FYI. Feel free to distribute.

Cheers,

Loriene Roy



Call for Manuscripts for Special issue of Multicultural Review

Libraries as a public good in 21st century multicultural societies: Policy and 
the politics of literacy, libraries and librarianship

Guest Editors: Curtis Brewer, Anne McMahan Grant (Clemson University)

When it comes to recent national budget discussions, funding for library 
services has come up short. For example, a 9% cut has been proposed for the 
FY2012 budget to the Institute for Museum and Library Services, an organization 
that provides assistance to the nations libraries. (President, 2011) And, on a 
local level, according to a recent Library Journal poll, 72% of responding 
libraries said that their budgets had been cut during FY2010 with one library 
staff person making the pointed observation that "Public libraries are not 
sacred cows any more, and librarians need to accept this and make their 
libraries viable to protect them against future challenges" (Kelley, 2011 p. 
28). With these newly limited budgets, libraries are moving toward changing 
their image from the library as a storehouse for books to the library as a 
learning commons or an information gateway designed to help patrons not only 
find information, but to help them determine good information from bad 
(Casserly, 2002). A strong argument could be made that the development and 
support for libraries as a public good are central to an everchanging 
multi-cultural information society with the provision of library services 
playing a central role. The simple fact is that libraries are no longer merely 
storehouses of information. Outreach services have expanded as more libraries 
have internet accessible chat services that provide a personal librarian for 
anyone who can access a web page. This is especially true in academic libraries 
as one study found that 84% of libraries surveyed offered instant messaging 
services via their web page (Tripathi, 2010). Hospitals have librarians who 
assist medical staff in finding crucial research for their patients (Abels, 
2002). Schools and universities have librarians to train students to filter the 
vast amounts of information that they will encounter in their daily lives as 
well as to provide them access to research materials (The State of America's 
Libraries, 2011). And communities have libraries that give them access to the 
internet, provide safe places for patrons to learn, and gives them free access 
to materials that could lead to public discussions that may reshape our 
understanding of ourselves and others (How Libraries Stack Up, 2010). Given the 
possibly robust dividends a public investment in libraries, librarians and 
literacy programs could provide, it is important to interrogate how the 
political and policy context are currently shaping these possibilities.

The study of politics, policy and multiculturalism makes us acutely aware of 
how the framing of problem definitions, research and policies shapes public 
understanding of an issue (Fraser 1989; Hajer and Waagner 2003). Therefore, in 
this special issue we seek to pay close attention to how dominant values, 
institutionalized power, privilege, and the policy process itself interact to 
frame and reframe literacy, libraries and librarians as political issues in 
multicultural societies in the early twenty-first century. We seek articles 
that will help make sense of this changing policy environment for all 
practitioners concerned with libraries or literacy.

In this special issue of the Multicultural Review we ask for manuscripts that 
might address the following questions:

1. What is the state of the politics of libraries in these times of 
retrenchment? What knowledge might help practitioners navigate the changing 
policy contexts?

2. How do the dominant values within our society create avenues for change or 
act as barriers in the development of policies that address libraries, 
librarians and literacy?

3. What are the experiences of patrons and those working in libraries across 
multiple contexts in this time of retrenchment?

4. How are librarians and supporters of public libraries currently influencing 
the creation of policy?

5. How do the dominant political discourses constitute the library as a public 
institution and how is this related to inequality?

6. What role do libraries and literacy programs play in the creation of space 
for a more democratic, deliberative and inclusive forms of political 
participation?

We assume each manuscript should clearly articulate a conceptual framework 
grounded in, and informed by theory and relevant research. We want to emphasize 
the importance of maintaining a focus on the politics of your substantive 
topic/area in your work, including political theories that interact with 
multicultural theory when relevant. We would also like to emphasize the breadth 
of the readership of MCR and encourage authors explicitly show the relevancy of 
their argument to the work in the field.

Possible themes may include:

The role of interest group development in the change of literacy policy;

A critical analysis of the racialization of libraries and librarianship 
advocacy and their relationships to the growing digital divide;

The ways in which political theories around social movements and fearless 
speech can shape the potential for the reframing of political discourses;

The use of radical democratic theory to inform the advocacy discussions 
surrounding literacy and libraries;

The use of feminist theory to analyze the development of politics of library 
and/or literacy policy;

An institutional analysis of the interactions between accountability policy, 
library policy and literacy policy in a multicultural society;

An economic/structural analysis of the distribution of funding for libraries 
and literacy programs;

An historical account of the development and evolution of the federal 
involvement in the public library in order to shed light on our current policy 
debates for all those who are currently working as practitioners.

For this special issue of the Multicultrual Review we invite papers that 
interrogate and challenge the assumptions within the themes described above. 
Submissions may be either qualitative, quantitative or interpretive/conceptual 
manuscripts that address the questions and areas outlined above will be 
considered. Manuscripts should meet the 6th edition of APA Publication Manual 
and a maximum of 8000 words in length. The deadline for submission is September 
15, 2011.

Please direct submissions, questions or abstracts to the guest editors
Curtis Brewer ([log in to unmask]) and Anne McMahan Grant ([log in to unmask])

Sources

Abels, Eileen G., Keith W. Cogdill, and Lisl Zach. The contributions of library 
and information services to hospitals and academic health sciences centers: a 
preliminary taxonomy, J Med Libr Assoc. 2002 July; 90(3): 276284.

Casserly, Mary. Developing a Concept of Collection for the Digital Age. portal: 
Libraries and the Academy, Volume 2, Number 4, October 2002, pp. 577-587.

Fraser, N. (1989). Unruly practices: Power, discourse and gender in 
contemporary social theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hajer, M. A., & Wagenaar, H. (Eds.). (2003). Deliberative policy analysis: 
Understanding governance in the network society. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press.

How Libraries Stack Up: 2010, OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) Report.

Kelley, M. Bottoming out: Severe cuts today put big question marks on the 
future. Library Journal (1976) v. 136 no. 1 (January 2011) p. 28-31.

President Obama's Budget Strips FY2012 Funding. American Libraries v. 42 no. 
3/4 (March/April 2011) p. 8.

The State of America's Libraries 2011 - A report by the American Library 
Association, April, 2011.

Tripathi, Manorama and Sunil Kumar. Use of Web 2.0 tools in academic libraries: 
A reconnaissance of the international landscape. The International  Information 
& Library Review Volume 42, Issue 3, September 2010, p. 195-207.
*********************************************************************
Professor
School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin
1616 Guadalupe St., Suite #5.202
Austin, TX 78701-1213

Phone: (512) 471-3959; Fax: (512) 471-8285
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~loriene/index.html
Blog: "Pin-ding-u-daud-ewin. To enter into one another's lodges,"
 	http://lorieneroy.blogspot.com/

Project Director, "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything", a national reading
 	club for Native children: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ifican
Convener, IFLA, Library Services to Multicultural Populations,
 	Special Interest Group on Indigenous Matters,
 	http://www.ifla.org/en/indigenous-matters
Senior Trustee, LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund. Find out more at 
merrittfund.org
Chair-Elect, ALA International Relations Round Table
Advisory Board Member, www.webjunction.org