CFP: Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together

The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) will hold its 55th annual conference, Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together, in Portland, Oregon, April 4-7, 2027.

In Northern Portland, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, waters that have traveled different paths meet, carrying distinct histories, sediments, and stories into a shared current. Maya Lin’s Confluence Project, located along the Columbia River basin, reflects on these meeting places as sites of memory, Indigenous history, and environmental reflection, reminding us that rivers and people are shaped by both movement and encounter. Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together, the Art Libraries Society of North America’s 55th Annual Conference, considers what these ideas mean within the context of art librarianship, and the art information ecosystem more broadly. 

As art information professionals, we each bring our own unique perspectives and experiences to conferences, the Society, and the profession at large. Yet, like two rivers merging, by coming together to share our knowledge and learn from our colleagues, we foster vital connections and a more dynamic profession. Gathering at the confluence becomes a fitting metaphor: separate voices, experiences, and struggles joining together to create something stronger in common. In the spirit of the idea that “You can’t step into the same river twice,” Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together invites us to embrace our interconnectedness, celebrate our differences, and creatively engage with the ebbs and flows of our profession. 

The deadline for proposals is Monday, September 14, 2026 at 11:59pm UTC.

The Conference Program Committee invites librarians and library professionals, archivists, curators, museum professionals, visual resources specialists, publishers, educators, artists, designers, architects, students, and scholars to propose papers, sessions, workshops, and speakers that reflect the theme Confluence as it relates to the practice of art information and scholarship. The committee also encourages submissions that stretch the bounds of traditional conference scholarship in terms of format and delivery.

Conference registration and attendance are mandatory for all presenters.

In addition to the topics listed below, we encourage proposals that explore Confluence. Examples could include: GLAM collaborations, cross-cultural knowledge creation, integrated collection systems, consortial art libraries and collaborative stewardship, community partnerships, librarian-faculty collaborations, donor relations, and other ways that networks of knowledge, and knowledge workers, intersect.

The program committee encourages submissions that include, but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Alternative Publications, Artists’ Books, Comics, Zines, etc.
  • Archives, Rare Books, and Special Collections
  • Censorship of information and Resources
  • Collection Development and Management
  • Critical Librarianship
  • Digital Humanities and Digital Scholarship
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
  • Fair Use and Copyright Issues
  • Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Field of Librarianship
  • Innovations in Cataloguing
  • Leadership, Mentoring, Management, and Professional Development
  • New approaches to Providing Reference Services
  • Social Justice, Advocacy, Anti-Racism, Public Policy, and Activism
  • Teaching and Pedagogical Practice
  • User Experience
  • Visual Literacy, Critical Information Literacy, Media Literacy

Types of Submissions

PAPERS: An individual paper presentation, potentially addressing new research, a case study, or an innovative idea with a total time of 15-20 minutes. Presentations provide attendees with new tools, strategies, or inspiration that they can apply in their own practice. The Conference Program Co-Chairs and the Conference Program Committee will group individual presentations into paper panels with a common topic or theme, which will run from 60 to 90 minutes, including a Q&A.

LIGHTNING TALKS: A short individual presentation (5-10 minutes maximum) addressing a topic that is particularly timely or specific in scope. Lightning talks provide attendees the opportunity to hear about a range of innovative projects or ideas from a broad and varied group of colleagues in a short amount of time. Lightning talks will be grouped into sessions that may or may not be themed. Lightning talk sessions will be 60 minutes, including a Q&A.

PRE-COORDINATED PANELS: A pre-coordinated session of up to 4 presenters with a moderator addressing a common topic or theme with a total time of 60-90 minutes, including a Q&A. Panels provide attendees with multiple views/strategies on a single topical area, a comparison of tools or methods, or a number of case studies on related topics. It is not necessary to identify all potential presenters before submitting. Naming a moderator, who will advocate for and develop the session, is required. The moderator may be one of the presenters or may serve only as the moderator. 

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS: Small, informal group discussions around a common theme or issue. In the abstract field, facilitators should identify a topic and submit at least three potential questions that will keep the discussion moving. Roundtable speakers should also be prepared to take questions from the audience. Discussions are 60 minutes in length.

WORKSHOPS: An opportunity to teach and explore current and emerging topics in an intimate atmosphere. Workshops encourage a focused, engaging experience led by experts who combine presentation, active learning, collaboration, and discussion. They may last 90 to 180 minutes.

SPEAKER SUGGESTIONS & PLENARIES: A plenary may be a prepared paper or discussion panel of significant importance to the profession. Plenaries are 60-90 minutes in length. No other meetings, sessions, etc. are scheduled during plenaries. The content of plenaries should be current and of broad interest to attendees. Non-member speakers who will speak on a significant topic of interest to ARLIS/NA members may be suggested here.

Additional Details

The following fields will be used by the programming committee to review proposals. In addition, some non-personally identifiable demographic information will be used by the reviewers to ensure that the papers, lightning talks, workshops, and invited speakers are inclusive and diverse, both in the voices present and content delivered.

WORD LIMIT: All proposal abstracts are limited to 500 words or fewer.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: You’ll be asked to list 2-3 learning objectives, takeaways, or goals for your proposal.

TOPICS: You’ll be asked to select 2 to 5 topics relevant to your session.

AUDIENCES: You’ll be asked to pick up to 5 target audiences for your session.

DEIA-AR: You will be asked if your presentation addresses issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and/or anti-racism. The committee is particularly interested in seeing papers and sessions that include attention to DEIA-AR.

YEARS IN PROFESSION (optional): You’ll be asked to select how long you have been working in the field.

FIRST TIME PRESENTER (optional): You’ll be asked if this would be your first time presenting at an ARLIS/NA conference.

SELF-IDENTIFICATION (optional): You’ll be asked if you are a member of a historically under-represented group. This information will only be used to help us coordinate diverse sessions and is not required to propose a paper or panel.

How to Submit Proposals

The review of proposals is a blind peer review process. You must anonymize your proposal description. All personal or institutional names must be removed from the description and learning objectives (however, these details must remain in other fields of the form), and may be replaced by terms such as “presenter,” “author,” or “speaker”, or in the case of institutions, terms such as “large academic library,” “small museum library,” etc. Non-anonymized proposals may be ineligible.

Submit your proposals via Sched: https://cfp.sched.com/speaker/dJoatUIcMG/event

The deadline is Monday, September 14, 2026 11:59pm UTC.

Funding Opportunities

Prospective presenters interested in funding and support for conference attendance are encouraged to apply to the Society’s Conference Attendance and Travel Awards or to contact their local ARLIS/NA Chapter about the availability of additional awards.

The call for posters, moderators, and other meeting proposals will be announced

later this year.

Please direct any questions to Program Co-chairs:

Stefanie Hilles, Miami University, hillessa@miamioh.edu

Stephanie Kays, Denison University, kayss@denison.edu

CFP: Library History Seminar XV

The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce our 15th Library History Seminar (LHS) and we’d like to offer you an opportunity to share your research!

LHS XV conference will take place virtually December 3-5, 2026. The theme is “A History of Modern Libraries, Warts and All: Development, Organization, and Transformation.” The conference will be low-cost or no-cost for attendees. 

The American Library Association is celebrating its 150th year in 2026 and LHS XV seeks to explore all aspects  of the history of modern libraries and librarianship in North America and beyond. “Libraries” is defined broadly and includes public, academic, school and special libraries, library organizations (state, national, and international).  We especially welcome voices from marginalized and non-mainstream communities, and critical examinations of the history of modern libraries/librarianship.  

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • History of ALA or other modern library organizations 
  • History of individual libraries in the modern era
  • Examination of decisions and actions affecting the profession
  • Librarians who have contributed to the development of modern libraries and librarianship
  • Developments in public and technical services
  • Cooperation and collaboration in the modern library world
  • Development of the modern literature of librarianship

We are seeking proposals for individual papers (15 minutes) or organized panels (1 hour). 

Submissions are due by September 4 2026, 11:59pm EST. Please submit your proposal below. 

Please contact Ellen Pozzi at ellen.pozzi@gmail.com with any questions.

Proposal form

2027 ICMS Sponsored Session Call for Papers: “Manuscript Collecting in North America”

On behalf of Digital Scriptorium and the Peripheral Manuscripts Project, see the following CFP for a sponsored session at the 2027 International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 13-15, 2027.

Manuscript Collecting in North America: Considering the Means, Motives, and Opportunities

Sponsored by Digital Scriptorium and the Peripheral Manuscripts Project

Regional and national efforts have recently increased the discoverability of the numerous medieval manuscript holdings found in North American collections. Such projects have made more–and better–data available about North American manuscripts, revealing complex histories of manuscript circulation on this continent. We invite papers that consider the many motivations that drove collectors, booksellers, and institutions to acquire and trade manuscripts, including economic, political, and social factors relating to the dispersal of libraries and collections in Europe and the Middle East, and the less savory aspects of the trade such as book-breaking, theft, and graft.

Proposals are due September 15, 2026, and can be submitted here.

CFP: Between Big Data and Obsolescence: Born-Digital Sources, Contemporary History, and the Politics of Access

Ninth Conference on Digital History and Digital Humanities
Location: German Historical Institute Washington
Date: March 18–19, 2027
Deadline for Submissions: September 6, 2026

Co-convened with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), the Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, the Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim, and NFDI4Memory.

Digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the production, circulation, preservation, management, and interpretation of historical sources. Contemporary history is increasingly confronted with sources that are not simply digitized versions of analog records, but born-digital traces: emails, databases, social media posts, websites, digital images, messaging apps, spreadsheets, geodata, audiovisual files, code, metadata, and AI-generated content. These sources are unstable, fragile, platform-dependent, and often inaccessible both for research and even to the institutions that initially produced them. At the same time, they constitute crucial evidence for political, social, cultural, legal, and economic histories of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This conference takes the problem of born-digital sources as a central challenge for contemporary history and digital history alike. It asks how historians, archivists, information scientists, legal scholars, and digital humanities practitioners can work together to ensure that born-digital materials will be accessible as sources for research, while also developing tools and strategies that support their critical analysis.

One of the starting points for this conference in the German context is the position paper “NFDI4Memory: Damit wir auch zukünftig eine Vergangenheit haben” (Ensuring that the Future Has a Past). The authors argue for much closer cooperation between archival science and historical research in response to the changing conditions of the production of historical evidence. The mass availability of cataloging and metadata, they note, produces volumes of information that humans can no longer productively oversee, requiring new digital tools for enrichment, standardization, and analysis. Such tools are already being adopted in both archives and research communities. 

Comparative perspectives reveal that the preservation of born-digital records depends on distinct professional cultures, legal frameworks, and institutional responsibilities. In the United States, for example, records management, including electronic records management, has long served as an important bridge between administrators, archivists, and, potentially, historians. For government records, standards are shaped by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including guidelines for official social media records, as well as by state archives. Private and non-governmental organizations often develop their own practices, resulting in a more uneven landscape of preservation, access, and accountability. Yet even where standards exist, major challenges remain: records managers may lack enforcement authority; institutions may lack funding, staffing, and technical infrastructures; and political priorities may undermine commitments to transparency and preservation. These problems point to broader international differences in how born-digital records are managed, preserved, and made available as future historical evidence. For more than two decades, scholars and practitioners have warned that overcoming divides between archivists, historians, records managers, and computer scientists is essential if we are to avoid the losses associated with a possible “digital dark age,” as Roy Rosenzweig already argued in 2003.

The challenges become even more urgent when we shift our focus from archives to producers of born-digital records, including government agencies, legislative bodies, and courts. Even more complex are challenges for institutions not subject to federal and state electronic records management requirements and guidelines, such as political parties, corporations, NGOs, and media organizations. Common problems include a lack of guidelines, a lack of enforcement abilities, a lack of staffing and training, and a lack of affordable platforms and infrastructures. Records disappear in deletion routines, remain locked in proprietary systems, or become inaccessible due to changing software environments, legal restrictions, platform obsolescence, or phaseouts. Whether in democratic or in authoritarian regimes, political decisions and developments influence whether governments are committed to ensuring transparency, oversight, and accountability governed by processes accountable to the public, or whether electronic traces of evidence may be repressed or destroyed. 

Born-digital records are therefore not merely a technical or archival concern. They are central to public accountability, democratic transparency, and the very possibility of writing contemporary history. Or as Sarah Weicksel, Executive Director of the American Historical Association (AHA), recently observed in an interview with the Max Weber Foundation’s “Weltweit vor Ort”: “Part of the question, then, is whether the American public and researchers from around the world will have access to a full and complete accounting of governmental actions and records, both through the executive branch and throughout other branches of government.”

The transformation process requires new skills and offers new opportunities for researchers. Traditional methods and working practices must expand, and new research questions and opportunities are emerging. The advent of born-digital data has given rise to entirely new categories of sources, raising new questions about data management and analytics, as well as enhanced methods of source criticism. Born-digital materials therefore force us to rethink traditional historical and archival training, and disciplinary and professional boundaries between historical scholars, information and data professionals, including archivists, digital humanists, and computer scientists. What does it require to preserve a database, a social media feed, a messaging thread, or a dynamic website? How can historians reconstruct the provenance, integrity, and context of digital records? What forms of digital source criticism are needed when documents are produced, modified, enriched, compressed, deleted, or algorithmically reordered by technical systems? How should we treat AI-generated images, texts, videos, and synthetic media as sources of contemporary history? And how can historians respond when politically significant digital records vanish before they ever become archival objects?

Submission Guidelines 

The conference aims to create a forum for sustained exchange between those who preserve born-digital materials and those who interpret them as historical sources. By bringing together archival, methodological, technical, and historiographical perspectives, we seek to ask not only how born-digital records can be saved, but also how they can be made meaningful for contemporary history. We especially welcome contributions that combine methodological reflection with concrete case studies, project presentations, or hands-on approaches.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Digital forensics and born-digital evidence
    How can methods from digital forensics help historians and memory workers identify, preserve, authenticate, and interpret born-digital materials? What can forensic approaches reveal about deleted files, metadata, file systems, version histories, timestamps, or chains of custody? How can such methods be made accessible for historical research without reducing sources to purely technical artifacts?
  • Digital source criticism 
    Born-digital sources require new forms of source criticism. Contributions may address provenance, authenticity, metadata, platform infrastructures, interface effects, algorithmic mediation, software dependencies, and the interpretive challenges of large-scale digital corpora. We are particularly interested in approaches that connect computational methods with hermeneutic interpretation. How can historians critically analyze sources that are too large, dynamic, or complex to be read through conventional methods alone?
  • Working with born-digital governmental sources
    Present your in-progress or finished project based on the aforementioned new types of sources. What institutional, technological, and methodological challenges did you encounter? Are there advantages to the sources’ genuinely digital nature, which is unburdened by the time-consuming and error-prone aspects of retrodigitization?
  • AI-generated content as sources of contemporary history
    Generative AI has rapidly become part of everyday communication, political campaigning, cultural production, journalism, administration, education, and memory work. How should historians approach AI-generated text, images, audio, video, or code as historical sources? What evidentiary status do synthetic media have? How can scholars distinguish, contextualize, and interpret AI-generated materials, especially when provenance is uncertain or deliberately obscured?
  • Democratic fragility, deletion, and political accountability
    Digital records are central to democratic accountability, yet they are also vulnerable to deletion, manipulation, privatization, and selective preservation. We invite papers that examine the disappearance of data by political actors, the fragility of administrative records, the destruction or withholding of digital evidence, and the challenges of documenting political decision-making in digital environments. How can historians, archives, journalists, and civil society organizations respond when records disappear before they can be preserved?
  • Archives, infrastructures, and national differences
    The preservation of born-digital sources depends on legal frameworks, archival mandates, technical infrastructures, institutional cultures, and funding structures. We welcome comparative perspectives on national, regional, and institutional differences in the collection, preservation, and accessibility of born-digital records. How do archives in different countries deal with government records, web archives, social media, email collections, or digital audiovisual materials? What can be learned from transnational comparison?
  • Ethics, law, and data protection
    Born-digital sources raise pressing ethical and legal questions. How can researchers balance public interest, privacy, consent, copyright, data protection, and the right to be forgotten? What responsibilities do historians have when working with personal digital traces, leaked materials, or sensitive administrative data?
  • Access, platforms, and the privatization of historical evidence
    Many born-digital sources are produced on commercial platforms that restrict access to researchers. Social media data, search engine results, messaging apps, and platform moderation records are often unavailable, incomplete, expensive, or legally difficult to obtain. Contributions may address the epistemological and political consequences of restricted data access. What kinds of contemporary history become impossible to write when platform data is inaccessible? What alternative methods, collaborations, or advocacy strategies are available?

We invite proposals in two formats:

  1. Individual presentations of 20 minutes. Papers may present case studies, methodological interventions, archival projects, theoretical reflections, or comparative perspectives.
  2. Workshops of 90 minutes for hands-on presentations of projects, tools, workflows, methods, or skills. Workshops may introduce participants to digital forensic methods, born-digital archival workflows, web archiving, metadata analysis, platform research, AI source criticism, or other practical approaches.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words (introducing state-of-the-art, research questions and objectives), a short biographical note of no more than 150 words, and an indication of the preferred format: workshop or individual presentation. Workshop proposals should also include a brief description of the intended structure and any technical requirements. Please submit your proposal to our conference platform https://app.smartsheet.eu/b/form/019e0327d9be7cc5b158b9b7cab2fc4f by September 6, 2026. 

Registration and Contact Information

Although we favor in-person attendance of participants and presenters, facilities for hybrid participation will be provided with the aim of making the event as inclusive as possible. Accommodations will be arranged and paid for by the conference organizers (for one presenter per paper or workshop). Participants will make their own travel arrangements; funding subsidies for travel are available upon request for selected scholars, especially those who might not otherwise be able to attend the workshop, including junior scholars and scholars from universities with limited resources. For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Conference Committee

  • Daniel Burckhardt, GHI Washington
  • Andreas Fickers, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH)
  • Philipp Gassert, Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim
  • Katharina Hering, GHI Washington
  • Torsten Hiltmann, Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Jana Keck, GHI Washington
  • Atiba Pertilla, GHI Washington
  • Thorsten Wübbena, Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz

Contact Information

For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Contact Email

burckhardt@ghi-dc.org

URL: https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/between-big-data-and-obsolescence-born-digital-sources-contemporary-history-and-the-politics-of-access

CFP: Journal of New Librarianship

The Journal of New Librarianship is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the Spring 2027 issue. We invite submissions where authors reflect upon the last decade of librarianship and critically examine the changes, trends, and challenges of the past and the excitement, innovation, or concerns for the future. We are accepting submissions for Peer-Reviewed Articles, New Generation of Librarianship Column, Innovations in Librarianship Column, and Op-Eds or Essays. Authors who submit for Peer-Review, Op-Eds, and Essays may be asked to review other authors’ submissions, but is not required for submission. 

  • Peer-Reviewed articles: Although longer works may be considered, 3,000–6,000-word manuscripts are most suitable.
  • Columns, Op-Eds, and Essays: 1,500–3,000 words.
    • New Generation of Librarianship Column (1,500 words)
      • This column examines the issues faced by the new generation of librarians, across all fields of librarianship. “New generation” is broadly conceived to include any person who is new to the field, regardless of age, background, etc. Topics could include, but are not limited to: efforts advancing accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion; experiences of marginalized librarians; critical librarianship; international experiences and perspectives; succession planning, hiring, and retention; experiences and impact of early- and second-career librarians who have recently joined the profession. For potential inclusion in the Spring 2027 anniversary series, please consider these themes within the context of the CFP prompt above.
    • Innovations in Librarianship Column (1,500 words)
      • This column seeks authors who wish to share the details of how they have realized these innovations, defined as an “idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” within their own praxis.For potential inclusion in the Spring 2027 anniversary series, please consider these themes within the context of the CFP prompt above.

JoNL is a free, open-access journal committed to equity, diversity, and plurality of opinions. In addition to making scholarship freely accessible to all readers, the journal publishes works created by authors from all backgrounds, drawn from all types of libraries and information centers. A central aim of the journal is to challenge long-held assumptions within the library and information science (LIS) field. To this end, authors are encouraged to submit works that meaningfully interrogate structures and practices to engender and advance a sense of equity, fairness, and justice within librarianship.

New librarianship commands a call to action and the JoNL provides an outlet that mixes both traditional and emerging forms of scholarly and professional communications that forge innovative paths shared and led by the LIS profession. Our goal is to provide a publishing venue for innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship that extends beyond the narrow scope of existing LIS journals.

JoNL uses an electronic submission and reviews process through OJS. See our website for additional information about the Review Process and our AI Policy. Submissions must be submitted using the preformatted JoNL Manuscript Template.

Key Dates:

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2026

Notification of Acceptance for Peer Review: October 18, 2026

Return of Peer Review manuscripts: November 23, 2026

Submission deadline for revisions: December 13, 2026

Publication: Spring 2027 

Contact:

Claire DL. Dunker, Communications Editor, newlibsjournal@gmail.com

CFP: Women and Cartography from the Middle Ages to the 20th century

SYMPOSIUM at Université Le Havre Normandie — 12–13 March 2027

Organisation : Comité Français de Cartographie, Université Le Havre Normandie (Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences), Identités et Cultures Research Group, Le Havre Heritage Library

In partnership with : Institut universitaire de France, Bibliothèque nationale de France, EPHE (Histara), CNRS (Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris)

RATIONALE

This conference sets out to re-examine the place of women in the making, circulation, and reception of cartographic knowledge up to the 20th century, taking into account the various forms their participation took, the documentary biases inherent in the sources, and contemporary methodological issues. It is part of the broader field of the history of women in science and of the study of the gendered construction of knowledge.

An emerging field of research

While historiography has taken an interest in women in science since before the 1970s, and while the history of women and travel has been regularly explored, their role in cartography and their interest in maps only began to be studied around the turn of the 2000s, nearly thirty years later. This pioneering work emerged mainly in the English-speaking world (Shefrin, 1999; Hudson, Ritzlin, 2000; Dando, 2018, 2024; Tyner, 1997; 1999; 2001) and in Italy (Rossi, 2005). Christine Petto’s survey article “Women and Cartography” (2020) opened up more avenues than it closed.

This historiographical lag is even more pronounced in French scholarship. While French research has taken an interest in women cartographers of the 20th century (Robic, 1997, 2009), as well as in the important role they played in research institutions and libraries (Ginsburger, 2015; Ginsburger, Robic, 2017; Antonutti, 2020), studies of their place in the construction of cartographic knowledge before the 20th century remain too rare.

A systemic invisibilisation

As in other scientific fields, several factors combine to render women’s involvement in geography and cartography invisible. Women are difficult to trace in the archives because of their limited legal existence. Conventions of the time denied their competence or consigned them to anonymity out of modesty. Their identity dissolves into initials in place of a full name, or into the designation “widow,” which presents them as mere continuators of their husband’s work.

Women are also excluded from the historiography of authorial recognition in cartography because of a paradoxical requirement: complete mastery of the full range of skills involved in cartographic production (intellectual design, drawing, engraving). Yet almost no geographer possesses such total mastery, since cartographic production is, by its very nature, collaborative work. Thus, when a woman conceives a map intellectually without engraving it herself (the Carte de Tendre by Madeleine de Scudéry), present-day critics attribute authorship to the male engraver (François Chauveau). Conversely, women engravers are confined to the status of mere executants.

RESEARCH THEMES

Theme 1 – Trajectories and output of women cartographers

The conference will focus on women cartographers by:

  • Tracing individual trajectories, without setting aside the role of widows in the continuity of family workshops, which deserves particular attention. While widows generally ran their late husband’s workshop for only a limited period (Barker, 1997, pp. 90–92), there are several notable exceptions, such as Mary Senex, who ran the workshop for fifteen years after her husband’s death, as did Marie Desmaretz, widow of Duval, Geneviève Hourlier, widow of Antoine de Fer, and Marie Darbisse, widow of Guillaume Delisle, to name just a few examples.
  • Establishing the conditions of access to cartographic practice and the professional and family networks drawn upon.
  • Examining the possible specificities of their output: a preference for certain cartographic forms such as allegorical or thematic maps (Carte de Tendre, the map by Marie Le Masson Le Golft, the work of the astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute), or “informal” maps produced in a playful or educational context.

Theme 2 – The “little hands” of cartography

Following the recent work of Françoise Waquet (2015, 2022) on the “little hands” of science, and of Delphine Gardey on women’s clerical work (2001), this conference could be an occasion to bring to light the largely unexplored, invisible work of women: informants, copyists, draughtswomen, engravers, illuminators, secretaries, and workshop hands. This effort has already been made for the first half of the 20th century (Swab, 2025), but it could equally be pursued for earlier periods, since women can sometimes be identified in depictions of workshops.

Theme 3 – Women readers and the reception of maps

The question of women as readers of maps — whether elite women, schoolmistresses, booksellers, schoolgirls, or students — opens up a particularly fertile field of investigation. On what occasions did these women encounter maps? On what media? And through what modes of reading?

This question also raises the issue of education, since reading a map presupposes prior training, and thus invites attention to the full range of women’s educational practices connected with maps. 

Finally, Christine Petto also points to periodicals and advertising aimed at women, as well as playful uses of maps: games, novels, embroidered maps, among other forms of appropriation. As an example, the map of Île de France (present-day Mauritius) included in the novel Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a major publishing success of the late 18th century with a largely female readership, illustrates this still under-explored dimension of the reception of maps.

By adopting a broad chronological framework, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, the conference is open to all geographical areas. It is aimed at researchers in history, history of science, art history, literature, geography, and related disciplines.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Abstracts of c. 300 words, together with a short biographical note, should be submitted by 30 September 2026 to the following address: lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr

The selection committee will meet in early October and will announce the results of the call for papers no later than the second half of October.

The conference will take place on 12–13 March 2027 at Université Le Havre Normandie. A presentation of the heritage collections of the Le Havre municipal library is also planned.

Selected papers will be considered for publication in an issue of the journal of the Comité français de cartographie, Cartes & Géomatique, during 2028.

WORKS CITED AND SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antonutti, Isabelle (ed.). 2020. Figures de bibliothécaires. Villeurbanne: Presses de l’Enssib, series “Papiers.” (see entry for Myriam Foncin)

Baigent, Elizabeth. 2025. “‘Octavia Always Enjoyed a Map’: Octavia Hill, Maps, and Victorian Women Reformers.” The Cartographic Journal 62 (3–4): 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2025.2627791

Barker, Hannah. 1997. “Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution: Female Involvement in the English Printing Trades, c. 1700–1840.” In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, 81–100. London: Longman.

Costa, Shelley. 2002. “The Ladies’ Diary: Gender, Mathematics, and Civil Society in Early-Eighteenth-Century England.” Osiris, 2nd series, 17: 49–73.

Dando, Christine E. 2018. Women and Cartography in the Progressive Era. London/New York: Routledge, series “Studies in Historical Geography.” New edition in 2024.

Findlen, Paula. 1995. “Translating the New Science: Women and the Circulation of Knowledge in Enlightenment Italy.” Configurations 3: 167–206.

Gardey, Delphine. 2001. La Dactylographe et l’expéditionnaire. Histoire des employés de bureau, 1890–1930. Paris: Belin, series “Modernités.”

Ginsburger, Nicolas. 2015. “Les premières géographes universitaires en France: enquête sur les débuts d’une féminisation disciplinaire (1913–1928).” Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.

Ginsburger, Nicolas, and Marie-Claire Robic. 2017. “Portrait en groupe de femmes-géographes. La féminisation du champ disciplinaire au milieu du XXe siècle, entre effets de contexte et de structure (1938–1960).” Annales de géographie, 2017/1.

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Contact Information

Lucile Haguet, librarian at the Bibliothèque municipale du Havre, lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr

Catherine Hofmann, map curator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr

Contact Email

catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr

URL

https://cartogallica.hypotheses.org

CFP: 2026 Research Symposium: Books and Silence, 26–27 November

The Centre for the Book is pleased to announce that the theme of this year’s symposium is “Books and Silence.” Find more information at https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/cfb/2026-research-symposium-books-and-silence-26-27-november/ 

In today’s hurried world, noise is everywhere.  Do you want the chance to have silence to contemplate, reflect, and escape, with your best friend: the book? It is time to pen your paper on “Books and Silence.”

“Books and Silence” might suggest an exploration of deep reading, the value of uninterrupted contemplation in environments of disruption and hyper-connection, or the political or cultural implications of censorship.  The theme can cover everything from the quiet sanctuary of traditional libraries to the amplification of marginalized voices.  Presentations might consider:

The literary and psychological experience of books and reading

  • Exploring the lost art of uninterrupted reading and how stepping away from digital distractions restores cognitive focus.
  • Questioning how audio books do or do not fit within such a paradigm of reading.
  • Analysing how authors utilize ‘silence’—what characters leave unsaid or what is omitted from the narrative—to build suspense, express complex grief, and reveal hidden truths.
  • Focusing on silent (wordless or visual) picture books and how they transcend language and cultural barriers to spark communication.

The cultural and social roles of books and libraries

  • The examination of the traditional no-talk ‘shoosh’ library to the modern hub of books and bean bags and social spaces. The changing nature of these sanctuaries.
  • Censorship and anti-censorship: the silencing or amplification of ideas and thoughts; the fight against book bans and the suppression of marginalized or controversial ideas.

The philosophy of books and how readers interact with them

  • Combatting noise, anxiety and constant over-stimulation of the wired life, with mindfulness and quiet engagement with words and ideas.
  • The value of physical books and un-networked experience
  • How the physical, deliberate silence around reading cultivates an active resistance against machine culture – social, institutional, political, commercial and ideological.

We would welcome interdisciplinary contributions from e.g., Music, Psychology, Theology, Education, or other disciplines.

Suggestions for panels are also welcome.

Deadline

Please send through your abstract of 250 words by 1 September 2026, by email to: books@otago.ac.nz

Date: November 26-27

Plenary address (speaker TBA), Thursday 26 Nov. – Dunningham Suite, City Library Dunedin

All day symposium: Friday 27 November – University of Otago (Arts Building, Burns 2 lecture theatre)

Selection of the papers for the Symposium programme will start after 1 September, and authors will be informed of their successful inclusion mid-September.

The conference will be free to attend, though registration will be required to ensure adequate catering for afternoon tea.  The Friday conference presentations will be recorded and made available afterward for viewing by those who register for access, but there will be no livestream or interactive connections on the day of the symposium.

Please contact any of us if you have any further queries:

CFP: ICMS Kalamazoo Session “Introducing Library and Archival Research (A Roundtable)”

The International Society of Medievalist Librarians seeks speakers to join a *hybrid* roundtable at the International Congress on Medieval Studies taking place May 13-15, 2027, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI.

Session Title: Introducing Library and Archival Research (A Roundtable)

Session Description: Visiting libraries and archives is an important part of the research process, but it can be daunting to do this for the first time. How do you locate suitable primary source materials in catalogs and other databases? How do you set up a research appointment? How do you make the most of an on-site visit? What if you need additional information after you return home? A panel of librarians, archivists, and researchers both new and experienced will answer these important questions and more for students, early career scholars, and anyone embarking on a new research journey.

We welcome contributions from established and emerging professionals engaged in the field of medieval studies considered broadly. This includes librarians, archivists, and other cultural heritage professionals as well as teaching faculty, students, and independent researchers. Each chosen speaker will have approximately 5 minutes to introduce themselves and their experience conducting and/or facilitating research, with the preponderance of time in the session spent responding to questions from attendees about the research process.

Anyone interested must submit through the conference portal ([https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8653](https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8653)). For your abstract, please write a brief description of your perspective on the topic of library research and include an indication of your anticipated attendance modality (in person, virtual, or undecided). Proposals are due by Tuesday, September 15th. You may contact Allie McCormack ([allie.mccormack@utah.edu](mailto:allie.mccormack@utah.edu)) with any questions.

Call for Reviewers: October Issue Multimedia & Technology Reviews

ARLIS/NA Multimedia & Technology Reviews Co-editors seek volunteers to author reviews for the October 2026 issue. To volunteer, choose a resource from the list below and complete our Reviewer Interest form (https://forms.gle/viaCJvMwFUydCN9S8) by Wednesday, July 29th.

Initial draft submissions are due Monday, August 31st.

Contributing to ARLIS/NA Multimedia & Technology Reviews is a great opportunity to get involved with the Society, learn about interesting new resources, and help shape the publication. Please read
the complete review guidelines and direct comments and questions about the reviews to arlisna.mtr@gmail.com.

Know of a resource we should review? Submit ideas here.

Submitted by ARLIS/NA Multimedia & Technology Reviews Co-editors:

Matthew Garklavs
Bridget O’Keefe
Abigail Walker

Resources for Review:

We seek reviewers for the following resources. The snippets below are taken
from each resource’s web page and are not necessarily the opinions of the
M&T Reviews Co-Editors.

Americana
The John Carter Brown Library is at once a physical site and a digital space. Americana is the digital door to the library, named for the word chiseled in the limestone above the front door of the library’s 1904 building. The JCB’s collection of books, maps, prints and more, all focused on the early Americas, reside both in the building on George Street, at the corner of the campus green at Brown University, and in this digital location.

Aracne

Aracne is a digital tool that facilitates the analysis of the canvases that artists used for their paintings. This software precisely and objectively characterises fabrics so that paintings can be compared and original formats and added layers studied.

Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals with Full Text

Produced in collaboration with the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals with Full Text contains full-text journal articles on architecture and design, covering subjects such as the history and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, historic preservation, and interior design. (MTR editors can arrange for temporary access to this subscription-based resource).

Black Architects Archive

The Black Architects Archive traces the impact of Black creative, intellectual, and physical labor on shaping the built environment, and does so by revealing both the breadth and depth of Black spatial practice in the Americas. It includes the work of Black architects, builders, contractors, engineers, landscape designers, draftsmen and women, mapmakers, and other built environment practitioners working across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The aim of the archive is to recover the historical impact that Black people have had on shaping the towns, cities, and landscapes of the Americas while also making this information publicly available as a resource for local history.

Design Card Decks for Ideation and Exploration

The Design Card Decks for Ideation and Exploration Web Archive is curated by librarians at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation. Card decks are used in design fields as a game-based methodology for ideation and stakeholder participatory collaboration. The purposes of decks vary; some are used for brainstorming new products and services while others are scenario-based, prompting designers to consider how their products or services may be incorporated into different communities. They function both as a tool for design speculation and as a set of illustrations that visualize design thinking. This archive preserves websites associated with these decks; as design thinking becomes popular in many disciplines, from business to science, the potential user groups for these tools greatly expands outside traditional
design fields.

Digital Scriptorium

Digital Scriptorium (DS) is a growing consortium of North American institutions with collections of global premodern manuscripts. DS is dedicated to building an online national union catalog built on Linked Open Data technologies and practices for premodern manuscripts in US collections.

International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA)

IDEA is harnessing the power of Linked OpenData (LOD) to reassemble and re-contextualize archaeological informationrelated to Dura-Europos. Unique circumstances of preservation makeDura-Europos a rare archaeological resource. The city provides unparalleledglimpses into a multicultural religious life, the running of a militarygarrison, and domestic coexistence of different ethnic groups, and haspreserved hundreds of organic materials that survive in the archaeologicalrecord from few other places. But recognition as a singular resource forinformation about the ancient past has come at a price. Excavationsinvolving multiple institutional partners and well-intentioned efforts toshare-out access to physical objects from Dura has led to the dispersal ofthe site’s artifacts and other archival materials into collections acrossthe world. We’re using cutting-edge technology to power a new searchfeature for Dura-Europos archaeological data and archival content as ameans to mitigate this physical dispersal and improve access to informationacross disciplinary and linguistic silos for the (global) public good.

Odeuropa

Odeuropa is a European research project which bundlesexpertise in sensory mining and olfactory heritage. We develop novelmethods to collect information about smell from (digital) text and imagecollections. Our goal is to show that critically engaging our sense ofsmell and our scent heritage is an important and a viable means forconnecting and promoting Europe’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

Reg-Arts : the register of enrolments at Beaux-Arts de Paris from 1813 to 1968

Created by threeinstitutions, the Beaux-Arts de Paris, the INHA and the CNRS, the Reg-Artsdatabase provides access to the Beaux-Arts de Paris enrolment registers of more than 12,000 student painters, sculptors and engravers between 1813 and1 968. Reg-Arts provides a central resource for art history, enabling researchers, descendants, museums and galleries to explore the data.

Remodeled Getty Provenance Index and Tracing Art interactive

https://www.getty.edu/research/provenance/https://www.getty.edu/tracingart/
Arches is a Getty-supported, open-source database platform hosting Getty Provenance Index records that have been transformed into linked open data resources. By treating Provenance Index records as a structured web of related resources, Arches enhances accessibility and discoverability, surfaces existing connections within Getty Provenance Index resources, enables linkages with other cultural heritage datasets, and provides powerful federated search and data visualization tools. These enhancements
make provenance research more efficient and adaptable to evolving scholarly needs.

Trois Crayons Museum Forum

The Trois Crayons Museum Forum is aninnovative, free-to-use digital platform dedicated to deepening theunderstanding of pre-modern drawings in public collections. Join a globalnetwork of art historians, curators, and enthusiasts to collaborativelyexchange ideas, discuss, and re-examine both familiar works and overlookedsheets – shedding new light on old questions and bringing lesser-seendrawings into focus.

VisColl

VisColl is a system for building models of the physical collation of manuscripts, and then visualizing them in various ways. The core of VisColl is the data model, which defines the structure of individual manuscripts and which can be built and visualized by different tools.

CFP: LIDA Biennial International Conference

Conference Themes: Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Institutional Response Emotion and Creativity

Šibenik, Croatia, 19-21 May 2027

Web site: http://lida.ffos.hr/ Email: lida@unizd.hr

Libraries and Information Institutions in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference addresses the changing and challenging environment for libraries and information systems and services in the digital world. LIDA is an international biennial conference that brings together researchers, educators, students, practitioners, and developers from around the world in a forum for sharing ideas, discussions, and learning taking place in Croatia.

The LIDA 2027 conference will be held in Šibenik, a historic town included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List and one of the oldest Croatian self-governing cities on the Adriatic coast.

The LIDA 2027 conference explores questions prompted by the major transformations of memory institutions in the age of artificial intelligence with two inter-related themes: “Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Institutional Response” and “Emotion and Creativity.” In the age of artificial intelligence, technological, philosophical, and humanistic values are becoming intertwined. This presents new opportunities and challenges for memory institutions while encouraging a deeper understanding of the role of emotion and creativity in designing spaces for reflection on, and even counter-response to, artificial intelligence.

Submission of extended abstracts for papers, posters, workshops, panels, other innovative/alternative types of contribution: 10 October 2026 (Notification of acceptance: 1 December 2026)

Read the full call for papers.