https://www.firsts-online.com

A treasure trove of open access articles of interest to library history enthusiasts in the current and back issues!: https://rbm.acrl.org/index.php/rbm/issue/archive

Interesting story!: https://www.medievalists.net/2024/11/lost-medieval-library-found-romanian-church/

2025 Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Award opens for submissions in January.  Applications due by January 31, 2025.

The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) sponsors the biennial Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Award.

The award, named in honor of a library historian widely known as a supportive advisor and mentor as well as a rigorous scholar and thinker, recognizes outstanding dissertations in English in the general area of library history. The author of the selected dissertation will receive a certificate and five hundred dollars.

Dissertations completed and accepted during the preceding two academic years are eligible. Dissertations completed in 2023 and 2024 will be considered for the 2025 award cycle.

Dissertations must be original research on a significant topic relating to the history of libraries during any period, in any region of the world. Entries are judged on clear definition of research questions and/or hypotheses, use of appropriate primary resources, depth of research, superior quality of writing, and significance of conclusions. The LHRT is particularly interested in dissertations that place the subject within its broader historical, social, cultural, and political context and that make interdisciplinary connections with print culture and/or information studies.

Submissions for the next award cycle will open in January 2025. Applicants will be asked to submit one electronic copy of the approved and signed dissertation and a signed letter of support from the doctoral advisor or dissertation committee chair at the degree-granting institution.

For more information, please visit:

https://www.ala.org/lhrt/awards/phyllis-dain-library-history-dissertation-award

——————————
Deborah Smith
Executive Director
Jones Memorial Library

Kyoto University Emeritus Professor Yoshitaka Kawasaki has translated several of my books into Japanese, including American Public School Librarianship:  A History. Johns Hopkins University Press, my publisher, just sent me five copies.  I’ll save one, but I will be happy to send copies of the other four to anyone or any library that could make use of it for the cost of shipping (probably $5).  Let me know off list if you want one.

Wayne A. Wiegand
wwiegandfsu@gmail.com

You may have seen the recent series of posts initiated by Dr. Kathleen de la Peña McCook on ALA Connect commemorating influential library workers, a part of the build up towards ALA’s sesquicentennial anniversary. Thank you to Dr. McCook for allowing LHRT News & Notes to preserve these memories on the page below! Dr. McCook wrote many of the essays herself and others have followed. Stay tuned as we’ll continue to add posts in coming days…and please consider penning one about a library worker who influenced you.

Librarians We Have Lost, Sesquicentennial Memories -1976-2026

Call for Book Chapter Proposals for Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations

Editors: Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marschall, Molly McGuire, Nina Schneider, and Emily D. Spunaugle

Loss is inevitable in heritage preservation, and a nuanced understanding of the fundamental role of loss is essential to collections preservation, permanence, and sustainability. Cultural memory and heritage workers, too, face many other kinds of loss within the workplace that impacts their labor, including loss of resources, safety nets, and colleagues. 

The conference organizers of the 2023 online conference, “Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations,” co-hosted by the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Oakland University Libraries, seek proposals for additional chapters for an edited collection based on the conference theme. This collection will consider the ongoing reassessment of memory and heritage work and heritage ownership, as it is understood by libraries, archives and related organizations, through an examination of the multiple meanings, complexities, and resonances of loss.

Featuring the voices of practitioners and scholars of libraries, museums, and archives, this volume will grapple with questions including, What is heritage and cultural property, and to whom do they belong? Who owns the past, and what does such ownership mean? How can a sustained interrogation of collection and heritage loss be productively leveraged to reckon with other kinds of loss in the cultural memory and heritage workspace? 

We invite proposals from diverse perspectives on a range of topics including, but not limited to, the following:
-Theft, repatriation, virtual reunification, shared print/collection development
-Endangered archives, postcustodial archival practice
-Approaches to loss in preservation and conservation
-Other related aspects of practice and research

We areespecially interested in receiving proposals in the following areas:

-Deaccessioning, redirections, removals

-Human and resource loss, including loss of institutional knowledge, in and beyond the workplace

-Loss and conservation of collections

We welcome proposals of chapters that will thoughtfully engage with experiences derived from the practice of scholar-practitioners, including librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, scholars, museum professionals, students, and other stakeholders at any point in their careers, from institutions and organizations of all sizes, and including independent researchers.

Timeline for Accepted Proposals:

• April 2025: Completed first drafts of no more than 6,500 words (references included) due to editors
• May/June 2025: Editors review chapters
• June 2025: Editors return feedback to authors
• September 2025: Authors submit final draft to editors
• October 2025: Typescript due to publisher.
  

Please submit proposals (400-word maximum) using the following form: https://forms.gle/ek3vmf8sCqDjPb4F8Please submit proposals by December 6. Submitters will be notified by January 6.

Emily D. Spunaugle (she / her), MSLS, PhD

Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections

Associate Professor

Oakland University Libraries

248-370-2498 spunaugle@oakland.edu

Dear Colleagues,

Today, in a small gesture of tribute, I shared Cynthia Graham Hurd’s story and impact on me at our panel session Charting Turbulent Skies: Can Libraries Sustain Anti-Racist Efforts in Our Politicized Climate? at the Charleston Conference 2024. I will never forget Cynthia’s life and values—a reminder of what librarians can stand for: resilience, justice, and above all, inclusion. May all librarians and information professionals strive to honor her vision by championing libraries as places of peace and inclusion, even amid turbulent times.

Cynthia Graham Hurd (1960–2015) was a beloved librarian and community leader in Charleston who served her community for over 31 years. Guided by her conviction that “Libraries are always inclusive, never exclusive,” she devoted her life to fostering compassion, inclusion, and public service. Her life was tragically cut short in the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Yet her legacy lives on through the Cynthia Graham Hurd Foundation, literacy programs, scholarships in her name, and the renaming of the St. Andrews Library branch, where she once managed. The City of Charleston has also honored her by designating the area around the AME Church as the Mother Emanuel Way Memorial District.

Two memorials to Cynthia have a special meaning for me. Though I never met Cynthia or the other members of the Mother Emanuel Nine, their story had a profound impact on my life. Inspired by them, I returned to library work, creating the Anti-Racism Digital Library (ADL) as a clearinghouse for anti-racism, dedicated to the nine victims of the Emanuel AME Charleston 2015 shooting. Discovering that the term “anti-racism,” while an official Library of Congress subject heading, was underutilized in favor of materials focused on “racism,” I asked: How can we practice anti-racism if our vocabulary primarily reflects racism? In 2020, the Library of Congress added the ADL to its permanent web archive. Today, it is being reimagined by another young librarian and scholar as the Global Library for Anti-Racism and Digital Citizenship, extending Cynthia’s vision of libraries as inclusive spaces that foster understanding and embrace all.

The second tribute is a living memorial of ten cherry and five elm trees planted in front of the Gaillard Center in Charleston. The tree honoring Cynthia bears a simple but moving plaque: Mrs. Cynthia Graham Hurd, God-fearing. Compassionate. There is a lovely fountain, roses, and benches in this living memorial garden. The Gaillard Center, one of three venues hosting the 2024 Charleston Conference, lies across from the historic AME Church, where another plaque reads, Love is stronger than hate. These trees embody the spirit of compassion of the Mother Emanuel Nine, and the surviving congregation, and I’ve had the privilege of walking past them each day this week. The words inside the church resonate as the trees flourish nearby—a testament to the healing power of forgiveness. Over 2,200 librarians, vendors, and publishers have walked through this living memorial garden this week, several times, en route to difficult conversations, learning, and networking.

If you would like to see pictures of the living memorial garden, please let me know. Cynthia’s accomplishments and service are also documented on the Cynthia Graham Hurd Wikipedia page. Thank you.

Warm regards,

Anita

Anita S. Coleman, PhD | Infophilia | Antiracism Digital Library & Thesaurus | iSchool@UIUC | BlueSky

Many in the library history community may be familiar with Al Kagan’s Progressive Library Organizations: A Worldwide History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015). Kagan has just published an update article to this book in The Journal of Radical Librarianship that is available open access at: https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/126/107

The first update article (covering 2013-2017) appeared in volume 4, 2018.

University of Mississippi Press is offering a limited time, holiday sale of Dr. Wayne Wiegand’s recent book, In Silence or Indifference:  Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries (https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/I/In-Silence-or-Indifference). It can be purchased at 50% discount, with free domestic shipping for orders over $60.  It is a website sale only.  If you have difficulty ordering, you can go to:  https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Ordering/Ordering-Video.