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CALL FOR PAPERS

Themes
Procedure and Requirements
The Fifth Room
Guidelines
Review Panel

Call for Papers

All papers are to be in English or Chinese and the presenter must be fluent in English or Chinese.

Themes

The conference will cover a broad range of topics on the library service for the information literacy of rural community, including:

Theme 1. Innovations - bringing libraries into the 21st Century

How will the wave of technology innovations such as the Kindle, Web 2.0, RFID, interactive media, and cloud computing change our conventional conception of the library and librarians? What innovations will meet the challenges of the digital divide between the poor rural communities and the wealthier urban societies? We are looking for survey studies, trend analysis, best practice case studies and evaluations in the context of this theme.

Theme 2. Foundations of Library Development - the law/regulations, standards, and associations

Laws, regulations, professional organizations, education and training programs, and the standards they develop form the foundation of library development in most countries. China is now at the stage of building this foundation. We are looking for papers exploring and sharing experiences from their home country on this theme.

Theme 3. Reading and Literacy

Promoting reading and literacy is an important mission of rural libraries. We are looking for papers and reports that demonstrate best practices in teaching and guiding reading activities, training developments, and increasing social awareness of the significance of reading and literacy for the residents of rural communities.

Theme 4. Improving Information Literacy for Students- a team effort between the librarian and the teacher

To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed, and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively and ethically the needed information for the issue or problem at hand. We are looking for papers that address the partnership between librarians and classroom teachers in helping students develop information literacy skills and successfully apply those skills to projects within the school and in the community.

Theme 5. The Rural Library - serving marginalized Communities

Even as the digital divide presents an enormous challenge for rural librarians, the needs of the indigenous and rural communities are many and varied. What special knowledge and services are required for the librarian to improve economic, legal, agricultural, health care, cultural services and information literacy in rural communities? We are looking for papers that address these vital issues.

Theme 6. Models of Networking of Libraries and Other Organizations

Networking and collaboration between libraries and/or other organizations are important for those with limited resources and knowledge base in rural areas. No where is this more true than in China, where rural libraries are far behind their counterparts in big cities. We are looking for papers that can share successful experiences of collaborations.

Theme 7. The Importance of Library Assessment

For goal-driven library development, assessment is vital in guiding how libraries utilize limited resources to achieve best impact or value to community members (measured by social benefits, customer satisfaction, etc.) and to obtain continuing and enhanced financial support. We are looking for papers and reports that demonstrate best library assessment practices and experience.

Theme 8. Implementing Library Advocacy and Outreach

The basic goal of advocacy is changing attitudes and actions. Advocates for libraries undertake outreach work aimed at potential library users in the community, to develop friends of the library (community funding and volunteers). Professional library associations play an important role in advocacy aimed at the central and local governments, to gain policy and financial support. We are looking for papers and reports that shed light on principles and codes of practice, models and tools of advocacy.

Procedure and Requirements

Only original, unpublished papers are acceptable for this conference.

Potential contributors are asked to submit via email attachment an abstract and author introduction for initial consideration by the deadline indicated below. Each abstract will be blind reviewed by members of the ITIE2010 review panel. The authors of the accepted abstracts will be notified by the date indicated below, and s/he will need to submit a complete paper by 3/1/2010. All accepted papers will be scheduled for presentation at the conference, and a second round of peer review will be conducted to select full papers for publishing in the conference proceedings. The proceedings of ITIE2010 will be formally published with an ISBN. We will also publish all the proceedings online as open source publication, which will be searchable via Google Scholar.

For all conference materials, we only accept electronic copies and no hardcopy is accepted.

Guidelines

Guideline of Author Introduction
Guideline of Abstract
Guideline of Full Paper

Review Panel


A stellar review panel includes the following experts (in the alphabetical order of the surnames):

  1. Bingsi Fan, Professor, Business School, East China Normal University
  2. Liyun Hu, Professor, School of Public Administration, YunNan University
  3. Madge H. Klais, Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  4. Mengxiong Liu, adjunct Professor of Library and Information Science at San Jos� State University, California. The Steering Committee of ALA Spectrum Scholarship and ALA's Diversity Council. Board of Director of the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA).
  5. Carol Priestley, Director, Network for Information and Digital Access (NIDA) and Member of the Order of the British Empire
  6. Yongzhong Sha, Professor, School of Managment, LanZhou University
  7. Zizhou Wang, Professor, the Department of Information Management, Beijing University
  8. Jo B. Whitlatch,Professor, Library and Information Science, San Jose State University


The proceedings of ITIE2010 will be formally published with an ISBN. The Review Panel will also serve as the Editorial Committee of the proceedings.