Call For Papers

Call for Papers

Library History and Library Historians During COVID-19: Reports from the Field

Libraries: Culture, History, and Society (https://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_LCHS.html) and LHRT News and Notes (https://lhrtnews.wordpress.com/) unite and provide writing opportunities for a global community of scholars, practitioners, students, and retirees interested in library history. As we all near the one-year anniversary of remote teaching, service disruption, and quarantine brought on by COVID-19, the editors invite your reflections on how the pandemic has affected our discipline and how it has changed members of the library history community as human beings. For the Fall 2021 (volume 5, number 2) issue of LCHS, and for the 2021 cycle of News and Notes, we will publish brief, personal essays from our readers describing and reflecting upon their experiences of the past year. 

Essays should be 500-3,000 words (roughly 2-7 pages, 12-point font, double-spaced) and written in the first-person point of view. Citations/endnotes are not required unless there are quotations. Please send your submission by Friday, April 20th, 2021 to LCHS@press.psu.edu . All submissions will be editorially reviewed. Up to six essays will be selected for publication in LCHS; others may be forwarded to News and Notes.

While COVID-19 has touched virtually everyone, it has done so in very different ways. Many of us are still living through the pandemic. Some have made sense of everything we’ve seen, heard, done, or felt; others have not. Thus the editors welcome submissions that describe positive, negative, mixed, and ongoing experiences. Essays may take either professional or personal points of view (or both) and may be certain or uncertain in their conclusions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

*How the pandemic has affected your research plans

*Use of digitized collections for library history research

*New projects or lines of research prompted by the pandemic

*Challenges and opportunities of professional networking

*Using archives and rare materials during quarantine

*Efforts to document closures, curbside service, and libraries’ other historic experiences 

*Personal challenges, such as social isolation or work-life balance

*Gender, race, class, and other perspectives on being a historian, researcher, or librarian during COVID 

*Pandemic-related stories that point to larger truths

*Lessons learned and insights gained from the pandemic

*Post-COVID plans and hopes

For questions, please contact the LCHS editors, Bernadette A. Lear (BAL19@psu.edu) and Eric C. Novotny (ECN1@psu.edu), or News and Notes editor Brett Spencer (DBS21@psu.edu). 

Looking forward to your submissions!

Bernadette A. Lear (she/her/hers/Ms.)

Behavioral Sciences and Education Librarian

Co-Editor of Libraries: Culture, History, and Society

Penn State Harrisburg Library

351 Olmsted Dr., Middletown, PA 17057

BAL19@psu.edu – 717-948-6360

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9576-0704
http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_LCHS.html

Call for Papers: Cultural Heritage Institutions in Popular Culture

CULTURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS IN POPULAR CULTURE 

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) 

42nd Annual Conference, Week of February 22-27, 2021 

http://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions Open September 1, 2020 

Submission Deadline: November 13, 2020 

For the 2021 Conference, SWPACA is going virtual! Due to concerns regarding COVID-19, we will be holding our annual conference completely online this year. We hope you will join us for exciting papers, discussions, and the experience you’ve come to expect from Southwest. 

Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 42nd annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/ 

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: 

•           Histories and profiles of popular culture resources and collections in cultural heritage institutions; a chance to show off what you’ve got to scholars who might want to use it 

•           Intellectual freedom or cultural sensitivity issues related to popular culture resources 

•           Book clubs and reading groups, city- or campus-wide reading programs 

•           Special exhibits of popular culture resources, outreach programs, etc. of cultural heritage institutions 

•           Collection and organization of popular culture resources; marketing and ethical issues 

•           Web 2.0, gaming, semantic web, etc. and their impact on libraries, archives, museums, and digital humanities collections 

•           The role of public libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions in economic hard times and natural disasters 

•           Oral history projects 

•           Digital humanities and other digital/data-based projects on popular culture, the Southwest, and other relevant subjects, both those based in cultural heritage institutions and those in academia or other organizations. 

We encourage proposals for panels and roundtables organized around common themes. 

All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at http://register.southwestpca.org/southwestpca 

For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general, please see the Proposal Submission FAQs and Tips page at http://southwestpca.org/conference/faqs-and-tips/ 

Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words. For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs and Tips page.    

SWPACA will offer registration reimbursement awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due January 1, 2021. SWPACA will also offer registration reimbursement awards for select undergraduate and graduate students in place of our traditional travel awards. For more information, visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/. Registration for the conference will be open and available in late fall. Watch your email for details! 

In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at http://journaldialogue.org/ 

If you have any questions about the Cultural Heritage Institutions in Popular Culture area, please contact its Area Chair, Dr. Suzanne Stauffer stauffer@lsu.edu.