Tag: allied professions

Call for Book Chapters: Memory Studies – An Anthology of Perspectives

Chapter proposals are invited for a volume on contemporary memory and literary studies edited by Dr. D. Sudha Rani ( VNRVJIET ), Dr. Rachel Irdaya Raj ( VNRVJIET ), Dr.Shashibhusan Nayak (GP Nayagarh& MLA).

Memory studies is an increasingly diverse, interdisciplinary, and dynamic field of knowledge that spans multiple disciplines. Sociologists, psychologists, literary critics, media, cultural studies scholars, and natural and applied scientists have been exploring the concepts and application of memory to evolve a theoretical, conceptual, and methodological framework to investigate this emerging field of study. Memory—personal, collective, cultural—is crucial to the formation, conservation, and preservation of the identity of an individual, community, society, and nation. The act of remembering involves narration, and storytelling is a form of storing. As narration moves from oral, written, and visual records to the digital, it becomes imperative to understand the interface between and among the human and the non-human, digital and analog, and its impact on memory and its narrativization.

The explosion of technology allows us to know what we need to know and preserve what we want our future generations to know. To study and document certain forms of knowledge that are crucial to defining who we are, this interdisciplinary edited collection aims to bring together researchers, academics, technologists, corporates, and students to discuss, debate, and understand the various storytelling strategies adopted by different communities, regions, and nations to record and preserve their identities and collective memories. Since technology has assumed a vital role in this endeavor, it is necessary to assess the impact of technology on both the content and form of memory and its narration. The edited collection attempts to understand how the past, present, and future are formed, framed, mediated, and remediated through various forms of storytelling. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological approaches offered by literary, cultural, and media studies, history, sociology, psychology, as well as science and technology, this edited collection hopes to investigate the artistic representations of languages, communities, regions, and nations in oral histories, life writings, testimonies, and fictional and nonfictional narratives. The edited collection would examine issues related to memory, identity, representation, and narrativization and the impact of digital technology on memory studies and storytelling.

The edited collection invites papers on the following themes but is not limited to:

• Memory studies—theories and praxis

• Modes and methods of storytelling—of languages, communities, nations, and regions

• Impact of digital technologies on memory and memory studies

• Language, literature, and memory

• Interdisciplinarity and intersectionality of memory and memory studies.

• Memory and oral history

• Memory and life writing

• Memory and archive

• Memory and erasure

• Memory and marginality

• Memory and textuality

• Memory, cognition, and critical theory

• Memory and the Medium of fiction

• Memory and (mis)representation

• Memory and production of identities

Submissions

Abstracts of about 200 words, along with up to six keywords, a 50-word bio-note, institutional affiliation, and contact details, should be emailed by 30 July 2023 to shashienglish@gmail.com as a single MS Word document attachment.

Chapter requirements: A chapter should be max. Eight thousand words, including footnotes and bibliography adhering to the MLA 9th edition.

Important Dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 July 2023

Abstract selection notification: 30 August 2023

Complete Paper Submission: 30 October 2023

Contact :

Dr. Shashibhusan Nayak

MLA Bibliography Fellow

email: shashienglish@gmail.com

CFP: Journal of Open Humanities Data

Call for Papers for 2023

The Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) features peer-reviewed publications describing humanities research objects with high potential for reuse. These might include curated resources like (annotated) linguistic corpora, ontologies, and lexicons, as well as databases, maps, atlases, linked data objects, and other data sets created with qualitative, quantitative, or computational methods, including large language model prompts and prompt engineering strategies.

We are currently inviting submissions of two varieties:

  1. Short data papers contain a concise description of a humanities research object with high reuse potential. These are short (1,000 words) highly structured narratives. A data paper does not replace a traditional research article, but rather complements it.
  2. Full length research papers discuss and illustrate methods, challenges, and limitations in humanities research data creation, collection, management, access, processing, or analysis. These are intended to be longer narratives (3,000 – 5,000 words), which give authors the ability to contribute to a broader discussion regarding the creation of research objects or methods.

Humanities subjects of interest to the JOHD include, but are not limited to Art History, Classics, History, Library Science, Linguistics, Literature, Media Studies, Modern Languages, Music and musicology, Philosophy, Religious Studies, etc. Research that crosses one or more of these traditional disciplinary boundaries is highly encouraged. Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. More information about the submission process, editorial policies and archiving is available on the journal’s web pages.

Submissions are still open for our special collection, Humanities Data in the Time of COVID-19. This collection includes data papers that span various areas of enquiry about the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the Humanities. Data from this period have far-reaching and impactful reuse potential, so we encourage you to share your data by submitting to this growing collection. JOHD provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

We accept online submissions via our journal website. See Author Guidelines for further information. Alternatively, please contact the editor if you are unsure as to whether your research is suitable for submission to the journal.

Authors remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons licence agreement.

CFP: Writing Artifacts (Edited Collection)

Call for Proposals: Writing Artifacts 
Co-Edited by Cydney Alexis and Hannah J. Rule

In our first edited collection The Material Culture of Writing (2022), we call for others to join us in addressing a gap in writing studies: scholarship on the histories and uses of writing artifacts that reveal the material lives of those who work with them. This CFP extends that effort. For this edited collection titled Writing Artifacts, we invite scholars in writing studies and material culture studies, as well as those across disciplines who study writing or writing artifacts, to help us build a rich archive of the objects and possessions that matter to the study and practice of writing–broadly construed. 

What is a writing artifact? For the purposes of this collection, we mean any material thing taken up in acts of writing: tools, implements, possessions, objects–material and immaterial (such as digital objects)–that can teach us about writers and writing. Any mundane human thing can be an artifact when we approach it as worthy of study. Artifacts might be one writer’s personal possessions or heirlooms or those that communities rely on to achieve communal tasks or goals. They could be small objects or large ones, artifacts that uncover the histories of marginalized groups, forgotten or lost objects, or writing tools that we know little about, but about which we want to know more. We are interested in range, from a nineteenth-century “secretaire” desk to the library card, the writing on which could be used to trace sociomaterial inequities across communities. By writing, we signal both alphabetic scribal acts and acts of multimodal, symbolic meaning-making. Our hope is to see the lives, writing histories, and writing practices of everyday people reflected in the artifacts documented in this volume. 

To help writers and scholars in diverse disciplines and from diverse professional writing backgrounds envision topics, we offer the following non-exhaustive list of potential focal objects: 

  • An heirloom, historical artifact, or object in your writing practice or home that you’re curious about researching 
  • Objects that have undergone “shift” in use during the pandemic or other times of flux/crisis 
  • Objects that undergird the writing process, even if they’re not traditional writing “objects” 
  • Sentimental or talismanic objects, those that sustain writing habits 
  • Objects that gatekeep, surveil, regulate, or impede writing  
  • Marginalized objects, ones that traditionally have not been showcased or preserved 
  • Literacy artifacts 
  • Writing identity artifacts 
  • Objects that might not at first glance seem like writing tools, but trigger writing and writing identity performance in public or private 
  • Objects that sustain or tell the stories of members of marginalized communities  
  • Mundane or vernacular objects 
  • Objects relevant to specific disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, or discourse community practices 
  • Objects related to research and lab practices  
  • Medical or health-related writing objects 
  • Workplace objects related to writing practice or production, including workplace sites such as businesses, libraries, and printing presses 
  • Writing and research tools, including AI-created/informed artifacts; coding, citation, and research management software; and revision tools  
  • Any object, really: such as office or desk objects, tools, digital files, good luck charms, art, music, devices, a rolodex, old communication technologies, new communication technologies, dining room tables, a laptop, family heirlooms, thrifted objects, an item housed in your university or workplace archives, hacked or modified objects, photographs that involve writing, quilts, typewriters, and assistive technologies such as screen readers. 

Each shorter form chapter (3,000-5,000 words) in this volume should center on one writing artifact–or related set of them. Our emphasis on shorter pieces is to encourage fresh, new scholarly work–a space to test novel ideas. We hope this CFP generates broad interest and will allow scholars/writers interested in writing objects an opportunity to engage (or re-engage, post-pandemic). 

We encourage work that utilizes varied qualitative and hybrid research methodologies and theoretical frameworks, as long as authors demonstrate a core interest in writing artifacts and the lives of the people who use or rely on them. Methods might include, but are not limited to, life-span interviews, autoethnography, consumer research, narrative, phenomenological approaches, observation and thick description, and historical secondary research. Contributors looking for methodological direction might consider undertaking a version of Prownian analysis, as described by Kenneth Haltman in American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000).  

If the project includes research on human subjects, we ask authors to follow the best practices of the research protocols of their discipline.  

Proposal Submission Guidelines

  • Please submit a proposal by Sunday, September 25, 2023, with:
    • 250-400 word abstract that identifies the artifact(s) you’ll study and the research methods you’ll use. Please include a tentative title for your proposed chapter. We will also accept full chapter draft submissions for consideration, provided authors to edit their work down to the 3,000-5,000 word count. 
    • Your name and short bio with institutional/professional affiliation or writing/work background to provide context for your submission.  
  • Submissions are encouraged from all disciplines and backgrounds. Submissions that highlight the artifacts of marginalized communities and cultures welcomed. 
  • Ideally, authors will engage with material culture and/or consumer research scholarship, and we are happy to assist authors at the proposal or acceptance/revision stages. See list of touchstone work below for possible connections.  
  • We invite a wide range of genres/sub-genres, and favor work that is rich and complex in ideas, but written in a clear prose style that is accessible to a broad audience. 
  • If your project involves human subject research, please indicate the IRB timeline or share the procedure specific to your discipline.  

Touchstone Work 

  • Alexis and Rule, The Material Culture of Writing 
  • Haltman and Prown, American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture 
  • Jules Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method” (Winterthur Portfolio) 
  • Henry Petroski, “Why the Pencil?” (American Scientist) 
  • Laura Micciche, “Writers Have Always Loved Mobile Devices” (The Atlantic) 
  • Henry Glassie, Material Culture 
  • Epp and Price, “The Storied Life of Singularized Objects: Forces of Agency and Network Transformation” (Journal of Consumer Research) 
  • Lesley Bartlett, “Identity Work and Cultural Artefacts in Literacy Learning and Use: A Sociocultural Analysis” (Language and Education) 
  • Gouge and Jones, “Wearables, Wearing, and the Rhetorics that Attend to Them” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly) 
  • Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, Why We Need Things 

Project Timeline 

Deadline for proposal submission: Sunday, September 25, 2023 
Contributors notified of acceptance: Monday, October 30, 2023 
Full chapter submission: Sunday, March 10, 2024 

Please direct all queries and submission to both Cydney Alexis, cydneyalexis [at] gmail [dot] com and Hannah Rule, rulehann [at] gmail [dot] com 

CFP for a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History on ‘Personal documents and ephemera as sources for interdisciplinary Holocaust scholarship’

Personal documents and ephemera as sources for interdisciplinary Holocaust scholarship

Edited by Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh) and Amy Simon (Michigan State University)

Since the 1970s, and proliferating in the 1980s, works of life-writing and of academic scholarship have sought to reconstruct the experience of individuals during persecution, and as refugees in different parts of the world. In the past decade micro-historical research has drawn increasingly on personal documents from the Holocaust. Branching out from works on Holocaust testimony and memoirs, literary scholars have engaged with diaries, letters and other ego-documents, and sociologists, linguists and ethnographers have shown interest in personal archives of families affected by the Holocaust. At the same time, the past two decades have seen a rise in publications of memoirs and other forms of life writing that engages specifically with such sources. Typically, such works proceed from one disciplinary perspective and rarely engage with scholarship working on similar sources but with a different scholarly method. Yet, a conversation of scholars in different disciplines working on the same documentary evidence is still lacking. Volumes such as The Diary: The Epic of Everyday Life models a different approach by bringing together literary and cultural scholars with historians in the exploration of diary writing.

The proposed special issue seeks to facilitate a similar conversation and bring together scholarship on personal documents from the Holocaust. The aim is to develop and test multi- and interdisciplinary work regarding the value of different ways of approaching and interrogating these sources. We expect historians, literary scholars, linguists and translation scholars, historical anthropologists and sociologists among others to contribute to this special issue. We also encourage those working on documents from hitherto unexplored archival collections of Jewish refugees to majority-world locations, to propose contributions.

To this end we are inviting proposals for research articles of 7,000-12,000 words (incl. references and bibliography), annotated translations and research notes. We expect to host two gatherings during the writing process to engage in productive conversation about the  links between topics and cross-disciplinary approaches. The finished articles should act both as stand-alone research papers and model a methodological conversation across the entire special issue suggesting new directions for research in this field.  

Possible themes engaging personal documents and ephemera from the Holocaust could include, but are by no means limited to:

  • Multiple approaches to the same sources to explore gains of multidisciplinary research and opportunities for interdisciplinary work
  • The role of emotions for writing about personal archives
  • The relevance of materiality
  • Space and place in personal documents
  • Gender as an analytical category
  • Connecting micro- with macro-history
  • Language, translation and genre 
  • The value of engaging one collection of documents or a single diary
  • The value of working across a number of collections or different sources
  • Ethical considerations of writing about the lives of ‘private’ individuals 
  • Sociological, anthropological, historical, literary theory arising from engagement with personal documents

​​​​Timeline:

  • 300 word proposal with 100 word bio by 31 August 2023. Please send this to h.holtschneider@ed.ac.uk and simonamy@msu.edu.
  • Notification to submit full article by 30 September 2023.
  • Publication is envisaged by the end of 2025.

Contact Info: 

Dr Hannah Holtschneider, University of Edinburgh, UK

Contact Email: h.holtschneider@ed.ac.uk

URL: https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/hannah-holtschneider

CFP: The Image on the Page: A Study Day Around Illustrated Print Culture 

Concordia University Library, Montréal (Québec), Canada, 13 October 2023 (in-person) 

This study day aims to gather researchers around the subject of the printed image since the 1880s. A significant milestone of this era was the widespread implementation of halftone printing, a photomechanical process that eventually enabled the reproduction of subtle hues and gradients in publications with large-scale print runs. 

With particular attention to material bibliography and production techniques, we seek to better understand how illustrations contribute to the formation of meaning and discourses within different contexts from illustrated newspapers to etiquette manuals, from scientific journals to children’s books. As literacy levels continued to rise throughout the twentieth century, this vast array of publications was directed at increasingly diverse communities of readers whose expectations and needs influenced the development of visual culture in print. In turn, the intimate relationships that played out between image and text significantly shaped people’s impressions of the world around them by collating all manner of leisurely, professional, and political information within the space of the page. 

Straddling the disciplines of literary studies, art history, bibliography, and library sciences, the field of illustrated print culture is a privileged inroad to social history. We are inspired by the foundational work of Richard Benson’s The Printed Picture (MoMA, 2008) as well as recent scholarly interest in vernacular media, such as Sarah Mirseyedi and Gerry Beegan’s important contributions on the development of photomechanical reproduction and the Thierry Gervais-edited volume The “Public” Life of Photographs (The MIT Press, 2016). Heeding the call of rare books specialist Roger Gaskell, who has identified the need to develop a “bibliography of images,” we invite contributions in French and English that address any aspect of mass-produced visual materials as well as the diverse industrial or manual processes that enabled their production. 

Proposals may consider topics such as: 

  • The development, usage, or impact of various print processes. 
  • The importance of the graphic arts, including layout and typography, in the study of visual culture. 
  • The historical significance of a given book, magazine, or other kind of illustrated publication. 
  • Mass-produced works that rely on printed pictorial sequences such as photobooks, comic strips, or photo-novels. 
  • Posters, flyers, postcards and other kinds of ephemera. 
  • The invisible intermediaries: designers, prepress specialists, printers, typographers, etc. 
  • The evolving roles and statuses of author and illustrator/artist. 
  • Readership and reception. 
  • Distribution and publishing networks. 
  • The study of variants in the context of printed pictorial material: seriality, different editions, and the (ir)relevance of the original image. 
  • Approaches to the rapport between text and image in print and their resultant meaning. 
  • The creation and mass-circulation of stereotypes or other visual tropes. 
  • Theoretical or methodological approaches to multimedia artefacts: how to categorize, characterize and interpret hybrid print objects. 
  • The institutional challenges faced by scholars, libraries, and archives alike in collecting, cataloguing, preserving, and making illustrated print culture accessible. 

Proposals for 20 minute papers can be sent to stephanie.hornstein@concordia.ca before 15 July 2023. They should include a title followed by an abstract (200 words max.) and a short biography (100 words max.). 

Contact Info: 

Organizing committee 

Stéphanie Hornstein, PhD candidate, Department of Art History, Concordia University and Concordia Library’s Researcher-in-Residence 2022-2023. 

Michel Hardy-Vallée, PhD (art history), Visiting scholar, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University. 

Contact Email: stephanie.hornstein@concordia.ca

URL: https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#guid=https://library.concordia.ca/about/news/#i28_Apr_2023_11:44:00_EDT

CFP: Visible Designs: The Arts of Race and Capitalism (Symposium)

Call for Papers

 “VISIBLE DESIGNS: The Arts of Race and Capitalism”

 Interdisciplinary Symposium
University of Chicago
October 12-13, 2023

Plenary Panelists: Ashlee Bird (University of Notre Dame), Aston Gonzalez (Salisbury University), Silas Munro (Vermont College of Fine Arts), Kinohi Nishikawa (Princeton University)

We are seeking paper proposals for Visible Designs, a symposium that is bringing together researchers in History, Literature, American Studies, and allied fields (e.g., design studies, art history, others) who are studying the aesthetics of racial capitalism in the United States from the seventeenth century to the present day. Central to our discussion is design as a category for analyzing how people use race to make (and unmake) social lives in spaces of economic production, exchange, consumption, and waste. Our goal is to interrogate the centrality of visual and material culture to better understand how racialized capitalism functions, when it shifts over time, and where it manifests across a multitude of social sites in the American empire.

We welcome proposals for presentations from graduate students, earlier career scholars, and contingent faculty in all areas of the humanities, social science, and the design professions. The conference is organized to foster conversations between established scholars and emerging researchers. Our program will consist of four panels composed of invited faculty and emerging scholars; presenters will be matched with invited faculty according to broad methodological and thematic affinities. We encourage graduate students to propose presentations which reflect ongoing dissertation research. Presenters will be given funding to support travel and accommodations nearby the University of Chicago.

Sponsored by the Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture and supported by the Terra Foundation of American Art, Visible Designs will mark the ten-year anniversary of “Invisible Designs: New Directions in the Study of Race in American Consumer Capitalism,” a conference held at the University of Chicago in October 2013. Whereas our first conference emphasized the “hidden” dimensions of racial discrimination and inequality in the consumer economy, our sequel probes the overt, spectacular, and artful ways that Americans have crafted racial identities, maintained systems of racial domination, and built anti-racist social movements.

Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

  • The social lives of racialized commodities (iconography, furniture, cuisine, clothing, etc.)
  • Racial divisions of labor in craft traditions and artisanal manufacture as well as newer industries of design, advertising, architecture, marketing, and social media
  • The lived experience(s) of technologies, algorithms, and systems of racial inequality
  • Concepts of work, value, matter, energy, and waste in racial discourses and critical race theory
  • The narrative, graphic, and architectural forms that govern the archiving, writing, and curation of histories of racial capitalism
  • The administration of race relations and/or racial conflict in cultural industries and institutions

We invite you to submit a 250-word abstract for 20-minute paper presentations, along with a one-page CV, to conference organizers Chris Dingwall (dingwall@wustl.edu) and Korey Garibaldi (Korey.G.Garibaldi.4@nd.edu) by no later than July 28, 2023. Successful applicants will be informed in early August.

Call for Applicants for EBLIP Journal: Evidence Summaries Writers

Call for Applicants for EBLIP Journal: Evidence Summaries Writers

Journal URL: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/eblip/index.php/EBLIP

EBLIP seeks to add several writers to the Evidence Summaries Team. Evidence summaries are critical appraisal syntheses, which provide analysis regarding the validity and reliability of the methodology used in an original research article. As such, they are a key component of EBLIP to aid readers in making informed decisions in their local practice. Evidence Summaries Team members are required to write two evidence summaries per year, with a two-year commitment to the journal. Evidence Summaries cover all areas of library and information studies, and we encourage applications from information professionals in areas such as school, public, and special libraries, as well as academic settings.


Interested persons should send a cover letter, indicating areas of strength they would bring to the role, and resume/CV as a single PDF file to Fiona Inglis (Associate Editor, Evidence Summaries) at finglis@wlu.ca by July 15, 2023. Applicants who are shortlisted will be asked to submit a sample evidence summary.

*Please note that Evidence Based Library and Information Practice is a non-profit, open access journal and all positions are voluntary and unpaid. The positions are an excellent opportunity for continuing professional development and gaining experience in reviewing and critically appraising library-related research.

**Only those applicants who are selected or shortlisted will be contacted by the Editors.

About the journal:

Published quarterly and hosted by the University of Alberta, this peer-reviewed, open access journal is targeted at all library and information professionals interested in an evidence based model of practice. By facilitating access to librarianship research via original research articles and evidence summaries of relevant research from the library literature, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice enables librarians to practice their profession in an evidence based manner. Please visit the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice web site (https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/eblip/index.php/EBLIP) for further information about the journal.

New/Recent Publications

Books

Ceglio, Clarissa J.. A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work of U.S. Museums. Public History in Historical Perspective Series.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022.

Herman, Ana-Maria. Reconfiguring the Museum: The Politics of Digital Display.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023.

Robert Irwin, ed. Migrant Feelings, Migrant Knowledge: Building a Community Archive.
University of Texas Press, 2022.

Murphy, Brian Michael. We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World
The University of North Carolina Press Publication, 2022.

Articles

Tara Murray Grove, Clara Drummond, J. Adam Clemons, Autumn Johnson. “Engaging with campus and community: Insights from a traveling exhibition.” College and Research Library News 84 no. 6 (2023).

Fogel, T. & Schrire, D., (2023) “Negotiating Tradition Archives in a Community Setting: Sounds of Silence and the Question of Credibility”, Ethnologia Europaea 53(1), 1-23. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.9433

Nick Thieberger. “Doing it for Ourselves: The New Archive Built by and Responsive to the Researcher.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 17 no. 1 (2023).

Sara Diamond. “The Dangers of Disappearance, the Opportunities of Recovery.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 17 no. 1 (2023).

Abigail Hollingsworth, “The role the LGBTQ+ Community Plays in Preserving Their Own History: The Rise of LGBTQIA+ Grassroots Archives.” SLIS Connecting 11, no. 2 (2023)

Reports

Living Wages Art Museum Leaders Confront Persistent Staff Compensation Challenges Joanna Dressel, Deirdre Harkins, Liam Sweeney. ITHAKA S+R Issue Brief. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.319152

CFP: Charleston Conference – November 6-10, 2023 (in-person) & November 27-December 1, 2023 (online)

In Person: November 6-10
Online: November 27-December 1

We’re excited to welcome you back to Charleston, either in-person or virtually, for the 2023 Charleston Conference: Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition. Our theme this year is “Let the Good Times Roll!” 

Do you have ideas, challenges, solutions, or information to share?

We’re seeking proposals on topics related to collection development and acquisitions, including, but not limited to, the following threads:

  • Analysis and Analytics
  • Collections/Collection Development
  • Library Services
  • Management
  • Preservation/Archiving
  • Scholarly Communication
  • Technology & Trends
  • Up & Coming – Foundational information for those new to the profession.

Deadline for submissions is Monday, July 10. 

We also have a limited number of spots available for preconference workshops. Proposal deadline is June 5.

Submit Your Proposal

Call for Preconferences

Call for Chapters: Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians

Editors: Whitney Kramer, Evan Muzzall, and Iliana Burgos

We are excited to invite chapter proposals for Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians, an edited volume to be published by ACRL. Click this text to fill out the Google Form and start your submission. Please email Whitney Kramer at wbk39@cornell.edu with any questions. 

About the book:

Text and Data Mining Literacy for Librarians will provide librarians with a broad overview of the TDM-specific data literacy skills needed to support researchers. It will include case studies of library-supported TDM projects in a variety of disciplines, from the digital humanities to the social sciences and beyond. This volume will help librarians of all experience levels learn to support researchers utilizing TDM across disciplines and even conduct TDM research of their own. We will prioritize open scholarship principles and data-centric approaches to TDM when applicable and encourage librarians to think critically about the applications of TDM — especially with regards to social impacts, intellectual property rights, and power structures in facilitating TDM. Ultimately, this volume is intended to empower librarians, inform decision makers, and support our research communities as working with textual data becomes further embedded into the research landscape. 

Call for chapters:

We invite chapter proposals for the following sections. If you have experience supporting text and data mining research in any form, please consider submitting a proposal. Do not feel limited by the following suggested topics! We encourage proposals from first-time authors and authors based in any type of college or university setting. 

Section 1 – Essentials of Text Data Literacy

This section will provide a basic understanding of contemporary research topics and skills necessary for librarians to adequately support faculty and students who are conducting TDM research. Sample topics could include:

  • How to engage in a TDM “reference interview”
  • Data ethics in text data mining research contexts
  • Embedding critical theory into text data education
  • The role of library administration and management in supporting TDM

Section 2 – Education, Training, and Logistics 

This section will cover the many core mechanics of TDM, including data sources, licensing and legal aspects, collections management, vendor products, and administrative perspectives. Sample topics could include:

  • Text data sources and collections management
  • Library applications of text data mining: easy examples in context
  • Problems of text data mining in libraries: licensing and legal aspects of TDM 
  • Labor in supporting TDM education
  • Evaluating proprietary and black box TDM products

Section 3 – Practical Applications and Case Studies

This section will provide case studies of library-supported TDM projects in a variety of disciplines in order to help readers understand practical applications for TDM skills in the library. Sample topics could include:

  • Electronic health records
  • Engaging with ChatGPT and tools powered by artificial “intelligence”
  • Large language models
  • Law and technology
  • Literary text data
  • Social media data
  • Speech and /audio data
  • Text data in the digital humanities
  • Text data in the social sciences
  • Using TDM for library assessment
  • Working with multilingual corpora

Proposal Instructions:

Please submit your proposals using this Google form. The text of the proposals should not exceed 500 words. Be sure to include a working title, 3-5 keywords describing your proposed topic, and one or two learning objectives. (Note: These are not included in the word limit.) 

Submissions are due by July 15, 2023. We expect to notify authors of acceptance by August 15, 2023. See below for the proposed project timeline. Please email Whitney Kramer at wbk39@cornell.edu with any questions. 

Project Timeline:

  • CFP closes July 15, 2023 
  • Authors notified of acceptance by August 15, 2023 
  • Chapter outlines sent to editors by October 2, 2023 
  • First drafts due January 15, 2024 
  • Draft reviews completed and feedback provided to authors around April 15, 2024 
  • Second drafts due May 15, 2024 
  • Editor reviews completed around July 1, 2024 
  • Final draft submitted to ACRL by August 31, 2024