Keynote Announced + CFP Extension!

The Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) Conference Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that Randi Dalton has agreed to deliver the keynote address at CAPAL20.

Randi Dalton is a Haudenosaunee librarian from Bay City, Michigan. She uses her position as a Native librarian to hold space for Indigenous people and other communities of colour. She and her siblings grew up in a white, rural area where representation was sparse, and it has become her passion to ensure everyone can see themselves in their local public library. Randi has worked in the library world since 2011 and has been the children's director for the Caro Area District Library since 2015. When she is not at the library, you can find her volunteering at her local community theatre.

Please note that we have also extended the Call for Proposals to February 10th - see below.

The Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) invites you to participate in its annual conference, to be held as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2020, at the  University of Western Ontario, “situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron (Neutral) peoples, on lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796, and with the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. This land continues to be home to diverse Indigenous peoples who are recognized as contemporary stewards of the land and vital contributors to society” (Congress 2020). This conference offers librarians and allied professionals across all disciplines an alternative space to share research and scholarship, challenge current thinking about professional issues, and forge new relationships.

Note: The CAPAL20 Program Committee has chosen to change aspects of the previous CFP. Upon hearing concerns from membership that there was no specific mention of anti-black racism, this has since been added to the CAPAL20 theme.

Theme

In keeping with the Congress 2020 theme, Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism, the theme of CAPAL20 is Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism in the Library.

This conference provides an opportunity for the academic library community to critically examine and discuss the ways in which our profession is immersed in colonial and anti-Black narratives, both from a worker and a patron perspective. How deep are these roots? What strategies might we use to engage in mitigating the effects of colonialism and anti-Black racism for library employees and library patrons in our immediate environment and beyond?  Can we counteract the endemic dehumanisation of Indigenous and Black people in the library and our communities?

Potential Topics:

Papers presented might relate to aspects of the following themes (though they need not be limited to them):

• What does it mean to have a colonised space? What does it mean to decolonise? Is decolonisation possible? How does librarianship, and especially academic librarianship -- a mostly homogeneous group -- hope to tackle these issues?
• How do efforts to decolonise affect our relationship with our patrons? Our community?
• Where is the intersection between labour and decolonisation? How does the library school pipeline figure into it?
• Intellectual and academic freedom: What is at the intersection between decolonisation and academic freedom? Can they be reconciled?

The Program Committee invites proposals for individual papers as well as proposals for panel submissions of three papers. Proposed papers must be original and not have been published elsewhere.

• Individual papers are typically 20 minutes in length. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words and a presentation title, with a brief biographical statement and your contact information.
• For complete panels, please submit a panel abstract of no more than 200 words as well as a list of all participants and brief biographical statements, and a separate abstract of no more than 200 words for each presenter. Please identify and provide participants’ contact information for the panel organizer.
• Proposals may be submitted in English or French

Please feel free to contact the Program Committee to discuss a topic for a paper, panel, or other session format. Proposals should be emailed as an attachment in your preferred format (open formats welcome!), using the following filename convention:

• Lastname_Keywordoftopic.<extension>

Proposals and questions should be directed to the Program Chair, John Fink, john.fink+capalproposals@gmail.com 

Deadline for Proposals is: February 10th, 2020

Further information about the conference, as well as Congress 2020 more broadly, will be available soon.