Just published: Archives and Special Collections as Sites of Contestation

Archives and special collections play a critical role in promoting social justice. This collection of essays interrogates library practices relating to archives and special collections. Funding and political choices often underpin acquisition, access and promotion of these collections, resulting in unequal representation, biased interpretations, and suppressed narratives. Archives and Special Collections as Sites of Contestation explores the reinterpretation and resituating of archives and special collections held by libraries, examines the development and stewardship of archives and special collections within a social justice framework, and describes the use of critical practice by libraries and librarians to shape and negotiate the acquisition, cataloguing, promotion, and use of archives and special collections. Chapters in this volume discuss the development of new collections through community outreach to marginalized and underrepresented groups, efforts to amend the historical documentary record through digitization projects, cataloguing, authority and description of archives and special collections, using a critical practice framework, ethical and political issues relating to donors, appraisal and access, curation, stewardship and promotion of controversial or sensitive collections, and the decolonization of space and collections.

Mary Kandiuk is the Visual Arts, Design & Theatre Librarian and a Senior Librarian at York University in Toronto, Canada. She holds a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Library Science from the University of Toronto. She is the author of two bibliographies of secondary criticism relating to Canadian literature published by Scarecrow Press and co-author of Digital Image Collections and Services (ARL Spec Kit, 2013). She is co-editor of the collection In Solidarity: Academic Librarian Labour Activism and Union Participation in Canada, published by Library Juice Press in 2014. Her most recent publications include articles on the topic of academic freedom. For more information see: http://mkandiuk.blog.yorku.ca/.