Call for Submissions: 2018 Katharine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition

Submissions for the 2017 Katharine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Awards are being accepted until Friday, October 15, 2017. The awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogs and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for digital exhibitions of such materials. The prizes are administered and awarded by the ALA/ACRL/RBMS Exhibition Awards Committee.

For full information about entering please see the submission page at: http://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/publicationawards/leabawards which includes links to pdf forms that can be filled in online, saved, printed, and emailed in one operation.

Submissions of printed materials (4 copies of each catalog or brochure) must be postmarked by October 15th. For digital exhibitions, only the filled in form is needed which asks for basic information about the exhibition and the names of its creators; this form can be completed in a few minutes. After judging is completed and the awards announced, the printed materials are sent to The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, The Harry Ransom Humanities Center at UT Austin, and the Grolier Club in New York City. This constitutes a triplicate archive of the self-selected best work in the field. Lists and an exhibition of prize winners as well as lists of all materials submitted since the inception of the award in 1986, are available at this address: http://rbms.info/exhibition_awards/first_ten_years/index.html

Research Survey: Historians and Subscription Primary Source Databases

Though this survey is directed to historians, they want participants regardless of AHA membership. This is a chance to help inform the AHA about access to primary sources relevant to historical scholarship.

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The AHA is investigating access to research databases and other resources used by historians. Independent and unaffiliated scholars, as well as historians at smaller institutions often do not have access to subscription materials necessary for their work. We would like you to answer a few questions that will help us determine what we can do to help scholars with this problem. We are looking for responses from anyone who considers themselves a historian, regardless of AHA membership status, so please pass this survey on to your colleagues. Your responses will be extremely helpful to the AHA’s efforts to promote historical education and research, and we thank you for taking the time to help us gather this important information.

This survey is brief and should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. Please respond by October 4, 2017 and do not hesitate to contact zjackson@historians.org if you have any further questions or comments.

The purpose of this survey is to allow the AHA to look into the extent of the problem of access to digital primary and secondary source databases for historical research. Many proprietary databases are only offered through university or other institutional subscription and are thus only available to scholars whose institution subscribes. This means that scholars without affiliations and those at places that do not subscribe to the resource they need are unable to access the materials they need.

When answering these questions please think only of subscription digital research collections (either primary or secondary source), such as JSTOR, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Proquest Historical Newspapers, etc. Do not list or refer to materials that can be accessed for free. This brief questionnaire has a maximum of 9 questions and should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete.

CFP: Urban Library Journal

The call does not specify archives, but they are open to a variety of content. A search shows they have previously published archives-related articles.

CFP: Urban Library Journal (ULJ) – Open access Peer-Reviewed Journal

Urban Library Journal (ULJ) is an open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal of research that addresses all aspects of urban libraries and urban librarianship.
Urban Library Journal invites submissions in broad areas such as public higher education, urban studies, multiculturalism, library and educational services to immigrants, preservation of public higher education, and universal access to World Wide Web resources. We welcome articles that focus on all forms of librarianship in an urban setting, whether that setting is an academic, research, public, school, or special library.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

Reference and instruction in diverse, multicultural urban settings
Radical librarianship, social justice issues, and/or informed agitation
Intentional design / “library as space” in an urban setting
Physical and/or virtual accessibility issues
Open access / open education resources in urban systems
Innovative collaboration between academic departments, other branches, or community partnerships
More!

Completed manuscript length should fall between 2,500 and 5,000 words. Full author guidelines can be found on the ULJ website: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/ulj/author_guidelines.html

The submission period is open! We publish articles on a rolling basis and close issues twice per year (Oct / May). For more information about ULJ and to see the latest issue: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/ulj.

If you have questions about whether your paper topic is within the journal’s scope, please email the editors Anne.Hays@csi.cuny.edu, Angel.Falcon@bcc.cuny.edu, and/or Cheryl Branch cb1704@hunter.cuny.edu.

CFP (abstract deadline 9/29): Featured section in History in Africa: Archives, the Digital Turn and Governance in Africa

Featured section in History in Africa:
Archives, the Digital Turn and Governance in Africa

Guest editors:

Dr Marie Rodet, School of Oriental and African Studies
Dr Vincent Hiribarren, King’s College London
Fabienne Chamelot, University of Portsmouth

digital.turn.africa@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: 29 September 2017

This featured section of History in Africa will address the wave of digitisation of archives in Africa over the last fifteen years. With the rise of information technologies, an increasing part of public – and to some extent private – African archives are being digitised and made accessible on the internet. This wave of digitisation is usually seen as a progress with the help of ambitious initiatives applying new technologies to cultural heritage of humanity such as the rescue of the manuscripts of Timbuktu or the Endangered Archives programme at the British Library. Yet as much as these new technologies raise enthusiasm, they also prompt discussions amongst researchers and archivists, which go from intellectual property to sovereignty and governance.

First, in the digital era, the issue of the ownership of these documents is crucial since the very definition of an archive is being challenged: from unique hard copies of documents, they can now exist in a variety of formats reproducible at will. Second, technical and economic issues at stake are also key to the discussion and intertwined with that of sovereignty: institutions elaborating a digitisation programme may do so under the pressure of donors or non-African scholars. All in all, beyond the discourse of transparency, whether to the benefit of governance or that of scientific research, this matter is eminently political. These archives are thus concerned with negotiations which go far beyond their sole technical and scientific aspect.

In the field of history, archives are usually addressed as sources for research, and questioned as such because of their documentary aspect. More rarely are they approached as historically constructed systems combining intellectual and physical aspects, as archival science theorises it. Yet digital archiving disrupts archival norms and practices, opening up a field of reflection relatively little explored by historians. The digital turn of African archives is therefore an object of study in its own right, located at the crossroads of political and economic interests.

This featured section seeks to reflect on the practices of digitisation of archives in Africa (pre-colonial, colonial or postcolonial) and to engage both with history and archival science.

Submission instructions

If you wish to contribute, please submit a 500-word abstract of the proposed paper as well as a short CV by Friday 29 September 2017 to digital.turn.africa@gmail.com

Notifications of decision will be sent by Friday 27 October 2017.

Selected authors will then be expected to send their full-length paper (no more than 10,000 words, including notes) by Friday 16 February 2018.

All completed papers will be subject to peer-reviewing process in accordance with History in Africa requirements.

Please address any query you may have to digital.turn.africa@gmail.com

Call for Book Reviewers: JCAS

The Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (JCAS) seeks book reviewers who are looking to engage with the professional literature. Sponsored by New England Archivists, Yale University Library, and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this open access journal publishes articles on a rolling basis.

To apply, please review our submission guidelines and then email the journal at email.jcas@gmail.com. Submit a brief list describing your area(s) of professional interest or expertise, and we will match you with a book to review.

The mission of the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies is to further awareness of issues and developments in the work of professional archivists, curators, librarians, and historians, and to serve as a locus for graduate students and professionals in library science, archival science, and public history to contribute original works of research and inquiry for peer-review and publication.

For more information, visit elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas.

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Katy Sternberger
Marketing Associate
Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies
email.jcas@gmail.com
Follow the journal on Facebook and

Recent Issue: Archives and Records

Volume 38, Issue 1, 2017

Editorial: archives and public history
Victoria Hoyle

Articles
‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: community archives and the importance of representation
Michelle Caswell, Alda Allina Migoni, Noah Geraci & Marika Cifor

‘Setting the record straight’: the creation and curation of archives by activist communities. A case study of activist responses to the regeneration of Elephant and Castle, South London
Elena Carter

The small politics of everyday life: local history society archives and the production of public histories
Fiona Cosson

A labour of love: the affective archives of popular music culture
Paul Long, Sarah Baker, Lauren Istvandity & Jez Collins

‘I will not leave, my freedom is more precious than my blood’. From affect to precarity: crowd-sourced citizen archives as memories of the Syrian war
Dima Saber & Paul Long

Artists and records: moving history and memory
Kathy Michelle Carbone

‘Instead of fetching flowers, the youths brought in flakes of snow’: exploring extreme weather history through English parish registers
Lucy Veale, James P. Bowen & Georgina H. Endfield

Book Reviews
Directory of rare books and special collections in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland
Julia Sheppard

Managing local government archives
Niamh Brennan

Building trustworthy digital repositories: theory and implementation
Jenny Mitcham

Managing digital cultural objects: analysis, discovery and retrieval
Adrian Brown

Introduction to metadata
Ellen O’Flaherty

Digitizing flat media: principles and practice
Alex Fitzgerald

Digital preservation essentials
Simon Wilson

Edward II: his last months and his monument
Rebecca Phillips

Early records of University College Oxford
A. C. Green

Northallerton wills and inventories, 1666–1719
Andrew George

Seals in medieval London 1050-1300: a catalogue
Paul R. Dryburgh

Rookwood family papers 1606–1761
Robert F. W. Smith

The building accounts of the Savoy Hospital, London, 1512–1520
Anthony Smith

The Royal Irish Constabulary: a short history and genealogical guide with a select list of medal awards and casualties
Neil G. Cobbett

New Page: Newsletters

When I started this blog, I knew that there are a wide variety of archival writing opportunities. I chose to focus on scholarly publishing due to the lack of guidance and resources for archivists.

Now that the blog has been active for over 2 years, it’s a good time to assess and rethink. I still plan to have the bulk of the content focus on scholarly publishing. However, there are many opportunities that provide good writing practice which can eventually lead to journal, chapter, or book publications.

Therefore, I compiled a long list of newsletters on a separate page. Because there’s so much out there, including a newsletter link is limited to archival or related organizations and groups; individual and/or institutional newsletters will not be included to help maintain a manageable list. But please let me know if there are any to be added.

While I will try to post announcements about calls for contents or new issues, there are so many it is unlikely I’ll keep up. But I’ll do what I can! And I hope you find this valuable.

New/Recent Publications: Reports, Guides, and Other

Provenance Guide
International Foundation for Art Research

Navigating Research: How academic users understand, discover, and utilize reference resources
Oxford University Press

CHU, Clara M. and DAVIS, Mary Ellen K. and PUENTE, Mark A. (2017) Learning Together: Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC 2017 – Wrocław, Poland – Libraries. Solidarity. Society. in Session 112 – Poster Sessions.

“Construction of Backup System and Operating Mechanism for Military Archives” International Conference on Man-Machine-Environment System Engineering
Shisheng Cheng, Yongqing Zhang, Qianqian Wu, Rong Liu

“Archives Digital and Otherwise: Recent Books on Archiving Canadian Writing” Journal of Canadian Studies 50 No. 3 (Fall 2016)

Jason Wiens The Activist’s Guide to Archiving Video
Witness.org

SAA Annual Meeting Session Recordings Available

Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering

Association of Research Libraries, SPEC Kit 356: Diversity and Inclusion (September 2017). There’s also a webinar about this on October 11.

Association of Research Libraries, SPEC Kit 354: Data Curation

Association of Research Libraries, Issue Brief: Using Fair Use to Preserve and Share Disappearing Government Information

SAA Case Studies

SAA announced a new Campus Case Study, “Successful Fundraising with Library and
Archives Collaboration.” SAA started this series geared towards academic archives, but often the studies offer insight and tips to any type of institution.

More recently, the case studies have expanded and there are now openly accessible case studies on ethics, diversifying the archival record, and government records.

These are also a good publishing opportunity. Recognizing the benefit of these to the profession, SAA is open to expanding the contributing groups. They are much shorter than journal-article length, good for collaborative writing, and allow to share real-life experiences and practices.