Call for Proposals: Chapters for Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis. Due September 15

Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis (An Edited
Collection)

Editors:
Shana Higgins and Lua Gregory are instruction and reference librarians at
University of Redlands.

Outline:
In her award winning essay “Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical
Praxis,” Heidi L.M. Jacobs draws out the inherent democratizing and social
justice elements of information literacy as defined in the “Alexandria
Proclamation On Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning.”    She suggests
that because of these underlying social justice elements, information literacy
“is not only educational but also inherently political, cultural, and
social” (258).  We propose to extend the discussion of information literacy
and its social justice aspects that James Elmborg, Cushla Kapitzke, Maria T.
Accardi, Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier, and Maura Smale have begun.  If we
consider the democratizing values implicit in librarianship’s professional
ethics (such as intellectual freedom, social responsibility, diversity,
democracy and privacy, among others) in relation to the sociopolitical context
of information literacy, we will begin to make intentional connections between
professional advocacy and curriculum and pedagogy.  We hope this book will
encourage a renewal of professional discourse about libraries in their social
context, through a re-activation of the “neutrality debate,” as well as
through an investigation of what it means for a global citizen to be
information literate in late capitalism.

Objective of book:
This edited collection, to be published by Library Juice Press in Fall 2012,
poses the following questions: What are the limits of standards and outcomes,
such as ACRL’s "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher
Education," in fitting information literacy instruction to the complex contexts
of information in the real world?  Would the teaching of social justice and the
democratizing values of the library profession strengthen critical information
literacy in the classroom?  And how do we balance the need to teach search
skills and critical information literacy in our instructional efforts?

Target audience:
The target audience for this book includes instruction librarians, library
instruction program coordinators, faculty and instructors interested in
information literacy, and all librarians interested in the political, economic,
social, and cultural contexts of the production, dissemination, suppression,
and consumption of information.

Possible topics:
We encourage proposals on the intersections of information literacy instruction
with the democratizing values of the library profession.

•         Possible topics may include information literacy aspects of media
coverage of war and embedded journalism, renewal of the Patriot Act,
market-based censorship, for-profit libraries (Library Systems & Services), EPA
library closures and access to environmental information, immigrants and
library access, Wikileaks and government censorship, corporate censorship,
anti-communism and anti-socialism in the media, classification of government
documents, international and comparative studies on censorship, First Amendment
protection to whistleblowers and the press, British Petroleum and oil spill
research, global warming censorship, and library database mergers.

•         Examples of information literacy sessions focusing on the above
topics and/or framed by democratizing and social justice values of the library
profession. Examples can also be aimed at specific disciplines.

•         Discussions of theories/theorists (e.g. Noam Chomsky, Edward S.
Herman, C. Wright Mills, Paulo Friere, Peter McClaren, etc.) and their
usefulness in illuminating sociopolitical contexts of information within the
classroom.

•         Discussions on the “neutrality debate” in light of the
sociopolitical and cultural context of information.

Submission Guidelines:
Please submit abstracts and proposals of up to 500 words to
ilandsocialjustice@gmail.com by September 15, 2011.  Notifications will be sent
by November 1 and manuscripts from 1,500-7,000 words will be due by March 1,
2012.