ACRL/NY 2020 Annual Symposium
Civic Engagement: Democracy and the Library

December 4, 2020 
Virtual Symposium

For this year's ACRL/NY Symposium, we are seeking proposals for presentations and panels about the intersection of libraries and research institutions with civics, governance, and democracy. How are civic issues impacting collections and services? How do libraries foster engagement with civic issues and the democratic process throughout the community? How do ideas of “library neutrality” affect how we engage with these issues? We welcome proposals from all positions of library staff. 

Potential perspectives include but are not limited to:

Diverse voices: participation of diverse groups in decision making and programming

Ethical Leadership: explorations of institutional authority and power dynamics, formal and informal practices of good governance and resistance

Public Services, Outreach, and Instruction: library programming, creative partnerships in and outside the institution, information literacy

Acquisitions/Collection Development: new and interesting collections meant to encourage civic discussion and activism, purchasing issues, resources sharing

Technical Services and Access:  authority control and the algorithmic impact of information retrieval, scholarly communications, artificial intelligence

Format: The ACRL/NY 2020 Symposium will be held completely virtually. We are seeking proposals to fill 60 Minute (50-minute presentation; 10 minutes Q&A) and 30 Minute (20-minute presentation; 10 minute Q&A) slots. We are open to a mixture of presentation types and formats. 

Proposals should be 250-500 words in length. Proposals must be submitted by June 26th ­­­.

Abstracts of presentations can be submitted using this form: https://acrlnyforms.wufoo.com/forms/acrlny-2020-symposium-save-the-date-cfp/ 

Questions regarding submitting or about the Symposium, in general, can be sent to acrlnysymposiumchair@gmail.com