24 January 2019 / Research

Call: 'Decolonising African Studies: questions and dilemmas for libraries, archives and collections'

SCOLMA Annual Conference 2019, University of Edinburgh

There has been an increasing call for the decolonisation of the curriculum across the disciplines in Northern institutions and elsewhere, notably recently South Africa. Librarians and archivists should be actively involved in this process but little attention has as yet been given to practical implications for libraries: acquisitions, cataloguing, resource allocation, information literacy, and the need for continuing professional development.

European institutions hold rich resources on Africa. How are these collections being used from the decolonisation point of view and what is research on these collections uncovering?

How are libraries and archives seeking to open up their collections, how are they responding to the different demands and requirements of scholars and restitution activists and what sort of partnerships are they developing in African countries and elsewhere?

In order to increase access to African-authored knowledge and perspectives how are libraries discovering what is being published in Africa and acquiring it? How are international journals being opened up to African academics?

Librarians, archivists, researchers, teachers and students are invited to submit abstracts of up to 350 words for consideration to Sarah Rhodes (sarah.rhodes@clutterbodleian.ox.ac.uk) by 4 February 2019.

Further information:SCOLMA Annual Conference