Background and motivation

According to a report issued 14 June 2017 by the American Council on Education, internationalization is continuing to gain traction among U.S. colleges and universities. A scan of available resources reveals ACRL offers limited guidance to its members on how to respond to this trend in higher education. Additionally, a new ACRL report, Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research, aligns with some of AMICAL’s goals, such as the report’s 6 priority areas where academic librarians should focus, including: collaborating with educational stakeholders, enhancing teaching and learning, and connecting to the institution’s mission. A recent collection of essays from CLIR, meanwhile, describes many of the new roles that academic librarians are creating for themselves, collaborating necessarily with both faculty and technologists, and positioning themselves clearly as active and creative partners in the enterprise of learning and teaching.

This project aims to fill a resource gap for North American librarians seeking to learn about academic librarianship in international and multicultural environments, while examining librarians’ new collaborative roles and digitally-focused priority areas as they are being addressed within AMICAL’s membership.

Desired scope of contributions

We welcome contributions of many types, such as descriptive narrative case studies (which could explain a problem and how a group designed a solution), program evaluations, reflective essays, or interview transcripts with other departments or faculty on campus. The proposed format of the contributions could be anything from book chapters to blog posts to webinar panels.

If selected, your final work does not need to describe fully formed, completed and assessed programs and the impact they have had on students. We would also welcome a focus on practical experiences of engaging in, or even planning for, collaborative projects with others on campus (e.g., projects being planned by members of the DHSI 2018 cohort).

Project theme: Library partnerships in international liberal arts education: waypoints for a collaborative future

Topically, contributions should relate in some way to library-related collaborations that demonstrate successes, challenges or opportunities of liberal arts education in the extremely international, and increasingly digital, environment of AMICAL institutions. Ideally, they should provide cumulative knowledge, reference points and aspirational targets for planning future library-related collaborations in AMICAL institutions or similar environments. Collaborations described in contributions can be purely among libraries and librarians, or at a single institution, but we’re looking especially for collaborations or partnerships that reach across professional profiles (e.g. librarian-faculty, librarian-technologist, etc.) or across AMICAL member institutions.

Two facets of this theme are drawn out as sub-themes below, and we encourage contributors to treat either or both of these. Contributions that don’t align perfectly with these sub-themes may also be proposed, but the proposal should describe a clear and substantive connection to the overall project theme above.

Sub-theme 1: Multicultural aspects of library collaborations in an international liberal arts environment

AMICAL librarians are collaborating with colleagues across their campus on projects that further a liberal arts education in an international environment. Contributions for this facet should answer questions like:

• What’s interesting, unique, or informative about the library’s role in these multicultural projects?
• How does the library’s contribution to the project mitigate the challenges, reinforce the advantages, or leverage the opportunities of these collaborations?

Sub-theme 2: Collaborative digital liberal arts and librarianship in an international environment

Digital liberal arts represent a growing area of importance and opportunity for libraries and librarians as central partners in course-related collaboration. Whether through digital scholarship, digital pedagogy, or digital literacy programs, academic librarians are creating new roles and collaborating deeply with faculty and technologists as active and creative partners in the enterprise of learning and teaching. Contributions in this subject area which highlight activities and opportunities related to digital scholarship, pedagogy, or literacies will be of particular strategic interest for the effective planning of AMICAL’s anticipated 2018-2021 grant programs, which gives special focus to the digital liberal arts. Contributions for this facet could, for example:

• describe local digital scholarship, digital pedagogy, or digital literacy programs, and their library’s relationship to those programs;
• discuss how they approach collaborative work among faculty, librarians, and technologists on digital learning outcomes—course-integrated digital projects, digital literacies as general education outcomes, etc.—and possible solutions for sustaining such collaborations; or
• explain challenges they have faced related to digital liberal arts initiatives at their institutions, in particular related to the library’s role in those initiatives.

Evolution of the project scope

Depending on the proposals received, the final scope of this joint project may be more centered on digital aspects of international liberal arts education, more centered on multicultural aspects of international liberal arts education, or centered somewhere between those.

Emphasis on collaboration

Regardless of the focus area for your proposal, we will give preference to proposals which are made in collaboration—involving, for example:

• faculty with experience partnering with librarians and/or technologists on course design and delivery;
• librarians with experience partnering with technologists and humanities faculty on scholarship and teaching projects;
• teams of librarians, faculty, technologists, or deans who are engaged in collaborative liberal arts or digital scholarship/pedagogy/literacies initiatives;
• teams who are poised to launch a project/initiative related to collaborative liberal arts or digital scholarship/pedagogy/literacies.

For proposals related to information literacy

AMICAL has recently been very active in supporting librarian-faculty collaborations related to information literacy, and we anticipate receiving proposals in this area. Before submitting such a proposal, you should review the recent ACRL white paper Global Perspectives on Information Literacy to understand whether and how your proposal covers different ground. If your proposal overlaps with recent literature, in particular this ACRL white paper, it is more likely to be considered for informal publication (e.g. a blog post or webinar) for a largely AMICAL-focused audience, as opposed to a formal publication (e.g. a chapter in a white paper or book) for North American and global audiences.

Formal publication

The formal contributions, which may be published by ACRL as either a white paper or book, would bring a rich global lens to collaborations supporting a liberal arts education. With diverse geographical and cultural contexts, the experience of these AMICAL consortium members is valuable to anyone pursuing new collaborative roles in liberal arts education. Through descriptive narrative case studies, program evaluations, reflective essays, and interview transcripts, the authors will reveal the challenges and opportunities for starting or expanding liberal arts initiatives, in particular those related to roles librarians play.

As internationalization continues to gain traction among U.S. colleges and universities, the rich cross-cultural aspects and experiences of collaboration described in this ACRL publication would make a meaningful contribution toward identifying the most promising opportunities for library involvement in liberal arts initiatives that have not yet been realized.

Author support

If your proposal is selected for formal publication, we will provide full guidelines, including an outline and questions to guide your contribution. Generally, the writing style does not need to be overly formal; your tone can be relaxed but not too conversational. Keep in mind, you are not answering for your entire library, institution, or country; however, we will be looking for cultural perspectives as well as your individual opinion. We will be available for editing and copyediting assistance. If you need language editing assistance, we will also be able to provide that service.

To help selected authors to contribute the strongest writing possible, we will encourage you to share your draft manuscript with local colleagues, discuss it, and make revisions based on their comments. Additionally, the editorial process for this project will include:

• Developmental feedback by Kara and Jeff as co-editors.
• Feedback by 2 other authors as peers.
• Optional support through feedback by other peers in AMICAL who are not authors (an opportunity for more people to participate in the project and provide authors with fresh eyes, if desired).
• Finally, each contribution will be copyedited by ACRL. Our copyeditor will make edits to style, grammar, punctuation, typos, and citation format. We will also ask her if she finds any areas where she thinks clarity could be improved. Nothing substantive will be changed prior to publication and you will have the chance to review her suggestions.
• If you need assistance with authoring material for publication in English, please let us know in your proposal.

Timeline

20 December 2018	Call for proposals issued
10 January 2018	Q&A session 1
23 January	Q&A session 2
31 January 2018	Proposals due
23 February 2018	Notifications back
9 April 2018	Authors’ first drafts due to Jeff, Kara, and designated peer authors (plus additional AMICAL peers, if desired).
27 April 2018	Written feedback due to authors
4–7 May 2018	Optional in person discussion at AMICAL conference
25 June 2018	Second drafts due to Jeff and Kara

Please Note: This timeline may change based on the proposals we receive.

Participate as an interviewer

You can also participate in this project by being an interviewer on your campus and contributing to a piece synthesizing results across AMICAL institutions. We are seeking as many institutions as possible to engage in this portion of the project. Kara is developing an interview guide for AMICAL members to use in carrying out conversations with senior academic administrators, such as deans and provosts. The questions will help develop AMICAL’s anticipated 2018-2021 grant programs, which give special focus to the digital liberal arts. As part of a formal publication, it will also help a broader readership to clarify the potential value of digital liberal arts initiatives to their institutions and serve to identify unique opportunities represented by librarians and these initiatives.

By conducting an interview and reporting back, you can help create a clearer view of those issues AMICAL member institutions share and where your institutional and cultural perspectives are unique. Kara will gather your interview data, analyze the results, and interpret and report findings as one contribution to the formal publication portion of the project.

People choosing to carry out these interviews will:

• review a draft of the questions and provide feedback before they are final (March);
• participate in a briefing to gain clarity about the interview protocol to follow (early April);
• conduct a one-hour interview (April);
• report back the results and their impressions (early May); and
• provide feedback to Kara on a draft of her analysis and interpretation (early June).

Being part of this multi-campus exploration could make it easier to have the kind of conversation you’ve always wanted to initiate with a top academic leader on your campus around the potential value of digital liberal arts initiatives.

Q&A sessions for proposal development

We, Jeff and Kara, will be reviewing proposals and making the final decisions about what to select for development. Feel free to reach out to us (kmalenfant@ala.org or jgima@amicalnet.org) with any questions or ideas in advance of submitting a proposal—we want to hear from you! Additionally, we will be holding online informal question and answer sessions to answer any questions you may have:

Q&A session 1
Wednesday, 10 January 2018, 13:00 Paris time (see local time)

Q&A session 2
Tuesday, 23 January 2018, 13:00 Paris time (see local time)

Links and information to attend the meetings is available at the event pages linked above. They have also been sent to members in the announcement email, and will be shared on AMICAL Connect before each meeting date.

How to make a proposal

Interested in participating as a webcast presenter, author, peer reviewer, or interviewer? See the proposal form and instructions linked below, and submit the form by 31 January 2018.

The call for proposals has ended!