CFP: CAPAL 21 Virtual Conference

April 5, 2021

The Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) invites you to participate in its annual conference, to be held online May 19-21, 2021. This year the conference will be free to attend for both members and non-members. 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.

The theme of CAPAL21: EDI in Academic Libraries – How are we doing?

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, anti-inclusion narratives, and other issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion both from a worker and a user perspective. How deep are these roots? What strategies might we use to engage in mitigating the effects of colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-diversity for library employees and library patrons in our immediate environment and beyond?

Potential Topics:

Papers presented might address aspects of the following intersecting themes: equity, diversity, and inclusion, which includes but is not limited to gender, sex, race, class, sexuality, and/or disability. For example,

• How does librarianship, and especially academic librarianship hope to tackle issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• How can libraries more effectively hire, mentor, and retain staff from diverse backgrounds and experiences?
• How (in)sufficiently are library schools incorporating the needs of diverse users as they develop/update new curriculum (e.g. accessibility, universal design)?
• How do efforts to be more inclusive affect our relationship with library users in areas such as collection development, information literacy instruction, digital scholarship, library services, and community engagement, among others?
• How have you adapted your pedagogy/praxis as a result of EDI and curriculum changes?
• What measures has your library put in place to assess how effectively EDI commitments are being implemented?

The Program Committee invites proposals for individual presentations from students, practitioners, researchers, and academics. Presentations must be original.

• Presentations are typically 20 minutes in length.
• Panel presentations are typically 60 minutes in length and include three panelists.
• Lightning talks, approximately 5 to 10 minutes in length. Lightning talks can describe current research, works-in-progress, or other projects related to the conference theme.

Proposals may be submitted in English or French.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and a presentation title using the conference submission form: https://forms.gle/fDziPjEQijkN2cRh8

Questions should be directed to the Program Committee: capalproposals21@gmail.com

Deadline for Proposals is: April 21st, 2021

(Via Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians)