CFP: Core Values in Theory and Practice: A Special Issue of Library Trends

Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice: A Special Issue of Library Trends (February 2016)

Editors: Selinda A. Berg and Heidi LM Jacobs
Leddy Library, University of Windsor
ValuingLibrarianship@gmail.com

In 2004, the American Library Association (ALA)’s Core Values of Librarianship statement identified eleven core values:

Access
Confidentiality and privacy
Democracy
Diversity
Education and lifelong learning
Intellectual freedom
Preservation
The public good
Professionalism
Service
Social responsibility

As the ALA document explains, “the foundation of modern librarianship rests on an essential set of core values that define, inform, and guide our professional practice.These values reflect the history and ongoing development of the profession and have been advanced, expanded, and refined by numerous policy statements of the American Library Association.”

While the ALA is not the only national library association to articulate their core values, 2014 marks the ten-year anniversary of the ALA’s adoption of this statement. Such an anniversary offers us a useful opportunity to consider how core values have shaped, influenced, and informed libraries and librarianship in North America and around the world.

Individual values such as democracy, diversity, access, and social responsibility have been the subject of inquiry by prominent scholars in library studies. There has not, however, been a coherent collection of scholarship addressing these specific, individual values in the practice of librarianship. Valuing Librarianship, a special issue of Library Trends, is an attempt to redress this absence within the context of public, school, special, and academic libraries.

This proposed issue of Library Trends will invite practicing librarians and LIS scholars to address librarianship’s present and future in relation to its core values. Using the ALA Core Values of Librarianship statement as a framework, Valuing Librarianship will explore how these core values have informed, influenced, guided, and contextualized libraries and librarianship in the past ten years and consider how these values might guide our profession in the future.

Contributors are invited to select one specific core value and consider questions such as:

• How has this value evolved over the last ten years?
• How do librarians enact and advocate for this particular core value? Are librarians successful in their advocacy?
• Where does this particular value emerge in librarianship or libraries? Is attention to this value changing libraries, the work we do in the profession, or the profession itself?
• Other questions that look specifically at how one core value reflects, informs, guides, or challenges current practices and thought within libraries or librarianship.

Values are a key building block of one’s professional identity and librarians must define, describe, and enact these values daily. This special issue of Library Trends will work toward articulating these values in meaningful ways in order to build upon the foundations of librarianship and shape it for the future.

Submissions: For consideration in Valuing Librarianship, please submit the following to ValuingLibrarianship@gmail.com by June 15, 2014:

An abstract of 500 words that clearly identifies the selected core value
A 50-100 word biographical statement of author(s)
A list of author’s/authors’ selected and relevant publications and presentations with links as available.

Preliminary Publication Timeline:
June 15, 2014: Abstracts (500 words) due
September 1, 2014: Notification of acceptance decisions
January 15, 2015: Full papers due
June 15, 2015: Final revisions due
February, 2016: Publication

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