenon, one whose weight accumulates across generations precisely because it was never acknowledged in its own time. Whether the chapter engages the suppression of testimony, the destruction of archives, the rewriting of official memory, contested monuments and memorials, or the communities whose losses were never entered into the historical record, the discipline’s encounter with loss should drive the argument rather than illustrate it. Oral history’s particular contribution, the recovery of testimony that the written archive could not or would not hold, makes this chapter’s terrain especially immediate for members of this community.

The collection asks each contributor to engage two anchoring concepts. Embodiment means that loss is not only a cognitive or emotional event but something that happens to bodies, structures, and material worlds, leaving traces that alter what can be perceived, inhabited, and remembered. Temporality means that loss disrupts the relationship among past, present, and future in ways that resist being located at a single moment on a timeline. For history, temporality is particularly pointed: losses that were never mourned in their own time do not stay in the past. Their weight accumulates, resurfaces, and reshapes the present in ways the discipline is uniquely equipped to trace. Contributors are not required to engage these concepts philosophically, but the chapter should reflect awareness of how the discipline’s encounter with loss is shaped by both.

The collection is designed to be read across disciplines. Contributors are asked to write with enough clarity that a careful reader outside history can follow the argument, without flattening the disciplinary perspective to reach that reader.

Full chapter description, contributor guidelines, word count, timeline, and submission details are available at: tinyurl.com/stimersmahairi

CFP: Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age

Call for Chapters

Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age

Edited by  Ester Cristaldi

Under contract with Anthem Press

Chapter proposals are invited for the edited volume Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age, under contract with Anthem Press.

The volume examines artificial intelligence as a cultural, semiotic, social and media phenomenon. Rather than approaching AI only as a technical system or computational tool, the book investigates how AI participates in the production, circulation and transformation of meaning in contemporary digital culture.

The central premise of the volume is that AI does not simply process information. It increasingly mediates how people write, read, see, classify, imagine, remember and interpret the world. AI systems generate texts and images, organise visibility, shape public attention, classify social subjects, predict behaviour and participate in the construction of cultural narratives.

The book is grounded in semiotics and linguistics, but it also welcomes interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural studies, media and communication studies, media sociology, digital sociology, digital humanities, visual culture, platform studies, critical data studies, journalism studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and related fields.

Topics

Possible topics include:

  • AI, language and meaning
  • Large language models and linguistic authority
  • AI and language inequality
  • AI-generated images and visual culture
  • Synthetic media and visual disinformation
  • AI, public trust and the crisis of mediation
  • AI, platforms and public attention
  • Algorithmic visibility and digital inequality
  • AI, datafication and social classification
  • AI, creativity and cultural production
  • AI, cultural labour and the creative industries
  • AI, archives and cultural memory
  • AI, embodiment, interfaces and everyday experience
  • AI, environment, infrastructure and digital materiality
  • AI, interpretation and cultural authority
  • AI, media ecologies and affective publics
  • AI, memory, archives and the digital humanities

Submission Guidelines

Interested contributors are invited to submit:

  • a provisional chapter title;
  • an abstract of approximately 250–300 words;
  • a short biographical note of approximately 100 words;
  • institutional affiliation and contact details.

Full chapters will be expected to be approximately 6,000–8,000 words, including references.

Timeline

Proposal submission deadline: 30 June 2026
Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026
Full chapter submission: 30 November 2026
Editorial feedback: January 2027
Revised chapter submission: 28 February 2027
Final manuscript preparation: March–April 2027

Submission

Chapter proposals should be sent to:

Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi
Üsküdar University
mariapia.cristaldi  @ uskudar. edu.tr

Please include “Chapter Proposal – Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning” in the subject line.

Contact Information

 Ester Cristaldi
Üsküdar University
mariapia.cristaldi @uskudar.edu.tr

Contact Email

mariapia.cristaldi@uskudar.edu.tr

CFP: Chapters on Conspiracies and Visual Culture

Conspiracies and Visual Culture

Editor Information: Stephanie Beene (sbeene@unm.edu) and Katie Greer (greer@oakland.edu)

Abstract

Conspiracy ideation in America is on the rise and has infected popular culture and social media. This phenomenon is deeply concerning, not least because it moves beyond fringe groups to influence mainstream discourse and belief systems. Despite extensive academic work on the psychological underpinnings of conspiracy belief and the linguistic/rhetorical analysis of related texts, a crucial gap remains. Specifically, there is an underdeveloped area of study concerning the sophisticated and widespread influence of the visual, not only in disseminating conspiracy ideation generally but at the juncture where it intersects with evangelical subcultures. 

The information landscape is currently saturated with visual content designed to sow distrust and disseminate disinformation. The tools of digital media creation have become powerful vectors for this spread. Examples abound, from the unsettling realism of DeepFake TikToks and sophisticated AI-generated imagery, which blur the lines between reality and fiction, to seemingly innocuous visuals—photographs, charts, or video clips—that are removed from their original, legitimate contexts and weaponized to promote baseless narratives.  The ease of production and viral distribution of this visual misinformation and disinformation means that educators must become acutely aware of the mechanisms by which visuals, more than just text, are influencing conspiracy ideation in novel and increasingly alarming ways.

To effectively combat this rising tide of visual disinformation, there is an urgent need for scholarly and practical intervention. Incorporating robust frameworks of visual literacy—the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in images—and the broader concept of metaliteracy—the comprehensive understanding of how to produce, evaluate, and share information across various media—can significantly enhance our collective ability to analyze and deconstruct these narratives. This approach would allow us to move beyond simply identifying a conspiracy and delve into how semiotics and imagery—the signs, symbols, and visual language employed—influence and solidify conspiracy beliefs. Addressing the visual dimension of this crisis represents a crucial step toward filling a significant, and currently dangerous, gap in current scholarship and public awareness, especially as it relates to communities where these visual narratives are most readily accepted.

This edited volume aims to bring together leading scholars from both conspiracy studies and visual literacy studies to examine visual messaging in conspiracy theory culture.

The book will be divided into the following sections:

  • Part 1: The participatory environment: Visuals and conspiracy engagement
  • Part 2: Hidden messages: The semiotics of visuals in conspiracy communities
  • Part 3: Critical visual thinking: Educating for conspiracy avoidance
  • Part 4: Nefarious Tropes: Historical intersections of visuals and conspiracy theories

Chapter topics could include:

  • Visual analysis of conspiracist aesthetics on social media
  • Mis/ mal/disinformation as political tools
  • Visual Literacy to inoculate against conspiracism
  • Generative artificial intelligence and conspiracy visual culture
  • Analyses of the attention economy, platform capitalism, or recommendation algorithms driving conspiracist content
  • “Do your own research” communities or movements
  • Historical analyses of the use of visuals to promote conspiracy theories
  • Cultural influences of conspiracy theories
  • Gender and sexuality studies and the “manosphere” or “trad” communities
  • Information overload & culture
  • Cognitive visual processing and conspiracy imagery

Logistics and Timeline

Proposals between 250 and 500 words, CVs, and brief author bios (50-80 words) should be

submitted to Stephanie Beene (sbeene@unm.edu) and Katie Greer

(greer@oakland.edu) by COB July 31, 2026.

The editors will review all submitted proposals and notify applicants by COB August 31, 2026.

Chapters should be approximately between 7,000-8,000 words, and first drafts of completed

manuscripts will be due COB March 31, 2027. The expected publication date will be in 2028. 

CFP: Thinking with Things: Narrative, Culture, and Material Politics

Call for Papers: Thinking with Things: Narrative, Culture, and Material Politics (with strong interest from Routledge, New York)

Even though questions of matter and materiality have long informed humanistic thought, recent years have witnessed a renewed and intensified engagement with “materiality” across the humanities and social sciences. This resurgence responds to a range of contemporary challenges—environmental instability, planetary disruption, digital overdetermination, infrastructural fragility, and the erosion of anthropocentric exceptionalism—all of which have reshaped how we understand what it means to be human in a more-than-human world. While materialist, new materialist, and posthuman paradigms have expanded the grammar of critical discourse, much existing scholarship remains focused on conceptual elaboration, often treating literary and cultural texts as secondary illustrations of theoretical claims. Such an approach risks reinstating the familiar Cartesian divide between mind and matter, idea and experience, theory and praxis. What remains underexplored is how material thinking itself operates within narrative practices—how conceptual structures are articulated through storytelling, and how narratives are shaped, constrained, and transformed by the presence and agency of things.

As Jane Bennett suggests, materiality is never passive; it possesses “the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, and to produce effects.” Taking this insight seriously, Thinking with Things: Narrative, Culture, and Material Politics seeks to reposition narrative as a site where matter is not merely represented but actively participates in the production of meaning, ethics, and power. The volume brings together contributions that explore how material entities—objects, infrastructures, ecological conditions, nonhuman agents, technological assemblages, and everyday artefacts—intervene in and generate narrative processes. Rather than approaching materiality as a neutral medium, the collection understands it as a dynamic force that mediates relations and constitutes the very conditions of meaning-making. In doing so, the project aims to move beyond human-centered epistemologies and purely representational frameworks, demonstrating how material forces reshape ontological assumptions, challenge inherited political models, and reconfigure ethical frameworks.

By foregrounding the active role of things in cultural and political life, the volume fosters a cross-disciplinary dialogue across literary studies, philosophy, cultural theory, media studies, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies. It is particularly interested in how things, understood as “material-semiotic” agents in the sense articulated by Donna Haraway, enable new modes of conceptual and narrative practice that move beyond the dualisms of mind and matter, theory and praxis, while remaining attentive to textual specificity. The volume also seeks to examine how objects—from everyday artefacts to large-scale infrastructures—mediate temporality, responsibility, and relations of power; how narratives respond to ecological disruption and planetary instability; and how literary and cultural texts reimagine the human by tracing the co-constitution of human and nonhuman actors within complex material assemblages.

We invite contributions that engage with themes such as materiality and narrative form; objects and material culture; literature, cinema, and visual culture; affect and embodiment; ecological and planetary imaginaries; everyday life and capitalist circulation; ethics and material relations; transmedia storytelling; human/nonhuman interfaces; urban space and spatial materialities; temporality, ruin, and breakdown; archives and material traces; digital media and technological assemblages; and object-oriented ontology, among others. Submissions that combine theoretical rigor with close attention to texts, media, or cultural practices are especially welcome.

Submissions are invited from scholars who have completed the doctoral degree or are at an advanced stage of doctoral research with an established record of scholarly engagement. Abstracts of approximately 300 words, along with a brief bio (100–150 words), should be sent to thinkingthings.project@gmail.com by May 30, 2026. Accepted chapters will be expected to be in the range of 6000–8000 words; the full submission timeline will be communicated after the selection of abstracts.

This is a selective, peer-reviewed edited volume currently under development. Contributors will be chosen on the basis of originality, conceptual rigor, and relevance to the thematic concerns of the collection. The volume is co-edited by Ratul Nandi (Department of English, Siliguri College, University of North Bengal, India) and Anik Sarkar (Department of English, Uttar Banga Maheshwari College, University of North Bengal, India).

Some areas that the chapters can explore, but not limited to:

  • Things and Narrative Form
  • Things and Objects of Material Culture
  • Things and Literary Texts
  • Things and Cinema and visual culture
  • Things and Affect
  • Things, materiality and Psychoanalysis
  • Things and Ecological and Planetary imaginaries
  • Things, Objects and Everyday Life
  • Things and Capitalist Circulations 
  • Things and Questions of Ethics
  • Things and Transmedia Storytelling
  • Things and the Human / Nonhuman Interface
  • Things and Critical Theory
  • Things and Polity and definition of the Political
  • Things and Temporality
  • Things and Graphic Narratives / Comics
  • Things and Ruin, Breakdown, and Failure
  • Things and the question of Archive
  • Things and Digital Media
  • Things and in-betweenness 
  • Things and Object-Oriented Ontology

Contact Information

Editors

Ratul Nandi, PhD
Department of English
Siliguri College, University of North Bengal, India

Anik Sarkar, PhD
Department of English
Uttar Banga Maheshwari College, University of North Bengal, India

Contact Email

thinkingthings.project@gmail.com

Call for Chapter Proposals: Intangible Archives

Call For Chapter Proposals

Book Title :Intangible Archives (Working Title)

Editors: Jeannette A. Bastian, Professor Emerita, Simmons University.

Stanley H. Griffin, Head, Dept. of Library and Information, University of the West Indies.

Introduction

In the primarily text-driven archival discipline, intangible expressions are too often discounted as records.  And yet these expressions, created by societies world-wide and in multiple formats, are carriers of significant information, recorders in themselves of a  variety of beliefs, history, customs, and cultures. Intangible Cultural Heritage  (ICH) as defined by UNESCO includes orality, performance, social practices, festivals, and generational knowledge, and can also encompass craftsmanship, landscapes and memory texts,  but to what extent are these cultural signifiers also the archival records of the societies that produce them? And to what extent are these active forms of documentation and memory seen as valid and equal archival representations in ways that textual works are  traditionally perceived to be?

     Seeking essays from an international range of cultures and traditions, we invite chapters on intangible archives for an edited book to be published by Bloomsbury Press.  

Possible topics include:

·      Exploring the ways in which societies ‘document’ themselves through intangible expressions.

·      Whether intangible expressions are archival within traditional understandings of records or whether they are indicative of new understandings of what an archive could be.

·      Tensions between intangible and tangible archives, between community memory and  official records.

·      How community rituals and practices serve as record formation and archival processing

·      Institutional configurations to center intangible cultural heritage collections and holdings.

·      Ethical considerations and challenges for inclusion of intangible cultural heritage materials within archival collections.

·      Digital culture as intangible cultural heritage archives.

·      Preserving the intangible.

Please send an abstract of no more than  300 words to Jeannette Bastian at jbastian6@gmail.com  and Stanley Griffin at stanley.griffin@uwi.edu  by March 25, 2026.

Deadlines:

Submission of Proposals: March 25, 2026

Notification of Acceptance: April 10, 2026

Full Chapter Submission: June 30, 2026

New/Recent Publications

Articles

Onifer, D., & Finkel, I. (2026). Using What We’ve Got: Activating Institutional Archives in Uncertain Times. Urban Library Journal, 31 (2). Retrieved from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ulj/vol31/iss2/1.

Candela, G. (2023). Towards a semantic approach in GLAM Labs: The case of the Data Foundry at the National Library of Scotland. Journal of Information Science, 52(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515231174386

Arran J. Rees and Elizabeth Stainforth. “Disentangling Ownership in Digital Collecting Practices: Approaches From Across Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2025).

Luyombya, D., Sendikadiwa, E., & Mulindwa, E. (2023). Examining archives management practices and service delivery in Mpigi district local government in Uganda. Information Development, 42(1), 300-312. https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669231209958

Books

Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections: A Practical Guide for Museums
Angela Kipp
Bloomsbury, 2024

Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management
Joy M. Perrin
Bloomsbury, 2025

Paduano, Michael , éd. 2025. Imperfect Itineraries: Literature and Literary Research in the Archives. Book Page Text Image. Nancy (France): Éditions de l’Université de Lorraine. https://doi.org/10.62688/edul/b9782384511914.

Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 18
Edited by Matthew James Driscoll
University of Chicago Press, 2023

The Rise of the Therapeutic Museum: Decolonization and the Crisis of Knowledge
Janet Kraynak
Routledge, 2026

Collection Management Basics
Margaret Zarnosky Saponaro, John Novak G. Edward Evans
Bloomsbury, 2025

Opening up our Heritage: Opportunities in Digitising and Promoting Cultural and Research Collections
François Renaville, Renaud Adam and Cécile Oger (Eds.)
2025

The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening
Alejandro L. Madrid
Duke University Press, 2025

Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage
Edited By Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Johanna Turunen, Andrei Terian, Renaud Garcia-Bardidia
Routledge, 2025

Marketing and Social Media: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums
Lorri Mon, Christie Koontz
Bloomsbury, 2025

Contemporary Archival Fiction: A Multimodal Cognitive Stylistic Approach
Elin Ivansson
Routledge, 2026

Negotiating Digital Heritage Infrastructures: Setting the Scene for Participation
Quoc-Tan Tran
Routledge, 2025

Paper

Approaches to Integrating Supervised Machine Learning in Libraries and Archives
Gregory Tharp, 2025

Podcasts

Archives in Context
In episode 4 of season 9, cohosts Adreonna Bennett and Conor Casey speak with Julie Thomas, the instruction and electronic records archivist at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), about her new book, Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st-Century Learners. The conversation touches upon active learning strategies, effective methods of incorporating archival materials into instruction, and the importance of adapting our teaching approach to the learning styles of today’s students.

Sound Files, National Recording Preservation Foundation
The Cuttlefish Project: Preserving Unangax̂ Culture
Discover the journey of the Cuttlefish Project, where the voices of the Unangam Tunuu language come alive through archival recordings in Alaska. In this episode of Sound Files, we explore how these valuable tapes were rescued from obscurity and digitized, thanks to the dedicated efforts of educators Ray Hudson, George Pletnikoff Junior, and curator Leslie McCartney. We’ll hear the powerful stories behind these recordings, highlighting the unwavering commitment to preserve the cultural heritage of the Unangax̂ community and the vital role these sounds play in revitalizing a language on the brink of extinction.

Call for Chapters: Understanding User Behavior for Enhanced Library Services

Editors

Edmont Pasipamire, The IIE Rosebank College, South Africa

Call for Chapters

Proposals Submission Deadline: March 15, 2026
Full Chapters Due: June 28, 2026
Submission Date: June 28, 2026

Introduction

The landscape of information is undergoing rapid transformation due to advances in digital technologies, evolving user expectations, and the proliferation of data-intensive research practices. These developments have fundamentally redefined the role of libraries and information centres. Contemporary users engage with information in increasingly complex, personalised, and technology-mediated ways, necessitating a shift from traditional service models toward approaches that are user-centred and evidence-based. Consequently, a rigorous understanding of user behaviour on how individuals seek, access, evaluate, and utilise information has become central to the design, implementation, and evaluation of effective library services. This edited volume, Understanding User Behavior for Enhanced Library Services, responds to the growing need for theoretical, empirical, and practice-based insights into user behavior within academic, public, special, and digital library contexts. The book foregrounds user studies, information-seeking behavior, user experience (UX), and data-informed service design as critical foundations for enhancing library relevance, accessibility, and impact. By bringing together diverse perspectives from researchers and practitioners across global contexts, the volume seeks to illuminate emerging patterns of library use and translate user behavior research into actionable strategies for service innovation.

Objective

The primary objective of this book is to advance scholarly and professional understanding of user behavior in libraries and information environments and to demonstrate how such insights can be systematically applied to improve library services. Specifically, the book aims to: Examine contemporary theories, models, and methodologies used to study user behavior in physical and digital library settings. Showcase empirical research and case studies that illustrate how user behaviour insights inform service design, resource development, and policy formulation. Bridge the gap between theory and practice by translating user behaviour research into practical, scalable solutions for library professionals. Address emerging challenges and opportunities related to digital literacy, user diversity, accessibility, and data-driven decision-making. Contribute to the growing body of literature on user-centred librarianship, particularly in under-researched and Global South contexts. By consolidating interdisciplinary perspectives and evidence-based practices, the book will extend current research and serve as a reference point for future studies on user behavior and library service enhancement.

Target Audience

This book is intended for a broad audience of scholars, practitioners, and postgraduate students in Library and Information Science (LIS) and related fields. The primary beneficiaries include: Academic, public, and special librarians seeking to design user-centred and responsive services. Library managers and administrators involved in strategic planning, assessment, and service innovation. Researchers and scholars investigating information behavior, user experience, and digital engagement. Postgraduate students (Master’s and PhD level) studying library science, information studies, and knowledge management. Policymakers and educators interested in evidence-based approaches to improving information services. The volume will be particularly valuable for professionals and researchers working in rapidly evolving information environments and diverse socio-cultural contexts.

Recommended Topics

Proposed chapters may address, but are not limited to, the following topics: Theories and models of information-seeking and user behavior User experience (UX) research and design in libraries Digital user behaviour and online library services Information behaviour of students, researchers, and faculty User behaviour in public, academic, and special libraries Data-driven decision-making and analytics in library services Personalisation and adaptive library systems Accessibility, inclusivity, and diverse user communities Digital literacy, information literacy, and user engagement The impact of emerging technologies (AI, discovery tools, virtual libraries) on user behavior User behavior in research support and scholarly communication services Ethical considerations in studying and analysing user data User behavior in Global South and under-researched contexts Assessment, evaluation, and continuous improvement of library services

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 15, 2026, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by March 29, 2026 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines.Full chapters of a minimum of 10,000 words (word count includes references and related readings) are expected to be submitted by June 28, 2026, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at https://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/ prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-anonymized review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Understanding User Behavior for Enhanced Library Services. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-anonymized peer review editorial process.

All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery® online submission manager.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global Scientific Publishing, an international academic publisher of the “Information Science Reference”, “Medical Information Science Reference”, “Business Science Reference”, and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. IGI Global Scientific Publishing specializes in publishing reference books, scholarly journals, and electronic databases featuring academic research on a variety of innovative topic areas including, but not limited to, education, social science, medicine and healthcare, business and management, information science and technology, engineering, public administration, library and information science, media and communication studies, and environmental science. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit https://www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2027.

Important Dates

March 15, 2026: Proposal Submission Deadline
March 29, 2026: Notification of Acceptance
June 28, 2026: Full Chapter Submission
August 30, 2026: Review Results Returned
October 11, 2026: Final Acceptance Notification
October 25, 2026: Final Chapter Submission

Inquiries

Edmont Pasipamire
The IIE Rosebank College
edmontp936@gmail.com

Classifications

Education; Library and Information Science

Propose a Chapter

CFP: Bedroom Journalists? Zines and Early Player Cultures

Bedroom Journalists? Zines and Early Player Cultures.

edited by Arno Görgen and Aurelia Brandenburg

In the 1980s and 1990s, for many computer game enthusiasts, the dream of a job in the games industry often began in their bedrooms: some created their first games on the C64 or Atari, while others wanted to write about games and literally put together their own gaming magazines. However, not much is known about these so-called zines.

Compared to other areas of the history of games and gaming, there has been relatively little research on the histories of print publications as part of cultural histories of gaming cultures in general. There are exceptions to this rule, however, although these exceptions tend to focus on the history of commercial gaming magazines and their contents. The most notable example for this is Graeme Kirkpatrick’s book (2015) who investigated the emergence of UK gaming magazines, but especially for magazines in English, there also have been other studies such as Fisher (2015), Summers and Miller (2007, 2014), Cote (2018) or Schmidt et al. (2020) that used gaming magazines as a vehicle to analyse representations of gender and in a similar vein, scholars such as Condis and Morrissette (2023) or Laabs (2023) have also been investigating the famously sexist print ads these magazines used to publish especially in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile, approaches that either focus on the production side of these magazines or try to investigate the fringes of the professional fields these magazines established, are far rarer. Graeme Kirkpatrick touches upon this issue due to his timeframe starting in the early 1980s and others, such as Trammel (2023) tend to brush them as well when incorporating sources such as newsletters into their research. There also are some highly localized studies such as Metzmacher’s (2017) dissertation on early German computer magazines that regards these magazines as actors in early networks of computer hobbyists and thus, in part also early gaming enthusiasts.

This special issue aims at this gap by deliberately focusing on the DIY aspect both of early professional gaming magazines same as publications that can be regarded as zines in a more traditional sense such as fanzines, club newsletters, and more. By taking up the term “bedroom coders” (Swalwell 2021, 70) – a diminutive term for hobbyist game developers in the 1980s – and translating it into “bedroom journalists,” we also would like to point out that this early gaming culture in particular was characterized by a complex lay DIY culture that, with the possibilities of the first home personal computers at hand allowed not only for developing games at home, but also to write about games and (more or less) successfully distribute the publications.

We seek to bring together scholars interested in the role of DIY fanzines in early player cultures. This includes perspectives from media history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, art and design history, and/or media aesthetics. We also particularly welcome interdisciplinary perspectives that combine methods from cultural history, fan studies, game studies, and archival research. We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions and themes:

  • Historical significance: What role did fanzines play in the emergence of player communities and player cultures before the mainstreaming of digital networks? How are DIY cultures in games journalism and games development interwoven?
  • Material and aesthetic practices: How were fanzines produced, circulated, and preserved, and what can their materiality tell us about grassroots cultural production of games journalism?
  • Knowledge sharing and expertise: How did fanzines serve as platforms for community events, technical advice, or critical debate, and how did they shape perceptions of expertise within player cultures?
  • Identity and community formation: In what ways did fanzines contribute to the construction of collective identities and player communities, whether through gendered perspectives, subcultural affiliations, interactions with their readers, or political engagement?
  • Comparative and cross-cultural approaches: How did fanzine practices vary across regions, platforms, or gaming genres, and what can these differences reveal about the global diversity of early player cultures?
  • Preservation and memory: What challenges and opportunities exist for archiving and studying these fragile artifacts today?

Abstracts and Deadline

For all contributions, please submit an abstract (300-500 words) with a title and a short biography (100-150 words) for each author until 01.06.2026 to arno.goergen@hkb.bfh.ch or aurelia.brandenburg@hkb.bfh.ch.

Timeline

  • Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15.06.2026
  • Full text submission by authors to the guest editors: 15.12.2026
  • Publication: Summer 2027

Submission Details

Full articles should be 5.000-10.000 words in length and will be peer-reviewed. We also encourage other contributions such as interviews or research reports that may not fit the typical format of a research article if they fit the scope of the Special Issue. For further information on possible formats and their different editorial processes, see gamevironments’ submission guidelines.

All submitted manuscripts also need to conform to the journal’s stylesheet, which can be found here.

References

Condis, Megan, and Jess Morrissette. ‘Dudes, Boobs, and GameCubes: Video Game Advertising Enters Adolescence’. Media, Culture & Society 45, no. 6 (2023): 1285–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231159533.

Cote, Amanda C. ‘Writing “Gamers”: The Gendered Construction of Gamer Identity in Nintendo Power (1994–1999)’. Games and Culture 13, no. 5 (2018): 479–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015624742.

Fisher, Howard D. ‘Sexy, Dangerous—and Ignored: An In-Depth Review of the Representation of Women in Select Video Game Magazines’. Games and Culture 10, no. 6 (2015): 551–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014566234.

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. The Formation of Gaming Culture: UK Gaming Magazines, 1981-1995. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305107.

Laabs, Laura. ‘»Nintendo What Nintendon’t«: Sexualisierte Konsolenwerbung, die Maskulinität des Gamers und #Gamergate’. In Politiken des (digitalen) Spiels: transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Arno Görgen and Tobias Unterhuber, vol. 4. Game Studies. Transcript Verlag, 2023. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467909-005.

Metzmacher, Marina. Das Papier der digitalen Welt. Computerzeitschriften als „Akteure“ im Netzwerk von (jugendlichen) Nutzern, Hardware und Software 1980-1995. RWTH Aachen University, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18154/RWTH-2017-09791.

Miller, Monica K., and Alicia Summers. ‘Gender Differences in Video Game Characters’ Roles, Appearances, and Attire as Portrayed in Video Game Magazines’. Sex Roles 57, nos 9–10 (2007): 733–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9307-0.

Schmidt, Thomas, Isabella Engl, Juliane Herzog, and Lisa Judisch. Towards an Analysis of Gender in Video Game Culture: Exploring Gender Specific Vocabulary in Video Game Magazines. Universität Regensburg, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5283/EPUB.49297.

Summers, Alicia, and Monica K. Miller. ‘From Damsels in Distress to Sexy Superheroes: How the Portrayal of Sexism in Video Game Magazines Has Changed in the Last Twenty Years’. Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 6 (2014): 1028–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.882371.

Swalwell, Melanie. Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality. Game Histories. The MIT Press, 2021.

Trammell, Aaron. The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race, and Geek Culture. New York University Press, 2023.

Contact Email

arno.goergen@hkb.bfh.ch

URL

https://journals.suub.uni-bremen.de/index.php/gamevironments/openquests

Join Ask an Oral Historian’s session on Book Publication with Haymarket Books

Are you working on a book that includes oral history? Need to learn the process of book publication? Are you interested in learning what goes into a book proposal? Want to know more about how to pitch your book? 

If these are all questions on your mind right now, please join Ask an Oral Historian’s session on Book Publication on Thursday, February 12th at 3 pm EST via zoom. Register here. 

For this session, we will be in conversation with Đào X. Trần, managing Editor at Haymarket Books. She has worked on nearly every aspect of the publication process for over two decades including acquisition, developmental editing, copyediting, and project management. This is a one-hour long session. 

Come prepared with your questions, current challenges, or simply your curiosity about narrative oral history, book publication, and writing!

Space is limited to maintain the collaborative atmosphere these conversations deserve. Sessions will not be recorded. Zoom link information for the session will be sent directly to your email inbox, not through EventBrite. Check your inboxes and spam folders a few days before the session!

Contact Information

Fanny García, Editorial Program Manager at Voice of Witness. My email is fanny@voiceofwitness.org

Contact Email

fanny@voiceofwitness.org

URL: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ask-an-oral-historian-book-publication-tickets-1976968124880?aff=oddtdtcreator