Workshop Description

Abstract

The IU Libraries are planning an invitational workshop on international and area studies librarianship and collections to be held at Indiana University on October 30 and 31, 2013. With this workshop, we propose to debate, think, and develop an agenda for continued conversations that will keep area and international studies librarianship linked to ongoing developments and strategies in the library and information world as it responds to changes and shifts in higher education. We envision several potential outcomes, e.g., plans for collaboration on international partnerships, programs for the training of area studies librarians, positioning area and international studies collections and librarians within the context of current trends in research libraries. The need to address area and international library collections within the contexts of the changing nature of research libraries as well as discussions and efforts to “internationalize” our campuses is reflected in two conferences in the fall of 2012, one at Yale on “International & Area Studies Collections in the 21st Century” (November 2012), and “The Global Dimensions of Scholarship and Research Libraries” at Duke University in December 2012. These topics are also discussed within area studies librarians’ associations, as for example at a joint panel of Romance and Germanist Language Discussion Groups (WESS) on “New Directions for Collection Development in North American Research Institutions” at the upcoming meeting of the American Library Association, and at two connected roundtables organized by the Africana Librarians Council at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in November this year: “Telling Our Story, Part I: Positioning African Studies to Thrive within Changing Research and Political Landscapes”, and “Telling our Story, Part II: Cross-Dialogue for Strategies to Sustain Area Studies – Libraries, Archives, and Scholarship”. In this last respect, we also hope that our workshop will bring some of these conferences together, possibly in form of a larger conference on these issues at the national level.