CFP: “Students in the Archives: Archival Pedagogy in Practice” Edited Collection

Heather Fox & Amanda Stuckey

In early 2020, we developed a pedagogy-driven digital humanities site to feature pedagogical approaches to archival research and teaching. Prompted by Barbara Biesecker’s premise that “whatever else the archive may be, it always already is . . . our collective invention of us and of it” (2015, 156), this site was designed to investigate the collaborative relationships that archival research and pedagogy engender. As life-long learners, we are all “students” in the archives, and our collaborations have the potential to reshape an archive’s narrative and the methods we bring to it. Drawing upon this initiative, alongside a decade of pedagogical and scholarly collaborations, we are compiling contributions for an edited collection–“Students in the Archives: Archival Pedagogy in Practice”–to connect conversations between teacher-scholars across disciplines, grade levels, and learning spaces. Since archivist Ken Osborne’s 1980s call to integrate archival sources in the classroom, educators have sought to connect how we research and how we teach.

This volume takes a broad view of what it means to be a “student in the archives,” expanding upon and/or complicating previously published archival pedagogy collections like Lori Ostergaard and Henrietta Rix Wood’s In the Archives of Composition: Writing and Rhetoric in High Schools and Normal Schools (U of Pittsburgh P, 2015), Sarah Robbins’s Learning Legacies: Archive to Action through Women’s Cross-Cultural Teaching (U of Michigan P, 2017), Nancy Bartlett’s Teaching Undergraduates with Archives (Maize Books, 2019), and Tarez Samara Grabin and Wendy Hayden’s Teaching through the Archives: Text, Collaboration, and Activism (Southern Illinois UP, 2022). This collection aims to bring together assignments, curriculum design, and practices that illuminate the intersection of archival research and pedagogy.

“Students in the Archives: Archival Pedagogy in Practice” situates collaborative archival relationships within and outside of the academy as sustainable teaching and learning practices across disciplines, grade levels, and types of learning spaces. We envision it as a resource, record, and theorization of archival explorations through pedagogy, written by scholars, archivists, librarians, and educators whose work furthers an understanding of how engagements with collected materials shape pedagogy. Contributions to this collection will prioritize students’ inquiries, discoveries, frustrations, and overall engagements with archives. Reproductions of assignments that demonstrate archival pedagogical strategies are welcome to accompany chapters. This edited volume is intended for presses publishing archival pedagogy collections, such as Southern Illinois University Press, University of Michigan’s Maize Books, University of Pittsburgh Press, or Routledge’s Studies in Archives series. It is planned for publication in
2024-2025.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • University classroom pedagogy projects, including recovery projects that involve
  • students
  • Undergraduate archival research and/or faculty-student collaborations
  • K-12 classroom integrations
  • Accessibility/equity issues related to archival pedagogy across digital and non-digital
  • sources
  • Collaborations across libraries, educators, students, and/or communities
  • Interdisciplinary archive-based projects
  • Histories of pedagogical spaces that include archival research
  • Teaching historically marginalized voices through archival sources
  • How archival research and teaching supports inclusive approaches to pedagogy
  • Students’ reckonings with archival absences and silences in archives

Please submit abstracts (250-500 words) and brief biographies (100 words) to Dr. Amanda Stuckey (amandastuckey@centralpenn.edu) and Dr. Heather Fox (heather.fox@eku.edu) by March 17, 2023. Co-authored submissions are welcome. If accepted, completed chapters of 6,000-10,000 words will be due in Summer 2024.

Call for Papers: Indigenous Librarianship (Library Trends Journal)

We are looking for a contributor or a collaboration of contributors to submit an article for a special issue of the Library Trends journal focused on Indigenous Librarianship. 

We are most interested in a contribution focusing on Indigenous cultural institutions of North America, histories, issues and problems, functions and significance tribal libraries and archives, but we are open to other topics. Examples include discussions on: protection of Indigenous ways of knowledge and/or communities’ way of life; language revitalization; land and resource management; and protection of sensitive information such as intellectual Indigenous property rights.

Library Trends is one of the leading library journals in North America.  It is published quarterly by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Contact Info: 

Please contact co-editors, Ulia Gosart and Rachel Fu with a proposal of 350 words or less by February 20 (the latest, we have strict deadlines and will consider submissions on the first sent basis), at:

ulia.gosart@sjsu.edu

rueih-chew.fu@sjsu.edu

Contact Email: 

rueih-chew.fu@sjsu.edu

CFP: Society For the History of Discoveries Conference

Society for the History of Discoveries 2023 Conference

Worlds of Exploration

The James Ford Bell Library, with its extensive collection of rare books, maps, manuscripts, and archival collections, documenting the history and impact of trade and cultural exchange before the 19th century, offers an ideal venue to host the 2023 SHD conference. This year’s conference locale aligns with the global breadth of the Society’s mission by supporting research into the expeditions, biographies, history, cartography, as well as the technologies of travel, the impact of travel and cultural exchange, and other aspects of geographic discovery. With its expansive resources, the James Ford Bell, and other collections associated with the University of Minnesota’s libraries, offers members of the Society and presenters an ideal opportunity to conduct research prior to and after the conference.  The rich and fascinating collections emboldens the inspiration for our conference.

The Society for the History of Discoveries invites papers, 20 minutes in length, on all points of view of this theme, Worlds of Exploration, including: “discovery,” encounter, exploration, conquest, resistance, settlement, economy, daily life, and all aspects of socio-cultural and political encounter, as well as on the teaching of the history of exploration, broadly defined.

SHD welcomes submissions from graduate students, emerging and independent scholars, as well as established scholars and members of the Society.  Presenters are encouraged to use images (maps, paintings, photographs, etc.).  For the benefit of the audience, all visuals have to be presented as PowerPoint-compatible projection. The audience at SHD meetings is diverse and includes academics and members of various professions.

Where: Minneapolis-St-Paul, Minnesota

When:  21 September – 23 September, 2023 (With an optional excursion on Sunday, 24)

Venue: James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota

Please provide a proposal that includes the following components:

  • the title of the presentation
  • the author’s name and address, including email address and affiliation
  • an abstract summarizing the paper’s scope and conclusions (maximum of 500 words)
  • a statement about the originality of the contents of the paper: how much is new, unpublished material, based on research in primary sources, etc.
  • a statement indicating whether PowerPoint or other digital media will be used and whether internet access is necessary for the presentation
  • a brief biographic sketch of the author(s)

Paper proposals are due 17 April 2023, and must be submitted via the SHD website  – an online submissions portal.

Inquiries via Dr. Lydia Towns, SHD secretary: lydia.towns@sfasu.edu

CFP: “Indigenous Histories in New England: Pastkeepers and Pastkeeping” at the 2023 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife

The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2023 gathering, Indigenous Histories in New England: Pastkeepers and Pastkeeping, to be held June 23–24, 2023.

Three decades have passed since the 1993 publication of the Seminar’s proceedings Algonkians of New England. Over that space of time, both the study of Indigenous histories in the region (encompassing present-day New England and adjacent areas of New York and Canada), and understanding of the memory work of pastkeepers and pastkeeping, have been transformed.  The 2023 Seminar Indigenous Histories in New England: Pastkeepers and Pastkeeping will explore long traditions of Indigenous pastkeeping and the wide variety of ways in which Native peoples have stewarded history and memory.  

The Seminar invites proposals for papers that focus on addressing the gaps in Indigenous voice and visibility in public views of the past. We wish to critically consider who has claimed responsibility for “keeping” the Indigenous past in New England, including how it has been represented (for better or worse), how historical research can be decolonized and improved, and what museums and tribal nations have done to engage the public in better understandings.

Papers offering historical perspective might explore, for instance:

  • Indigenous forms of memory-making and pastkeeping, on landscapes and in oral tradition
  • Native American authors of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century, including autobiography and tribal histories
  • collections of material culture; histories of tribal museums
  • repatriation and cultural recovery
  • language reclamation
  • artwork as vehicles for historical reflection

The Seminar will give particular attention to the work of museums, archives, historic preservation organizations, cultural centers, and initiatives that over the past thirty years have worked to provide more holistic and inclusive representations of regional Indigenous peoples and histories. 

The Seminar will convene in Deerfield, Massachusetts. This will be a hybrid program, with both on-site and virtual registration options for attendees. Speakers will present on site at Historic Deerfield.

The conference program will consist of approximately seventeen lectures of twenty minutes each. Dublin Seminar presenters are expected to submit their papers (approximately 7000 words) for consideration to the Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar by June 16, 2023. The scholarship proposed should be unpublished and available for inclusion in this volume to be published about eighteen months after the conference.

To submit a proposal, please send (as a single email attachment, in MS Word or as a PDF, labeled LASTNAME.DubSem2023) a one-page prospectus that describes the paper and the archival, material, or visual sources on which it is grounded followed by a one-page vita or biography.

Email proposals to dublinseminar@historic-deerfield.org. Deadline: Noon EST Friday, March 3, 2023. 

For more information on the Dublin Seminar, see https://dublin-seminar.org/.  

Survey: Tell us about your American Archivist reading experience!

What do you love about the digital American Archivist? What would you like to read more of? Tell us in this 15-minute survey.

Take the Survey

In the last decade, the Journal has seen a tremendous shift in how readers engage with it. Established in 1938 in a physical format, American Archivist launched a companion digital format in 2010. Then in 2021, the Journal shifted to a digital-only format. With these recent changes, the Editorial Board seeks your input on how you interact with the digital American Archivist, what you think of it, and how your reading experience can be improved. Take the survey by March 1 and send additional comments to AmericanArchivist@archivists.org.

Ohio Archivist: Call for Assistant Editors

The Ohio Archivist is urgently seeking assistant editors to contribute excellent content to the statewide biannual newsletter. Some of the past and current columns are Features, Newcomers, News & Notes, and a Digital Feature. We are also open to new ideas such as Social Justice/DEIA, as well as others.

Ohio Archivist is published twice a year, in the spring and fall, and can be found online, along with the submission guidelines. This is a great way to be involved with SOA and help get the word out about all things related to Ohio archives.

The Ohio Archivist is the official newsletter of the Society of Ohio Archivists. Its primary mission is to serve as a conduit for information about SOA and its membership. The Ohio Archivist also publishes articles containing general information about the archival profession, especially as it relates to archivists located within Ohio and the Midwest.

For questions or interest, please contact Ohio Archivist Editor Jessica Heys.

CFP: Information, Power, and Reproductive Health

Call for Chapter Proposals

Working Title: Information, Power, and Reproductive Health
Editors: Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Des Moines University); Alanna Aiko Moore (University of California, San Diego); Renée Ann Rau (University of Southern California)
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2023
Publisher: Library Juice Press

Book Description

Information, Power, and Reproductive Health will encourage readers to explore the inextricable intersection of reproductive health information and power. Rooted in a framework of reproductive justice, it will explore the ways in which power plays a central role in how reproductive health information is created, controlled, withheld, and shared. Deeply entrenched ideologies about which bodies are deserving or undeserving of reproductive care, which facets of reproductive life are worthy of research, which issues are taboo or frequently dismissed, and how to control bodies considered unruly all affect what health information is easily accessible or perhaps hidden from those who need it. Legislative, bureaucratic, medical-scientific, economic, and familial systems and structures shape reproductive health information, and framing information production and consumption as a social act can help us to trace these structural and ideological forces in the reproductive health landscape and locate transgressive sites of information sharing that speak back to power. Chapters will address the continued and more-urgent-than-ever interest in reproductive health, feminism(s), womanism, critical theory, and praxis in librarianship and information studies. We aim to develop an essential volume for librarians, healthcare practitioners, academics, advocates, and activists involved in the study of or street-level organizing around reproductive health in this critical era of reproductive crisis.

We seek proposals that demonstrate a substantive exploration of power and intersectionality, with attention to race, gender, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, and the like. We welcome all genres, from empirical research and critical analysis to personal narrative and autoethnography (and everything in between).

We welcome submissions from first-time authors and authors working outside academia. In the spirit of community, contributors will have the opportunity to be in regular contact with editors and with each other throughout the writing and publication process. Authors will also have the opportunity to both review and have their work reviewed by fellow contributors.

Potential Topics Include (but are not limited to)

  • The history of reproductive health information. For example:
    • Archival or library holdings
    • Close readings of historically influential resources
    • Lasting impacts of absent, erroneous, or discriminatory reproductive health information
    • Underground information-sharing networks of the past
  • The reproductive body, information, and the state. For example:
    • Information in relation to biopower, population control, or pronatalism
    • Forced hysterectomies/sterilization
    • Government records
    • Legislation
    • Funding for reproductive health research
    • Various forms of state and corporate surveillance (e.g., period tracking apps)
  • Reproductive health information and medical institutions. For example:
    • Medical records and medical classification
    • Pathologized bodies
    • Patient consent and information sharing
    • Medicalization of queer bodies
    • Medical technologies, fertility treatments, and assisted reproductive technology
    • Cultural competence and information sharing
    • Marginalized communities’ relationship(s) to the medical establishment
    • Capitalism/neoliberalism/racism/classism, etc., in medical institutions
  • Health information and the taboo reproductive body. For example:
    • Deviations from the “normal” or “healthy” or “fertile” body
    • Heteronormative ideas regarding reproduction and parenthood
    • Reproductive information for people with disabilities or otherwise “unruly” bodies
    • Libraries providing access to “taboo” reproductive information and resources (e.g., tampons/pads, condoms, materials on menopause)
    • Access to reproductive health information for non-normative or queer individuals or families
  • Taking control of reproductive health information post-Roe. For example:
    • Library and archival collections, services, and resources
    • (Radical) reproductive justice as information practice
    • Narrative medicine and storytelling
    • Zines and graphic medicine
    • Social media and information sharing
    • Underground information-sharing networks

Important Dates and Anticipated Timeline (subject to change)

  • Office hour: March 1, 2023, 10:00 – 11:00 am PST. Join the Information, Power, and Reproductive Health editorial team for an informal office hour. Pop in to say hi and ask us your questions about the call for proposals.
  • Proposal due date: April 1, 2023
  • Notification of acceptance: May 1, 2023
  • First draft due: September 1, 2023
  • Anticipated publication date: 2025

How to Submit

Submit chapter proposals and brief author bio(s). Proposals should not exceed 500 words.

Due to the political climate and nature of the collection’s subject matter, we respect that some contributors might choose to publish anonymously or using a pseudonym. If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at info.power.rephealth (at) gmail (dot) com: info.power.rephealth@gmail.com.

About the Editors

Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (she/her) is a health sciences librarian at Des Moines University. She holds an undergraduate degree in Sociology/Anthropology from Drake University, a masters of Social Science with an emphasis on Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Colorado Denver, and a masters of Library Science from the University of Denver. Her research interests include race and gender in librarianship, critical information literacy and peer learning in higher education, and the intersections of reproductive labor and information work. She is the editor of Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in LIS (Library Juice Press, 2017), has served as a journal editor and reviewer, authored peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and presented at numerous library science, gender studies, and higher education venues. She lives in Iowa with her people, cats, and chickens, and is a doula-in-training.

Alanna Aiko Moore is the Librarian for Sociology, Ethnic Studies, and Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Alanna holds a bachelor of arts in Sociology/Anthropology and Gender Studies from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, and a master’s of Library and Information Science from Dominican University. Alanna has published book chapters and articles on queer parenting, cross cultural mentoring, emotional labor, activism, and issues affecting women of color librarians. She has worked in academic libraries for over 15 years and has presented at numerous conferences and organizations. Before librarianship, she worked at social justice-centered non-profits and community organizations.

Renée A. Rau is an Information Services Librarian at University of Southern California’s Norris Medical Library and the liaison to the Keck School of Medicine. She earned a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree at San José State University (SJSU), in 2020. In 2017, she earned an MA in 20th-century United States history, specializing in women’s and gender history, from Washington State University (WSU). Her current research interests include: Evidence Based Practice and information literacy instruction; Graphic Medicine and health humanities; and diversity, equity, and inclusion in health sciences librarianship.

Call for speakers: ArchivesSpace Virtual Member Forum

Dear ArchivesSpace Users,

Mark your calendars for this year’s Virtual Member Forum!

Taking place April 4-5, 2023, our Virtual Member Forum will be a two-day event spanning a variety of time zones and ArchivesSpace experience levels. A schedule and information about how to register for the event will be released closer to the forum.

We are now accepting session proposals via our online form at https://forms.gle/jpSyx7VWZQ91HfTP8. We will be reviewing proposals on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to get your proposals in early.  Submissions will be closed on March 24, 2023, with final notification by March 27, 2023. 

The ArchivesSpace program team is particularly interested in presentations or facilitated discussions related to the following topics:

  • Demonstrations of workflows using different modules or features of the application
  • Managing digital objects in ArchivesSpace
  • Developing local training and documentation
  • Workflows and tips for editing existing records in ArchivesSpace or other data cleanup projects
  • Examples of anti-racism, anti-colonialism and redescription work being executed in ArchivesSpace
  • Demonstrations of plugins or tools you’ve developed to make your work in ArchivesSpace easier

The forum will include a mix of opportunities to share and learn from each other about many different aspects of ArchivesSpace and all presenter submissions are welcome. We anticipate recording many parts of the forum, but for it to be a success we will also need as many live participants as possible. We encourage you to dip in and out of the live program as much as you can. You will no doubt “meet” a different set of colleagues each time.

This year’s Virtual Member Forum is the successor to the Online Forums we held in previous years. To better support our member community and recognize their direct contributions to the development and sustainability of the ArchivesSpace application, registration for this year’s event is open to users from ArchivesSpace member organizations only. 

Going forward, we plan to make the Virtual Member Forum an online complement to our in-person Annual Member Forum, one of the many benefits of ArchivesSpace membership. This change will give even more members than before the opportunity to participate in a forum, no matter where they live or their capacity for attending events in person in a given year. If you are interested in learning more about ArchivesSpace membership for your organization, feel free to email us at ArchivesSpaceHome@lyrasis.org. 

Thank you for considering submitting a proposal. We’re looking forward to a great event, with your help!

CFP: Censorship Is a Drag: LGBTQ Materials and Programming Under Siege in Libraries

This call does not specifically mention archives, but it is an opportunity to integrate archives into the discussion.
______________________________________________

Call for Chapter Proposals

Working Title: Censorship Is a Drag: LGBTQ Materials and Programming Under Siege in Libraries
Editors: Jason D. Phillips and Jordan Ruud
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2023
Publisher: Library Juice Press

Book Description: Libraries, long tasked with defending intellectual freedom, find themselves under siege with threats of censorship for carrying gender/sexuality-related materials or holding LGBTQ-related events. Efforts to censor materials and control programming arguably threaten to have a chilling effect on libraries’ ability to carry out their core missions. We are soliciting contributions from across the library ecosystem exploring the significance of these threats and how librarians have responded, offering an intellectual and practical toolkit, in tandem with lessons with experience, to help libraries make their way through this new intellectual climate.

Topics under consideration might include:

  • Censorship of programming
  • Censorship of materials at any point in the acquisitions cycle
  • Preemptive caution (anticipation of censorship struggles) exerting a chilling effect on intellectual freedom
  • How classification can impede discoverability of controversial materials: “bibliographic invisibility”
  • Visibility of LGBTQ topics in displays
  • LGBTQ YA/children’s lit and its curricular role
  • Safe spaces for digital scholarship
  • The role and inclusion of LGBTQ materials, services, and outreach
  • Responsive collection development policy to address potential challenges
  • Administrative interference (campus, school, or public)
  • Workplace protections for LGBTQ personnel or those involved in LGBTQ
    collection development/programming
  • Information barriers creating a non-inclusive environment
  • Building design as a barrier to vulnerable populations (trans people)
  • Impact of LGBTQ materials and/or programming on student retention/mental health
  • The erosion of tenure as a threat to protection of intellectual freedom
  • Reflection on the role of LGBTQ materials as part of a collection, and as an aspect of overall library/campus DEI strategies
  • Politicization of library funding

We welcome contributions discussing specific situations, and also reflections of a more general nature on the importance of, and threats to, intellectual freedom.

We ask authors interested in contributing to submit a proposal or abstract in our submission form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bP5Eo_GsMXuCBMNerSdgtS9hjUVqrfEEuwvEwrCR-mY/

Deadlines:

  • April 1, 2023: abstracts due
  • April 30, 2023: notification of acceptance
  • September 1, 2023: drafts due
  • December 1, 2023: final revisions due
  • December 31, 2023: final submission of manuscript

Questions: If you have questions, please feel free to ask the editors: Jason D. Phillips (he/him) and Jordan Ruud (he/him)

RAAC brown bag discussion: archival publications

The RAAC Steering Committee is hosting a brown bag discussion on February 22nd where we’ll discuss archival publications, including transitions to digital publishing and the challenges of attracting good submissions. We’ve lined up representatives from the American Archivist, Archival Issues (Midwest Archives Conference), and the Journal of the Society of North Carolina Archivists, so we’ll be hearing from a variety of perspectives from organizations of different scale and scope.

If you have questions you want to pose about archival publications, you may submit them to me or to our RAAC email address before February 22nd, or we’ll also have time for people to ask questions during the discussion. 

Please join us on Wednesday, February 22nd at noon Eastern time for a discussion on this important topic for archival organizations.  Please register for the Zoom session; attendance is free.