(via Megan Kinney, City College of San Francisco)
In 2022, the California Conference on Library Instruction (CCLI) invites presenters to share the ways their instruction work imagined or adapted something new in their setting or the ways their current work explores and contains the groundwork for a future vision. The Conference, themed “Engaging in Speculative Pedagogy: Reimagining Library Futures with Creative Foresight”, will take place online Friday, May 13. See below for more details.
The push by some librarians to resist dominant structures and policies by imagining something different has opened the door to new possibilities. The possibilities latent in library work, in openness and universal access, require that librarians change, demolish and build. Emerging instruction pedagogies and practices based on these possibilities are humanizing librarians and our users, as well as creating visibility through greater representation. Possibilities for deconstruction of the dominant paradigm arise from librarians seeking out nontraditional publication formats and challenging long held conventions and practices (e.g., controlled vocabularies) that no longer hold up. When librarians see students’ realities, we are catalyzed toward not only radical creation of new programs, policies, collections, and spaces; but also new approaches to instruction. Putting the traditional and safe aside–allowing ourselves to engage in the speculative–has the power to propel our imaginations and dream the impossible.
The deadline to submit proposals is now Friday, November 19. More information on the proposal process is available here. For additional background on the Conference, please go here.