Reading Spaces

Forthcoming: Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/Practice/Politics

I'm happy to announce that the collection of papers that I've been editing with my colleagues Kjell-Ivar Skerdingstad, Lynne McKechnie and Knut Oterholm will be forthcoming in late spring/early summer 2016 (fingers crossed!).

The collection, "Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/Practice/Politics" will be published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and features 23 papers that address different aspects of the reading experience.

 
We can't thank enough the researchers who generously contributed their work for this collection -- for their expertise and their patience. Here's a table of contents (links coming soon): 

Chapter 1: Introduction: Plotting the Reading Experience                                                               

Chapter 2: The Hidden Foundations of Critical Reading, Magnus Persson

Chapter 3: What is a Reading Experience? The Development of a Theoretical and Empirical Understanding, Gitte Balling

Chapter 4: Re-Imagining Reading, Gabrielle Cliff Hodges

Chapter 5: Evidence of Reading? The Swedish Public’s Letters to Selma Lagerlöf: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the History of Reading, Jenny Bergenmar and Maria Karlsson                                                                    

Chapter 6: Byatt versus Bloom: or, Reading by Patricide versus Reading by Love, Marianne Børch   

Chapter 7: A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Researching the Reading Experience, Sara Whiteley

Chapter 8: Tempering Ambiguity – The Quality of the Reading Experience, Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad and Knut Oterholm

Chapter 9: Fun…and Other Reasons for Sharing Reading with Strangers: Mass Reading Events and the Possibilities of Pleasure, Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo

Chapter 10: The Once and Future Self: (Re)reading Personal Lists, Notes, and Calendars, Pamela McKenzie and Elisabeth Davies

Chapter 11: More Benefit from a Well-Stocked Library than a Well-Stocked Pharmacy: How Do Readers Use Books as Therapy? Liz Brewster

Chapter 12: Literary Reading as a Social Technology: An Exploratory Study on Shared Reading Groups, Mette Steenberg

Chapter 13: The Indescribable Described: Readers’ Experiences when Reading About Tragic Loss, Eva Maria Koopman          

Chapter 14: When Comics Set the Pace: The Experience of Time and the Reading Comics, Lucia Cedeira Serantes

Chapter 15: Reading Groups in Swedish Public Libraries, Kerstin Rydbeck

Chapter 16: “I readed it!” (Marissa, 4 years): The Experience of Reading from the Perspective of  Young Children Themselves: A Cautionary Tale, Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie    

Chapter 17: Reading the Readers: Tracking Visible Online Reading Audiences, Marianne Martens

Chapter 18: Literature in Common: Reading for Pleasure in School Reading Groups,  Teresa Cremin and Joan Swann                                                                                                               

Chapter 19: Desire and Becoming – Multilingual Pupils’ Reading Experiences,  Joron Pihl and Kristin Skinstad van der Kooij                      

Chapter 20: Experiencing the Social Melodrama in the 21th Century: Approaches of Amateur and Professional Criticism, Cecilie Naper

Chapter 21: The Republic of Readers: Book Clubs in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1815-1830, Arnold Lubbers

Chapter 22: “Crazy Thirst for Knowledge”: Chinese Readers and the 1980s “Book Series Fever", Shih-Wen Sue Chen

Chapter 23: Enabling Testimonies and Producing Witnesses: Exploring Readers’ Responses to Two Norwegian Post-Terror Blogs, Tonje Vold

 

 

new article on Reading and Older people

Nicole Dalmer and I wrote and submitted a short overview for a SAGE Encyclopedia project on Aging, a project that was subsequently cancelled by the publisher.

We will rework the encyclopedia entry in future publications, but we've decided to make the brief overview available through Western's institutional repository.

 

Call for Participants for LIS9367 Services for Children and Youth Interview Assignment

March 9, 2015 UPDATE: Call for participants is now closed. Thanks to everyone who got in touch -- we've been overwhelmed by your support!

Who: Public Librarians Working Primarily with Children and/or Teens (within the past 5 years)

What: Conversational Interviews (approx. 30-40 minutes) about your career and work to be conducted by MLIS students enrolled in the online course, LIS9367, in the Master of Library and Information Science Program, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, The University of Western Ontario

This is a required class assignment worth 15% of the total course grade. Each student is required to interview one working librarian who has current or past experience (within the last 5 years) working with children and/or teenagers and young adults in public libraries. The interview will be conducted using a predetermined set of questions as a guideline. All students are required to use it in their interviews. Interview questions will be limited to areas related to professional and educational experiences. Interviews may be conducted via online conversation software (e.g., skype, google hangouts), in person, over the telephone, over email, or via text messaging, provided such arrangements are mutually convenient. Phone and face-to-face interviews will be recorded and transcripts made from the recordings. Text-based conversations will be captured digitally, and anonymized by me after the student submits her/his work. Students will be instructed to destroy all records at the close of the course. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed and used for class purposes. The identity of all will be anonymized before any documentation or analysis is shared with class members. Data collected for this assignment is for class use only: it will not be published or shared through research reports or presentations.

The purpose of the assignment is multifold:

• To bring real-world experience into the online classroom
• To support stronger partnerships with youth services librarians across Canada and in the United States
• To give students a structured opportunity to make connections with potentially useful future networks
• To give students a taste of designing small research, collaborative research projects that have the potential to inform LIS practice and pedagogy in the area of youth services
• To pilot a small class project for possible future studies of the career trajectories of youth services librarians.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, agree to be interviewed and to have your interview recorded for this assignment, please get in touch with the course instructor: Dr. Paulette Rothbauer by email: [email protected] by February 2, 2015. I will then introduce you to your student interviewer by email, so that mutual arrangements can be made for the interview. The assignment is due at the end of term, April 10, so your interview could take place at a mutually convenient time between February and April. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions. Thank you for your interest and I look forward to hearing from you! 

"The Reading Experience and Older People" at RA in a Day 2014

It is always a pleasure to share reading research (plans and findings and sometimes failures) with members of the Ontario Library Association at the Readers' Advisory in a Day symposium. Always assured of a smart and engaged audience, and I come away having learned a lot about how to work with readers in public libraries. This year, I was hoping to share findings of a pilot study that I'm presently working on that explores the reading practices of small group of older people (70+ years, at least 5 years past retirement, and still living at home with no or low-level needs for health and social services). I'm not at a point where I can share findings from that project yet, so I took a page out of our Reading Matters book to share some of "what the research says" about older people and reading.

The slides I used for the presentation are available here: Download RAinaDay2014. I didn't have time to talk about the final two slides in the deck -- on reading as place-making. These slides represent a kind of working model for me relying on what David Seamon has called a "place-ballet" with an overlay of reading, libraries and books. I've explored this idea of the place-ballet in previous reading research (here and here) with rural young adults but am exploring ways to elaborate on the model in this next project. I like the concept of the place-ballet for how it helps me to think about massively pervasive, everyday reading practices that might otherwise easily be written off as trivial. 

Some of the studies featured in the talk:
PEW, Library Services in the Digital Age, 2013

PEW, The Rise of E-Reading, 2012

Vera Toepoel, 2013 “Ageing, Leisure, and Social Connectedness: How could Leisure Help Reduce Social Isolation of Older People?”

Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin, Kathleen Schreurs, 2014. Interviews with Lifelong Readers: Preliminary Findings from the EDITS (Effects of Digital Information Technology on Seniors) Project

Mary Cavanagh and Wendy Robbins, 2012. Baby boomers, their elders and the public library.

Australian Study of Reading for Pleasure, 2014. "A National Survey of Reading, Buying and
Borrowing Books for Pleasure"

Reading and Buying Books for Pleasure (Canada, 2005)

From indifference to enthusiasm: patterns of arts attendance in England

Consumption of Culture by Older Canadians on the Internet:
Allen, Mary. 2013. “Consumption of culture by older Canadians on the Internet.” Insights on Canadian Society. January. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 75-006-X.

Su-Yen Chen and Yang-Chih Fu, 2008. "Leisure Participation and Enjoyment: Individual Characteristics and Sociability."

(with more to come...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Colville Exhibition at the AGO

I had the unanticipated pleasure of a member's preview of the new (and largest) exhibition of Alex Colville's work today when I visited the AGO. Like many people, I suspect, I knew many of Colville's paintings, and might even have felt a bit cynical about them, given how much exposure some of his works have had over my lifetime. But, the show was astounding on a few different levels. One thing that I noticed right away, was how much people in the crowd enjoyed the gallery -- people really seemed to love the work. But, even more than this, it just seemed so obvious that Colville had a tender respect for the subjects of his paintings, whether his wife/muse, the many animals in his works, especially dogs, and perhaps this perspective is more wry in his self-portraits, but it is still there. It was a bit overwhelming -- more than in other exhibits, I really wanted to stop and really look at the paintings (and a smaller selection of drawings) -- each one invites the viewer into the frame, to wonder about the action, to create some kind of narrative or sense of what is going on there -- all the while, facing a certain kind of resistance to just exactly that impulse to make sense. I'm looking forward to going back again and again as often as I can manage to look at it all again.

I was instantly and deeply moved by the works collected under the theme of "Love, Life and Loss," especially the late painting of his wife Rhoda, standing with her back to the viewer, nude and in front of a faceless grandfather clock. You can see see an image of the painting in this video (at 4:36):

 

 
After spending some time with Colville's works, especially the ones in the Love, Life and Loss gallery, I'm left thinking about what it means to age, and to love, into what in gerontology is sometimes called "older old age." The exhibit as curated, seems to me anyhow, to represent the heft of a life, of a lifelong body of works, of an enduring love.

 

The Experience of Reading: FIMS Researchers at OLA2014

We'll be presenting highlights from our research at the upcoming Ontario Library Association Super Conference. Our session runs from 10:40 - 12:00 on Thursday, January 30, Session #402. My co-presenters, and fellow members of the informal group on Researching The Reading Experience:
Lucia Cedeira Serantes, LIS Doctoral Candidate
Pam McKenzie, Associate Professor and Associate Dean
Lynne McKechnie, Professor
and me, Paulette Rothbauer, Associate Professor and LIS Programs Coordinator

Catherine Ross, Professor Emerita and Keren Dali, SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow were scheduled to present, but were unable to attend.

We've compiled our publications on reading into a joint bibliography (see below -- links will be added soon!.

The program blurb: Members of an informal but active group called the Experience of Reading Research Group will share highlights from recent research into the reading practices of a diverse sample of readers including adult avid readers and young adult readers of graphic novels. We will discuss insights into specific acts of readerly engagement including the reframing of the readers' advisory interaction as a powerful cultural encounter and the troubling consequences for boys due the privileging of fiction, and much more.

About the Researching the Experience of Reading Research Group

The Conference: Researching the Reading Experience, hosted by Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, 11-12 June 2013. See the program. Selected papers from the conference will be published in a book length, edited manuscript. Some of the RRE researchers are on our open Facebook group as well.

Bibliography of Selected Works about Reading

Catherine Sheldrick Ross

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. The Pleasures of Reading: A Booklover's Alphabet (forthcoming June 2014, ABC-CLIO)

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. "Reader on Top: Public Libraries, Pleasure Reading, and Models of Reading," Library Trends 57(4): 632-56, 2009. 

McKechnie, (E.F.), Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Paulette Rothbauer, "Affective Dimensions of Information Seeking in the Context of Reading," Information and emotion: the emergent affective paradigm in information behavior research and theory, pp. 187-95, edited by D. Nahl and D. Bilal. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 2007.

Ross, Catherine S., Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie and Paulette Rothbauer. Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries and Community. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

Paulette Rothbauer

Rothbauer, Paulette M. "Kevin Major's Hold Fast and the Critical Reception of a Milestone Canadian Novel for Young Adults," Jeunesse: Young People, Texts and Culture 4(2), 2012. 

Rothbauer, Paulette M. “Rural Teens on the Role of Reading in Their Lives.” Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults 1(2), 2011. 

Rothbauer, Paulette M. “Exploring the Placelessness of Reading Among Older Teens in a Canadian Rural Municipality.” The Library Quarterly 79(4): 465-483, 2009.

McKechnie, (E.F.), Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Paulette Rothbauer, "Affective Dimensions of Information Seeking in the Context of Reading," Information and emotion: the emergent affective paradigm in information behavior research and theory, pp. 187-95, edited byD. Nahl and D. Bilal. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 2007.

Ross, Catherine S., Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie and Paulette Rothbauer. Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries and Community. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

Rothbauer, Paulette M. “The Internet in the Reading Accounts of Lesbian and Queer Young Women: Failed Searches and Unsanctioned Reading. Canadian Journal of Information & Library Science 28(4): 53-74, 2004. Special Issue on Children, Libraries and Information, edited by Margaret Mackey.

Rothbauer, Paulette M. “‘People Aren’t Afraid Anymore, But It’s Hard To Find Books’: Reading Practices That Inform the Personal and Social Identities of Self-Identified Lesbian and Queer Young Women.” Canadian Journal of Information & Library Science 28(3): 89-112, 2004.

Rothbauer, Paulette M. “Reading Mainstream Possibilities: Canadian Young Adult Fiction with Lesbian and Gay Characters.” Canadian Children's Literature/literature canadienne pour les jeunesse 108: 10-26, 2002.

Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie

Isajlovic - Terry, Natasha and McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.). “I don’t think they should stop you.” (Emily, 9 years): Children’s views of censorship. Children and Libraries 10(1): 38-49, 2012.

McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.). “Spiderman is not for Babies” (Peter, 4 years): The boys and reading problem from the perspective of the boys themselves. Canadian Journal of Library and Information Science 30(1/2): 57-67, 2007.

McKechnie, (E.F.), Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Paulette Rothbauer, "Affective Dimensions of Information Seeking in the Context of Reading," Information and emotion: the emergent affective paradigm in information behavior research and theory, pp. 187-95, edited by D. Nahl and D. Bilal. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 2007.

Ross, Catherine S., McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.), & Rothbauer, Paulette M. Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries and Community. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

McKechnie, Lynne (E.F.). “I’ll keep them for my children” (Kevin, 9 years): Children’s personal collections of books and other materials. Canadian Journal of Library and Information Science 28(4): 73-88, 2004.

Lucia Cedeira Serantes

Cedeira Serantes, L. "Read in Canada: The Canadian perception and reception of comics among
young adults." Exploring Canadian Identity/ies in Comics, Gail de Vos and Chris Reyns-Chikuma, eds (forthcoming 2014).

Cedeira Serantes, L. "Misfits, loners, immature students, reluctant readers: Librarianship participates in the construction of teen comics readers." In Anthony Bernier (Ed.), Transforming young adult services: A reader for our age (pp.115-135). New York: Neal-Schuman, 2013.

Cedeira Serantes, L. "Comics in the life of the young adult reader: Understanding the experience of reading graphic novels and comic books in contemporary society." International Journal of Comics Art, 14(1), 407-418, 2012.

Cedeira Serantes, L. “I’m a Marvel girl”: exploration of the selection practices of comic book readers. In P. Rothbauer, S. Stevenson, & N. Wathen (Eds.), Canadian Association for Information Science Conference: Mapping the 21st Century Information Landscape: Borders, Bridges and Byways, 2009. Available at www.cais-acsi.ca/proceedings/2009/Cedeira_2009.pdf

Pam McKenzie

Please take a look at Pam's publications and presentations over at her website.

Keren Dali

Dilevko, Juris, Keren Dali, and Glenda Garbutt. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2011.  http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?id=2147491934

Dali, Keren. “From Book Appeal to Reading Appeal: Redefining the Concept of Appeal in Readers’ Advisory.” The Library Quarterly 84, no. 1  (2014): 22-48.

Dali, Keren. “‘Ask Me What I Read’: Readers’ Advisory and Immigrant Adaptation.” New Library World 114, no. 11-12 (2013): Available through Emerald Early Cite.

Dali, Keren. “Hearing Stories, Not Keywords: Teaching Contextual Readers’ Advisory.” Reference Services Review 41, no. 3 (2013): 474-502.

Dali, Keren. “Books in Their Suitcases: Leisure Reading in the Lives of Russian-Speaking Immigrants in Canada. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) 45, no. 4 (2013): doi:10.1177/0961000612448208

Dali, Keren. “Reading Their Way through Immigration: The Leisure Reading Practices of Russian-Speaking Immigrants in Canada.” Library & Information Science Research (LISR) 34, no. 3 (2012): 197-211.

Dali, Keren. “Readers’ Advisory in Public Libraries and Translated Fiction.” The Reference Librarian 51, no. 3 (2010): 175-88.

Dali, Keren. “Readers’ Advisory Interactions with Immigrant Readers.” New Library World 111, no. 5/6 (2010): 213-22. (Selected for inclusion in Emerald Reading ListAssist).

Dali, Keren. “Russian-Language Periodicals in Toronto: Information Sources for Immigrants and Records for Documenting Community.” Slavic & East European Information Resources (SEEIR) 6, no. 1 (2005): 57-100.

Dali, Keren. “Reading by Russian-Speaking Immigrants in Toronto: Use of Public Libraries, Bookstores, and Home Book Collections.” International Information and Library Review 36, no. 4 (2004): 341-66.

Dilevko, Juris and Keren Dali. “Electronic Databases for Readers’ Advisory Services and Intellectual Access to Translated Fiction not Originally Written in English.” Library Resources and Technical Services 47, no. 3 (2003): 80-95.

 

 

 

 

Mood Boosting Books Chosen by Older People

An interesting booklist compiled by "older people". Who are these older people? How old is older? From The Reading Agency, funded by Arts Council England, and an ally to public libraries "because of the way they open up access to reading opportunities and support".

 

The Role of Reading Amongst Older People

For the past few months I've been reading various works on the social contexts of "old age" and the social worlds of "older people". It's still early days for me in terms of where I may go with all of this but I'm thinking about looking at the reading practices of older people, especially frail and less mobile people. There are some obvious links to my previous/ongoing research especially in terms of how people are  classified and defined by chronological age categories as if that could explain all and every behaviour. I haven't found much research that looks at specificities of reading experiences with old/older age, although truly I haven't really launched into that lit review yet.

Yesterday, I read "Talk about Old Age, Health and Morality" by Outi Jolanki in an edited collection by Ricca Edmondson and Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz called Valuing Older People: A Humanist Approach to Ageing. Jolanki used interview data collected from 250 people living in southern Finland who were 90 years of age or older to explore "whether and how notions of health and old age are constructed as moral matters" (p. 261). Using detailed excerpts and vignettes, Jolanki shows how when asked about their health, ageing participants "balanced" between distancing themselves from an identity as "old" and claiming one that features physcial and mental activity, as being in good health, but using old age as a way to legitimate poor health and inactivity  -- in other words, they were "giving factual reports of their health but also 'performing' their identities as worthy members of society" (p. 263). Jolanki goes on to explore how the category of "old" functions as a "restrictive  definition" for many participants. Citing Featherstone and Hepworth (1995), Jolanki writes, "...being able to control oneself cognitively, bodily and emotionally is required to achieve the status of adult; conversely, losing bodily control and cognitive skills produces the danger of social unacceptability and losing that status. As a result of the latter, older people might not be the object of moral reprehension, but they might well be assigned a childlike, patronised status" (p. 269). Even more interesting, are Jolanki's claims that "wisdom discourse" (i.e., "old age as a time of mental development and increased understanding of life" consituted "weak discourse" -- requiring a lot of rhetorical support to answer doubts and skepticism. Given the dominance of the "activity discourse" the author cautions against imposing all moral responsibility on the individual whose life choices are seen as determining if they are "active" and ageing well. Jolanki ends with a suggestion that "to study the ways that older people themselves address the idea of wisdom and life experience in their everyday lives could illuminate different meanings of wisdom, both as an individual quality and in terms of its social ramifications".

This essay gave me lots to think about (they all do...) especially wondering about the role that reading (or listening or being read to) might play, how that role has changed for those who have done it earlier in their lives. Also thinking about the public library, its services and how library discourses tie into Jolanki's themes. I'll be reading Elfreda Chatman again in the next little while...

 

LIS Scholar at Work column for Spring 2013: Johnson on social capital and public libraries

By Catherine Johnson, Associate Prof in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, "Public Libraries' Contribution to Community Social Capital."

excerpt: "Having a place to go - especially in poorer neighbourhoods - that is welcoming, where there are people to help you find the information you need and where you can get to know or mingle with other people from your neighbourhood has a postive effect on people's level of trust, civic engagement and community involvement" (pp. 30-31).

 

*****

I am the editor for the LIS Scholars at Work column, appearing in each issue of Access, the quarterly magazine of the Ontario Library Association. See previous issues (as pdfs). Spring 2013 coming soon.

 

Short Review: Riding Invisible by Sandra Alonzo, illustrated by Nathan Huang

Riding Invisible by Sandra Alonzo, illustrated by Nathan Huang
Hyperion: New York. 2010.
isbn: 978-1423119777

This is a quick read and is suitable for a wide audience of readers including young readers who may be more reluctant or resistant to novel reading. It features sketches and drawings by Nathan Huang and uses a hand-written style of lettering. It is told in a journal format (with occasional poetry) and has a nice balance of poignant and humourous anecdotes. It is an fairly gently treatment of mental illness in a family: the oldest brother, Will is diagnosed with "conduct disorder" and the reader feels the rawness that this causes in the rest of the family as seen through the younger brother's eyes (15 year old Yancy). I found the relationship between Yancy and his trail horse Shy  added a great deal of interest, as well as the southern California setting. Many elements of the story are a bit too shiny to appeal to those readers who like grittier realism in young adult novels but this book still has much to recommend it.

Goodreads Reviews

Sex & The Library: Progressive Librarian: London Chapter Event

Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 2:30. Visual Arts Centre 100.

Cdn Assoc for Info Science 2011: CFP

Annual Conference Theme: Information in a Local and Global Context

from the website: The theme of the CAIS/ACSI 2012 conference relates to how information is searched, retrieved, used, made sense of, and understood in a local and global context. The cultural, political, sociological, technological, and historial contexts are central in understanding how people interact with information. The conference will provide information scientists and practitioners with a forum for the presentation and debate of innovative research on all aspects of the evolving field of information science. The conference committee strongly encourages submissions from both practitioners and academics.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Social information diffusion
• The unique needs of local libraries
• Information in a global world
• The Internet as a source of local and global information
• Language as a connecting force in global communication
• Social networking technologies (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter)
• Mapping and visualization of information, social spaces, and networks

Call for proposals. We welcome proposals for CAIS/ACSI 2012. Proposals may be submitted in English or French. Practitioners and doctoral candidates are especially invited to submit proposals for the conference. Guidelines will be posted to www.cais-acsi.ca.

See the call at the CAIS/ACSI website

YALSA's new research agenda

The YALSA Research Committee has put forward 4 priority areas for research:

Priority Area 1: Impact of Libraries on Young Adults

Priority Area 2: Young Adult Reading and Resources

Priority Area 3: Information Seeking Behaviors and Needs of Young Adults

Priority Area 4: Informal and Formal Learning Environments and Young Adults

For full details see: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/research/researchagenda.cfm

CFP: Children in Theory for Postscript: deadline extended

Deadline extended from Nov 1 to Dec 1, 2011.

From the original call: To the degree that it is a social construction, childhood, as an idea, carries with it any number of assumptions and associations. Conversely, as a objective developmental period, childhood is interpreted in wildly different way within different contexts. Postscript: A Journal of Graduate Criticism and Theory invites articles for consideration for our Spring 2012 issue, a special edition on the theme “Children in Theory”. This issue will examine childhood from a multitude of perspectives. We welcome submissions from any humanities discipline on any aspect of children and childhood.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• literature or art for children
• representations of children
• care and discipline of children
• the education or instruction of children
• violence toward children
• the perspectives of children themselves
• the displacement of children
• childhood and class
• childhood and gender
• childhood and race

Postscript: A Journal of Graduate Criticism and Theory is an interdisciplinary journal published biannually through the Department of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland. For more see a copy of the call at the CRYTC site.

 

CFP: OCULA Student Award

The purpose of this award is "To promote OCULA to LIS students and provide an opportunity to participate in the OLA Super Conference." Deadline is November 15 -- see the website for more information on format and evaluation criteria:

http://www.accessola.org/OLA_Prod/OLAWEB/About/Awards/OCULA_Student_Award.aspx

LITA | Writing Award Guidelines

"The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is pleased to offer an award for the best unpublished manuscript submitted by a student or students enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate program.  Sponsored by LITA and Ex Libris, the award consists of $1,000, publication in LITA’s refereed journal, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), and a certificate.  The deadline for submission of the manuscript is February 28, 2012."

For more information on this prize for student penned manuscripts on any aspect of libraries and information technology, see the guidelines at: http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/involve/committees/exlibris/guidelines.cfm

Progressive Librarian Group: Meeting re: Neutrality

PLG meeting this week in the Grad Club Conference Room, 12pm, Wednesday October 5. Everyone is welcome.

see Cristina Naccarato's poster:

Download BeigeAlert

more reference resource controversies

In another New York Times article the controversies surrounding information in the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. Climate scientists contest claims about the speed at which Greenland's glaciers are melting, including mapping of ice-free parts of the coastline. Underlines the challenge of producing "neutral" information sources. Worth a read.

Felicity Barringer. "Scientists Want Publisher to Refreeze Greenland." NYTimes 24 September 2011, online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/science/earth/25atlas.html

Nunberg on Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary

Geoffrey Nunberg's essay in the NYT Sunday Book Review, "When a Dictionary Could Outrage" published online September 23, features the controversy that followed upon the 1961 publication of Webter's 3rd New International Dictionary. Nunberg tells us that the outrage went beyond the culture pages and was referred to in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories and in a New Yorker cartoon by Alan Dunn:

 

CFP: Journalism and Books

Call for Papers: The Intersection of Journalism and Books May 29, 2012 A Special Joint Session Sponsored by The CHA Media and Communication History Committee, The Bibliographical Society of Canada and The Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture The Media and Communication History Committee of the Canadian Historical Association, the Bibliographical Society of Canada and the Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture seek paper proposals for a special joint session to be held at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in spring 2012. The theme of this special joint session is “The Intersection of Journalism and Books.” Journalism is usually associated with regular, periodical publication or broadcast, while books are typically published individually, the timing of their appearance linked to the broad seasonal schedules of their publishers’ spring and fall lists. Yet there is an ongoing interplay between journalism and book publication that pre-dates the rise of the mass-audience newspaper in the late-nineteenth century and endures to the present day. In this special joint session, we would like to explore from an historical perspective “The Intersection of Journalism and Books.” As a starting point, we pose two basic questions: first, in what ways and for what reasons have journalists turned to book publication as a significant means of journalistic expression?; and, second, how and why have book publishers looked at journalists as valuable authors to place on their lists? Papers for this session might examine particular journalists whose careers encompass book publishing or book publishers whose lists are notable for the number of journalist-authored titles. Are there particular “journalistic genres” of book publication that merit attention, such as collections of previously-published newspaper columns, memoirs, or interviews originally produced for broadcast? Are there specific books that have effectively functioned as works of journalism (either non-fiction, such as Isabel LeBourdais’ work about Steven Truscott, or fiction, such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle) or more generally had a journalistic impact? Would a closer examination of the history of book publication call into question the definition of what we consider “journalism”? Is a journalist’s movement into book publishing from other forms of journalistic expression (eg. print periodicals, broadcasting, internet) simply a normal trajectory largely driven by an ambition to address a topic at greater length than other media allow, or is there a hierarchy of value among various forms of journalistic expression that attracts journalists to the medium of the book? These are just some of the questions that might be posed in relation to the theme of this special joint session. We invite proposals for papers that reflect on particular occurrences of “The Intersection of Journalism and Books” from any part of the world, and in any period of the past. Please submit a 250-word proposal, a one-page curriculum vitae, your contact information, and a description of AV needs to:  [email protected] (for members of the BSC or CASBC) or [email protected] (for CHA members). Deadline for Proposals:  Sept. 25, 2011