David Hudson Wins Fifth Annual Library Juice Paper Contest

October 1, 2017 by RoryLitwin

PRESS RELEASE
October 1, 2017
Sacramento, CA

Library Juice Press is happy to announce the winner of the Fifth Annual Library Juice Paper Contest. David James Hudson’s paper, titled, “On ‘Diversity’ as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies: A Critique,” published in the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, was judged by the award jury to be the best paper out of ten submitted in this year’s contest. The award jury consisted of three members who evaluated papers in a blind process. The jury wrote,

“On ‘Diversity’ as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Science Studies: A Critique” offers a nuanced and original engagement with the issue of persistent white supremacy in library and information science fields. Hudson positions the dominant professional discourse around diversity and inclusion as part of this intractable problem. The language of diversity, cultural competence, and privilege obscures the operation of racial power as a structural effect of white supremacy, limiting the field to approaches that address individual harms. Hudson embraces a broad interdisciplinary literature in order to make his claims, putting LIS in conversation with critical race, postcolonial, and feminist theories. In so doing, Hudson sharpens our vocabulary and deepens our thinking. His work challenges us to move beyond the “commodity solutions” [p. 25] of standards and toolkits to sustained critique that articulates and contests modes of power in LIS and the world in co-constructs.”

Mr. Hudson is Learning and Curriculum Support Librarian at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

The award for honorable mention goes to Rafia Mirza and Maura Seale’s “Who Killed the World? White Masculinity and the Technocratic Library of the Future,” published in Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science edited by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Library Juice Press, 2017).

The Library Juice Paper Contest winner receives an award of $1000. The intention of this contest is to encourage and reward good work in the field of library and information studies, humanistically understood, through a monetary award and public recognition. Papers submitted may be pending publication, or published (formally or informally) in the year of the award. Any type of paper may be entered as long as it is not a report of an empirical study. Examples of accepted forms would be literature review essays, analytical essays, historical research, and personal essays. The work may include some informal primary research, but may not essentially be the report of an empirical study.

The critera for judgment are:

– Clarity of writing
– Originality of thought
– Sincerity of effort at reaching something true
– Soundness of argumentation (where applicable)
– Relevance to our time and situation

Entries in next year’s award are due August 1st, 2018.

Library Juice Press is an imprint of Litwin Books, LLC specializing in theoretical and practical issues in librarianship from a critical perspective, for an audience of professional librarians and students of library science.

Media contact:
Rory Litwin
218-260-6115
rory@libraryjuicepress.com
PO Box 188784, Sacramento, CA 95818