I’m excited to announce that the Association of College & Research Libraries has accepted the following edited book proposal project, which I’ll be co-editing with Ione T. Damasco (University of Dayton). Please read on – and submit your idea soon!
Call for Proposals: Catalyzing Critical Hope in Libraries: Narratives of Challenge and Change (forthcoming from ACRL)
Editors: Kaetrena Davis Kendrick and Ione T. Damasco
Library workers working in higher education have always contended with perennial concerns surrounding budget cuts, censorship of materials, and recruitment and retention, and these challenges exploded during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this summary, library workers and leaders continue to reel from alarming attacks on library collections, policies, funding, labor, and workplace safety–all while bearing witness to growing mistrust of institutions of public good. Complicating these issues are rollbacks (and in some cases, complete abandonment) of several core values of librarianship, as defined by the American Library Association; specifically, diversity, intellectual freedom, and privacy. Troubling aspects of industrial psychology, negative workplace behaviors, and organizational culture (e.g., vocational awe, bullying and mobbing, low-morale experiences) increasingly threaten library and cultural memory sustainability. LIS literature highlights worker disillusionment, as expressed through the phenomena of quiet quitting and involuntary staying. These developments also underscore ongoing concerns about library worker well-being as ongoing commentary and literature about emotional labor, burnout, and mental health support grow in the field.
Regardless of these ongoing and emerging conversations, LIS literature omits the established framework of critical hope, a long-standing praxis couched in social justice, collective care, and community-building. Inspired by Dr. Kari Grain (author of Critical Hope), and taking further lead from other legacy and contemporary educators and scholars (Freire 1994; Duncan-Andrade 2009; hooks 2013; Bishundat et al. 2018), this book introduces the concept and aims of critical hope, shares challenge events that usher in critical hope practice, and reveals LIS practitioner experiences with these events and their paths/outcomes of critical hope practice.
This book of ethnographies may act as both a compendium and a guide for LIS workers who seek voices of emotion, humanness, and experience that move beyond systems-, metrics- and process-only centered literature where identification and improvement of interpersonal communication, library development and advocacy, and organizational and/or industrial culture are concerned. This book offers a broad touchpoint for LIS workers seeking insight into this proven social justice framework, validation for their current experiences in rapidly shifting library workplaces, and a way forward that centers imagination, person-centered advocacy, and on-the-ground sustainability and courage in LIS practice and leadership.
Please see the full CFP – and submit your proposal soon!
