Call for Papers: Public Libraries and Geographies of Knowledge

 

Libraries gave [ and still give] us power * …

*apologies to Manic Street Preachers for adapting the opening lyrics to their 1996 anthem A Design for Life, but, you know, Knowledge is Power, so they still do …

Public Libraries are spaces much loved and treasured by associates here at Geography Workshop for their multiple-user spaces, access to people, knowledge worlds and ideas, they are arguably the most emancipatory of places and thus a bedrock of a civil, forward-visioned, intelligent, thoughtful and hopeful society.

It is acutely timely that their historical and cultural geographies are valued and noted: how they have been shaped, utilised and how they have enriched cultures and society in the past and present to give value, voice and testimony to their cultural, educational, social and economic significance gives greater clarity as to what might be being lost through what is arguably the most widespread attack on public and civic educational community spaces hitherto unknown as local authorities are forced to adopt asset-stripping exercises in an effort to navigate central government’s economic campaign of austerity.

CILIP have noted that on average two public libraries a week were closed in England during 2015 and since the autumn budget statement, more local authorities are proposing the reduction of their public library services by at least 50%. The testimonial act of valuing public libraries by collecting together accounts, stories, lives, archives of their past but also of the current actions in the present (in-situ site-specific experiences of librarians and users as local authorities adopt different political strategies to manage public resources) remains a vital act of archival activism.

To find out more about advocacy and campaigning for your public library and local museum services, see CILIP website here:

http://www.cilip.org.uk/advocacy-campaigns-awards/advocacy-campaigns/my-library-right

You can also sign a petition campaigning for protection of the statutory right to accessing a public library here:

https://www.change.org/p/john-whittingdale-hm-government-act-now-to-protect-my-statutory-rights-to-a-quality-public-library-service

If you would like to present research concerning the historical, philosophical and cultural geographies of public libraries, please read and reply the call for papers below.

Thank you.

 

Call For Papers: RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 30 August – 2 September 2016.

Public Libraries and the Geographies of Knowledge.

Sponsored by History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG)

Deadline for Abstracts: 8 February 2016

Session Convenor:  Dr Jo Norcup (Geography Workshop).

Abstract:

Work on the geographies of knowledge has focused on a number of different spaces and institutions such as the laboratory and the field. While geographers have paid increased attention in recent years to geographies of the book (Keighren 2010, Ogborn and Withers 2010, Keighren, Withers and Bell, 2015), the archive (Gagen et al 200, Lorimer 2010, Mills, 2013) and private / members institutional library collections (Craggs 2008; Driver 2013) there remains a notable gap concerning the geographies of knowledge associated with public libraries: libraries and local archives and special collections bequeathed or given under statute for the free lending and provision of books, music and other cultural resources for the enrichment of the local community in its fullest conception.  While British public libraries have a deep and rich cultural and political history (Kelly, 1977; Black and Hoare, 2006), contemporaneous pressures on local authority budgets with proposed cuts by central government as part of a wider campaign of ‘austerity’ have seen over a thousand public libraries become ‘divested’ from public control to a range of voluntary, charitable and business led initiatives, while estimates from  the Chartered Institute of  Library and Information professionals (CILIP) that two libraries a week closed in 2015 with over half of public libraries ear-marked for closure across Local Authorities or reconfigured in other premises (Smith 2015). The histories and geographies of knowledge shaped by the public library are therefore a topic of acute contemporary relevance.

This session invites papers covering any time period and geographical location, although there is particular interest in papers attending to public libraries in the post World War 2 era. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

Libraries in city, country and suburbia

The geographical organisation of the library system

The role and status of the public librarian

Libraries and codes of conduct (including sonic conduct)

Public libraries as spaces of education

Public libraries and community engagement

Public libraries and civic/vernacular geographies

Public libraries, local authority museums and archiving the local

Geographical imaginations cultivated by the public library

Citizenship and public libraries

Libraries as educationally transgressive spaces / spaces of intellectual and social mobility

Mobile libraries and their geographies of knowledge

 

Proposals for papers, with an abstract of up to 250 words, should be sent to Jo at info@geographyworkshop.com no later than 8th February 2016.

 

Black, A. And Hoare, P. (2006) The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland.  Volume iii, 1850 – 2000.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Craggs, R (2008) Situating the imperial archive: the Royal Empire Society Library, 1868 – 1945. Journal of Historical Geography 34(1) 48 – 67.

Driver, F (2013) Hidden histories made visible? Reflections on a geographical exhibition. TIBG 38(3) 420-435.

Gagen, E. Lorimer, H. And Vasudevan, A. (2007) Practising the Archive: Reflections on Method and Practise in Historical Geography. HGRG. RGS-IBG.

Keighren, I. Withers, C.W.J. Bell, B (2015) Travels in Print: exploring, writing and publishing with John Murray, 1773 – 1859. University of Chicago Press.

Kelly, T (1977) History of the Public Library in Great Britain 1845 – 1975.  The Library Association, London.

Lorimer, H. (2010) Caught in the Nick of Time: Archives and Fieldwork. Chapter 14 in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Geography (ed DeLyser, D. et al) 248 – 273.

Mills, S. (2013) Cultural-Historical Geography of the Archive: Fragments, Objects and Ghosts in Geography Compass 7:10, 710 – 713.

Smith, A. (2015) Public Library and other stories. Penguin.

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