CFP: ITAL's "Public Libraries Leading the Way" Column

ITAL's "Public Libraries Leading the Way" Column

Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), the quarterly open-access journal published by ALA’s Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures division, is looking for contributions to its regular “Public Libraries Leading the Way” column for the four 2025 issues (to be published in March, June, September, and December). This column highlights a technology-based innovation or approach to problem solving from a public library perspective. See https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/pllw for a list of columns published in this series.

Topics we are interested in include the following, but proposals on any other technology topic are welcome.

• Virtual community engagement

• Virtual education and learning

• Technology to enable contactless service

• Civic technology

• Drones

• Technology that expands diversity, equity, and inclusion

• Privacy and cyber-security

• Virtual and augmented reality

• Artificial intelligence

• Big data

• Internet of things

• Robotics

• 3-D printing and makerspaces

• Geographic information systems and mapping

• Materials handling automation

• Self-service technology

• Library analytics and data-driven services

• Anything else related to public libraries and innovations in technology

To propose a topic, use this brief form, which will ask you for four pieces of information:

• Your email address

• Your name

• A brief (75-150 word) summary of your proposed column that describes your library, the technology you wish to write about and your experience with it.

• The quarterly issue(s) whose deadlines you can commit to

Columns are in the 1,000-1,500 word range and may include illustrations. These will not be research articles, but are meant to share practical experience with technology development or uses within the library. Proposals are due by December 13, 2024, and selections will be made by January 10, 2025.

If you have questions, contact Ken Varnum, Editor, at varnum@umich.edu, or Marisha Kelly, Assistant Editor, at marisha.librarian@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

Ken Varnum, Editor

Information Technology and Libraries

Call for Topic Editors, POEM (Project on Open and Evolving Metaliteracies) new IMLS-funded online publication

 Call for Topic Editors, POEM

 

The editorial collective of POEM (Project on Open and Evolving Metaliteracies), a new IMLS-funded online publication, seeks thirty topic editors, ten in each area (AI and algorithmic literacy; data and computational literacy; media and mis/disinformation literacy) to join the project team for a 1.5-year period. The deadline to apply is January 4, 2025.

 

A $2,750 stipend is offered for this work.

 

Is there a topic related to AI and algorithms; data and computation; or media and mis- and dis-information that you don’t think is getting enough attention, or that you think is crucial for high schoolers and college students to learn about? Are you interested in helping create a resource to help teachers teach fluency and critical literacy in that area?  Would you like to help curate a collection of high-quality, low-cost teaching and learning materials to help students learn about that topic? 

 

POEM (Project on Open and Evolving Metaliteracies) will be an open educational resource containing peer-reviewed, bilingual (Spanish - English) essays, videos, online games, and other open educational resources in the broad field of information literacy. It will be a reliable library of curated and contextualized materials for teaching and learning, designed to help high school and college librarians and instructors. 

 

What you will be doing

Each of these literacies is stewarded by two co-editors who will work with ten topic editors to build a collection of teaching and learning resources in the topic of their choice. These topics will be introduced, explained, and curated by an expert in the field, their editor (you!). You will seek out and bring together a collection of existing and new open teaching and learning resources that explicate, interrogate, and complicate the topic and provide opportunities for engagement across a range of modalities and learning styles.

 

This work will include:

• Proposing and refining a topic
• Authoring an introduction to that topic
• Developing a call for relevant teaching and learning objects
• Reviewing and selecting submitted materials
• Participation in the peer review process
• Verifying that materials are properly licensed
• Ensuring the development of the teaching and learning objects you select for your topic stay on schedule
• Creating tags for the content in your topic area

 

We are particularly excited to welcome applications from:

• Teachers and librarians at public high schools, community colleges, and HBCUs (and people who are connected to them)
• Data workers, activists, and practitioners (and people who are connected to them)
• People who have experience in and a professional commitment to equitable and antiracist practices
• People familiar with critical approaches to technology, data, and information
• People with previous experience working with open educational resources
• People with prior project management experience

 

To apply (and for additional information), please visit: https://library.cmu.edu/poem

 

 

 

Call for Chapters: Cultivating Collaboration: Communities of Practice in Librarianship

I’m reaching out as a co-editor for an upcoming book, Cultivating Collaboration: Communities of Practice in Librarianship, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. My co-editors and I seek chapter authors and would love to invite library professionals to share their work in this area. 

 

Communities of practice play a crucial role in library science by providing a structured yet flexible approach for information professionals to share knowledge, solve problems, and develop innovative solutions. This book aims to explore the significance of these communities in addressing feelings of isolation within the profession, highlighting their potential to build supportive networks that contribute to personal and professional development. This text will examine practical strategies for establishing and nurturing communities of practice alongside real-world examples that illustrate their impact. By fostering connections and collaborative relationships, communities of practice not only enhance individual practice but also strengthen the resilience and adaptability of the profession as a whole. 

 

Each chapter should be no more than 15-20 double-spaced pages (case studies 5-10 pages), with formatting in Times New Roman, 12pt font, and citations in APA style. Authors are encouraged to include tables, graphs, case studies, images, and citations where appropriate. 

 

If you're interested in contributing, please complete the Proposed Chapter Submission Form by January 10, 2025: https://forms.office.com/r/a3rvff7Vb0. 

 

We would appreciate you sharing this call for proposals on the Library Writer's Blog to help us reach a wider audience. 

 

Thank you for your time and support! 

 

Best regards, 

Shannon D. Jones, EdD, MLS, M.Ed, AHIP 

Tamara Nelson, MLIS, AHIP 

Laura Haygood, MLIS, AHIP 

Sandra Desjardins, MS, MA, MLIS, CHIS 

Kay Strahan, MSLIS, AHIP 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shannon D. Jones, EdD, M.Ed, MLS, AHIP, FMLA (she/her)

Director of Libraries & Professor

Chair, Academic Affairs Faculty

Medical University of South Carolina

Director, NNLM Region 2

171 Ashley Avenue, Suite 415, MSC 403

Charleston, SC 29425-4030

joneshan@musc.edu

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9650-581X

CFP: INCONECSS Conference: Research support in an Age of AI (Berlin, Germany - May 15th & 16th, 2025)

Call for Contributions

INCONECSS Conference: Research support in an Age of AI

INCONECSS is an international conference for researchers, librarians and other information specialists supporting researchers, faculty, teachers and students in Economics and Business Studies. INCONECSS aspires to be the platform for the exchange of ideas on changing user needs and services as well as the evolving landscape of scholarly publishing. INCONECSS encourages conversations between researchers, information specialists and other people working in fields related to information provision for research in Economics and Business Studies.

The conference will consist of curated sessions (e.g. keynote/panel) and community contributed sessions. The community contributed sessions will have the following formats: Posters, Presentation, Short presentation (details below).

We invite academics, librarians and staff from universities and libraries to submit original contributions on services or best practice and experience, including but not limited to the following:

• Will AI change everything? – Generative Information Retrieval
  • Library roles and responsibilities in an AI augmented world (e.g. Library/discovery and access of the future/ Future of search, Future of metadata, Librarians as prompt engineers…)
  • Impact of AI on the research process (e.g. AI-supported peer-review, academic integrity vs misconduct, fraud /retractions of AI-generated articles, …)
  • Legal topics/ guidelines, rules and regulations: Understanding the Contracts (e.g. Institutional rights retention…)
  • Risks and awareness of limitations (e.g. discrimination, misinformation, misuse, Are tools beneficial or not? Do users/students understand the limits?….)
  • Open AI tools versus closed AI tools (which tools are really open?)
  • Change of business models (e.g. publishers become data platforms…)
  • Upskilling process within the institutions
  • Networking and sharing knowledge: How can we all stay up-to-date on current important developments? Who can monitor and select important developments?
  • AI and Information Literacy: Teaching Critical Thinking
    
    
• Everything Open? Open Science, Open Access, Open Data, Open Education
  • Open Science/open scholarship and the role of libraries – best practices from different parts of the world (e.g. Open Science strategies in libraries…)
  • Open Access (e.g. Transformational/transitional agreements – are they beneficial? Diamond Open Access models…)
  • Open Data (e.g. reproducibility, Do editors encourage the publishing of research data? Using Machine Learning to analyze (open) data…)
  • Open Education (e.g. OER, Where to find or publish OER, Improving access to open textbooks…)
  • Creative Commons licenses and attributions

• Scholarly Communication, Research Support and Academic Skills
  • How to support students, scholars, early career researchers? (e.g. services that support teaching staff and students…)
  • Journals: Quality Control (e.g. Predatory Journals, Journal Impact / Journals rankings and lists of journals/ TOP Journal guidelines, Criticism of rankings and lists …)
  • Supporting the research process online (e.g. sharing tutorials, videos, best practices)
  • Information Literacy, Media Literacy, AI Literacy, Academic Skills
     
• Databases
  • Which databases do institutions subscribe to? Who pays?
  • Which databases cover which content? Which are redundant?
  • Tools /Overviews

• New Work and Sustainability
  • Socializing and collaborating while many staff members work at home
  • Changing buildings and office spaces
  • Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. Creating awareness, Shareconomy, Reputation and ranking aspects of SDG, assessing impact…)
    
• Plus: Any other timely topic that would be of interest to the target groups of the conference

Submission process:

The conference language is English, all submissions must be in English.

Abstract submission

• Abstracts should contain the title of the presentation and a description of major findings or experiences. Cover why this is new or innovative and/or why this presentation/information is beneficial for the audience.
• Please submit an abstract of your planned presentation with a maximum of 400 words via the online submission system: https://www.conftool.net/inconecss2025/
• All contributions have to be submitted through ConfTool and will be reviewed by the committee members.
• During the submission process, you will be asked if your contribution is for a poster, a presentation, or a short presentation or if your contribution could be presented in any of the formats.

Details on presentations and formats

• Poster: Poster presentations are a highly valued and central part of the INCONECSS. There will be a 90 minute time slot for parallel poster presentations (plus all poster presenters get a 1 minute presentation-slot to advertise posters)
• Presentation: 20 minute presentation plus 10 minutes for Q&A and discussion
• Short presentation: 10 minute presentation plus open format for discussion.In order to allow presentations on very up to date topics, we take suggestions after the submission deadline. Short presentations can be on any of the topics listed above or on some services, you would like to share, a discussion on an important topic you would like to start or anything else you can think of as useful to the audience.
• We expect presenters to make their presentations available after the conference. (e.g. upload poster PDF or presentations slides to your institutional repository or on Zenodo and share the URL with us or submit them to us to make them available on the conference website no later than 4 weeks after the conference)

Criteria for evaluation of the submissions by the program committee

• All submissions will be reviewed based on criteria of relevance to the conference scope and theme, originality and quality
• Relevance for the target groups (information specialists, researchers, librarians in the context of business and economics research)

Important Dates

• Call for Contributions published: 11 November 2024
• Abstract Submission: 10 December 2024
• Notification of Acceptance: 24 January 2025
• Final submission of document/presentation: 2 May 2025
• Conference Dates: 15-16 May 2025
• Please Note: There is an exception for some short presentations. Short presentation proposals can also be submitted after the deadline to keep them open for very up-to-date topics. These topics can be submitted up until March 31st.




Contact

If you have any questions, please contact:
veranstaltungen@zbw.eu

CFP: IASSIST at 50! Bridging oceans, harbouring data & anchoring the future - Bristol, United Kingdom - June 2025

IASSIST at 50! Bridging oceans, harbouring data & anchoring the future

IASSIST 2025 (https://iassistdata.org/conferences/iassist2025/) invites you to join us in Bristol, United Kingdom, for its golden anniversary conference (yes, that is 50 years!!) from June 3 - June 6, 2025 to engage in the past, present, and future of data services, including data management and technologies. IASSIST https://iassistdata.org/ (the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology) is an international organization of professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching.

Visit lively, yet laid-back, Bristol and find a city full of character, centuries-old heritage, and an irrepressible creative zeal. Enveloped in the hills of South West England, Bristol is a city full of unique experiences, from year-round festivals, award-winning cycle tracks, and gastronomy of every flavour, to first-class arts venues, and awe-inspiring street art.

The conference will be held in-person, centering around networking opportunities and interactions. We welcome submissions for papers, presentations, posters, demonstrations, workshops, and lightning talks that embrace our conference theme, “Bridging oceans, harbouring data & anchoring the future”. We are seeking out information on: the connections created by data and data services professionals and enthusiasts; the wealth of knowledge in the community; the context of our profession today; and good data practice in the future. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):


  *   Environmental impact and sustainability
  *   Artificial Intelligence
  *   Reproducibility
  *   Partnerships and collaboration
  *   Data literacy
  *   Data consultation and librarianship
  *   Data management and archiving
  *   Data provenance, CARE / FAIR data principles
  *   Data discovery and access
  *   Data documentation and metadata
  *   Data governance and ethics
  *   Data gaps and biases


Have you ever considered submitting a poster? Do you have a new idea you would like feedback on? Would you like to showcase a new service or resource? We will be holding a “Poster Reception” to encourage conversations, sharing of ideas, and community building, while engaging with these visually dynamic posters.

The deadline for submissions is Friday December 13, 2024.
We request that submitters limit themselves to one proposal per format type.

Decisions regarding submissions will be sent out by email mid-February 2025.

The Call for proposals and workshops, with a link to the submission form, is available at:
https://www.openconf.org/iassist2025/openconf.php
Or from the IASSIST 2025 Homepage at:
https://iassistdata.org/conferences/iassist2025/

Questions about presentation submissions may be sent to the Program Co-Chairs (Michael Beckstrand, Jane Fry, and Oliver Watteler) at programme.lists@iassistdata.org.

Support for Attending Conference
IASSIST Fellows Program supports data professionals from countries with emerging economies and underrepresented regions who are developing information infrastructures regarding the use and preservation of public and private data, implementing information policy decisions, and providing data services at their home institutions.

IASSIST Early Professional Fellows Program supports early career data professionals from under-resourced institutions. It recognizes the value of new and innovative ideas from graduates and professionals new to data in the social sciences, who may not otherwise have the funding to travel.
Applications can be made at https://forms.gle/1xLyY3Y6W96GreKYA and will close on Friday December 13, 2024.
Please address your questions about the Fellows Program to Fellows Committee Co-Chairs Florio Arguillas (foa2@cornell.edu) and Sarah Young (sarahy@andrew.cmu.edu)

For information about traveling to Bristol, check out (https://iassistdata.org/conferences/iassist2025/) the conference website (https://iassistdata.org/conferences/iassist2025/).

Call for ATG Reporters - Charleston Conference 2024

Are you attending the Charleston Conference next week? Against the Grain (ATG) is seeking brief reports for the “And They Were There” column. The column will be published in ATG beginning in early 2025.

OPTION A - Individual session report(s)
A short report (100-200 words) on an individual session or sessions. Highlight what resonated, met the reporter’s expectations (or didn’t), and any take-away memorable points.

OPTION B - "Top 3” reports
In 200-300 words per report, spotlight a themed conference experience (pick one or more): 

• The top three things I learned at the 2024 Charleston Conference 
• Three/ things I learned at 2024 Charleston Conference keynote or Neapolitan sessions
• My three favorite concurrent sessions/presentations from the 2024 Charleston Conference (and why)
• What I learned after viewing the 2024 Charleston Conference posters
• What I learned after visiting the 2024 Charleston Conference vendor showcase 

PRIOR TO THE CONFERENCE: Sign up for the sessions you wish to report on, and indicate Option A or B.  Please specify whether you will be an on-site or a virtual week attendee reporter.

AFTER THE CONFERENCE: Report submission deadline is January 10, 2025. Completed reports can be emailed to Caroline Goldsmith or uploaded here.

Contact Caroline Goldsmith with any questions at caroline@charlestonlibraryconference.com. 

Call for Book Chapter Proposals for Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations

Call for Book Chapter Proposals for Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations

Editors: Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marschall, Molly McGuire, Nina Schneider, and Emily D. Spunaugle

Loss is inevitable in heritage preservation, and a nuanced understanding of the fundamental role of loss is essential to collections preservation, permanence, and sustainability. Cultural memory and heritage workers, too, face many other kinds of loss within the workplace that impacts their labor, including loss of resources, safety nets, and colleagues. 

The conference organizers of the 2023 online conference, “Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations,” co-hosted by the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Oakland University Libraries, seek proposals for additional chapters for an edited collection based on the conference theme. This collection will consider the ongoing reassessment of memory and heritage work and heritage ownership, as it is understood by libraries, archives and related organizations, through an examination of the multiple meanings, complexities, and resonances of loss.

Featuring the voices of practitioners and scholars of libraries, museums, and archives, this volume will grapple with questions including, What is heritage and cultural property, and to whom do they belong? Who owns the past, and what does such ownership mean? How can a sustained interrogation of collection and heritage loss be productively leveraged to reckon with other kinds of loss in the cultural memory and heritage workspace? 

We invite proposals from diverse perspectives on a range of topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Theft, repatriation, virtual reunification, shared print/collection development
• Endangered archives, postcustodial archival practice
• Approaches to loss in preservation and conservation
• Other related aspects of practice and research

We are especially interested in receiving proposals in the following areas:

• Deaccessioning, redirections, removals
• Human and resource loss, including loss of institutional knowledge, in and beyond the workplace
• Loss and conservation of collections

We welcome proposals of chapters that will thoughtfully engage with experiences derived from the practice of scholar-practitioners, including librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, scholars, museum professionals, students, and other stakeholders at any point in their careers, from institutions and organizations of all sizes, and including independent researchers.

Timeline for Accepted Proposals:

• April 2025: Completed first drafts of no more than 6,500 words (references included) due to editors

• May/June 2025: Editors review chapters

• June 2025: Editors return feedback to authors

• September 2025: Authors submit final draft to editors

• October 2025: Typescript due to publisher.
  
  

Please submit proposals (400-word maximum) using the following form: https://forms.gle/ek3vmf8sCqDjPb4F8

Please submit proposals by December 6. Presenters will be notified by January 6.