Library-related Meetings, Panels, & Roundtables, 2023
55th ASEEES Annual Convention (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
All times are EASTERN STANDARD TIME
Meetings
East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections
Thu, November 30, 8:00am to 12:00pm EST (8:00am to 12:00pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room 301
Midwest Slavic and Eurasian Library Consortium
Thu, November 30, 9:00am to 12:00pm EST (9:00am to 12:00pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room 303
Pacific Coast Slavic and East European Library Consortium
Thu, November 30, 9:00am to 12:00pm EST (9:00am to 12:00pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room 305
Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Subcommittee on Copyright Issues
Thu, November 30, 3:00 to 4:45pm EST (3:00 to 4:45pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Subcommittee on Education and Access
Fri, December 1, 8:00 to 9:45am EST (8:00 to 9:45am EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Subcommittee on Slavic and East European Microfilm Project
Sat, December 2, 10:00 to 11:45am EST (10:00 to 11:45am EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Executive Meeting
Sat, December 2, 4:00 to 5:45pm EST (4:00 to 5:45pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Membership Meeting
Sun, December 3, 10:00 to 11:45am EST (10:00 to 11:45am EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 1
Library-related Panels and Roundtable Discussions
(in-person convention)
Central and East European Collections in the New York Metropolitan Area
Thu, November 30, 1:00 to 2:45pm EST (1:00 to 2:45pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Engaging in decolonization involves re-examining our current research and the resource materials on which they are based. One of the challenges is to “de-center” Slavic studies that have long been dominated by Russian topics. In this round table, four participants will discuss the history, holdings, and activities of several Central and East European institutions including the Ukrainian History and Education Center (Somerset, N.J.), the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America (New York City); the American Hungarian Foundation (New Brunswick, N.J.) as well as a number of Czech organizations in New York City.
Chair: Bogdan Horbal, NYPL
Roundtable members:
Michael Andrec, Ukrainian History and Education Center
Iwona Drag Korga, Pilsudski Institute of America
Martin Nekola, Project Czechoslovak Talks (Czech Republic)
James P. Niessen, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Decolonizing Library Collecting: Case Studies and Collaborative Efforts in Slavic and East European Studies
Fri, December 1, 1:30 to 3:15pm EST (1:30 to 3:15pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
The panel presentation includes three papers that discuss the decolonization of academic library collections in Slavic and East European studies. The first paper details the North American Slavist community's efforts to digitize and preserve the Memorial archival collections in response to increased pressure and legal persecution in Russia. The second paper examines the effectiveness and complexities of repatriation as a decolonial practice for libraries, using studies from Yale's collections. The third paper discusses UCLA Library's repatriation of six digitized books from Prague's Jewish Community Library and emphasizes the importance of dialogue, diplomacy, and institutional responsibility in repatriation efforts. All three papers underscore the significance of decolonizing library collecting and recognizing the rights of historically marginalized groups, offering resources for other libraries and archives to use in their own repatriation or non-extractive practice.
Chair and Discussant: Megan Browndorf, University of Chicago
Papers:
“Decolonizing Library Collections: Examining Ownership, Cultural Sovereignty, and the Importance of Dialogue of Restitution in East European Studies,” Alena Aissing, UCLA
“The Memorial Archives: The Power of Many,” Alla Roylance, NYU
“Library Repatriation: Pitfalls and Paths Forward,” Anna Arays, Yale University
Decolonizing Special Collections: Challenges and Opportunities of Working with Slavic and East European Materials in Rare Book Libraries
Fri, December 1, 3:30 to 5:15pm EST (3:30 to 5:15pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Rare book libraries typically concentrate on West European and American materials; even in those that collect Slavic and East European resources, such items are usually “hidden” and almost never used. How can we unearth these treasures, enhance their visibility, and promote their use? The participants in this roundtable will discuss their experiences with rare Slavic and East European materials at various institutions around the United States, while sharing their research projects and best practices for access, outreach, and teaching.
Chair: Veronika Trotter, Indiana University
Roundtable members:
Anna Arays, Yale University
Meghan Leigh Forbes, Independent Scholar & Curator
Edward Kasinec, Columbia University/Hoover Institution
A.M. LaVey, The Ukrainian Museum (NYC)/NYPL
Ernest Alexander Zitser, Duke University
A Revised Classification for Ukraine: Update on Work at the Library of Congress
Fri, December 1, 6:00 to 7:00pm EST (6:00 to 7:00pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 5th Floor, Salon D
Join Heidy Berthoud, Cataloging Policy Specialist, Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs Division, Library of Congress;
Jurij Dobczansky, Librarian, East Central Europe Section, Germanic and Slavic Division, Library of Congress and
Christine Dulaney, Chief, Germanic and Slavic Division, Library of Congress for an open, informal meeting to discuss the revised classification for Ukraine
Primary Sources in the Digital Space: Decentering Historical Narratives through Curated Digital Collections
Sat, December 2, 8:00 to 9:45am EST (8:00 to 9:45am EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Decolonization is an ongoing work of re-examining and evaluating knowledge critical to scholarship in REEE Studies. The work requires new conceptual frameworks, methods, tools, and the availability of sources and perspectives from the peripheries. Primary sources are an integral component of studying history. As historical materials become more available, the tools used for their accessibility can facilitate diversity of narratives and inclusivity of voices that were previously silenced. This proposed roundtable seeks to convene a group of librarians and scholars to discuss how digital tools, curation, and current DH projects can be used to re-evaluate colonial practices in REEE Studies and re-assess hierarchies and power dynamics within existing collections and sources. Through these discussions we also seek to promote best practices that aid in the discovery of new sources and collections at the national, regional, and international levels.
Chair: Joseph Lenkart, UIUC
Roundtable members:
Adnan Dzumhur, UNC Chapel Hill
Olga Makarova, UIUC
Curtis Richardson, Western Governors University
Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia, British Library
Juergen Michael Warmbrunn, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe (Germany)
Social Media, Memes, and Other Born-Digital Sources on the War in Ukraine: From Collecting and Archiving to Academic Research and Teaching
Sat, December 2, 2:00 to 3:45pm EST (2:00 to 3:45pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
Internet communications, and social networks in particular, have played an extraordinary role in the discourse around Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2022-). This panel will explore social media, memes and other born-digital primary sources related to the events of the war from two intertwined points of view: that of archivists tasked with preserving this material for the historical record and scholarship, and that of scholars who use these sources in media research and teaching. Olha Aleksic presents the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute’s web archive Russia's War on Ukraine that preserves news portals, civil society websites, resources for refugees and social media content related to the war. Anna Rakityanskaya explores the curator’s work on a crowdsourced online SUCHO Memes Collection created within the framework of Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online project, focusing on the curatorial scope and metadata structure of the collection, the methodology used, the issues encountered during the work, as well as the benefits of collaborative born-digital collection building. Mariya Rohozha dissects memes as a cultural and grassroots activism phenomenon, further develops their formal classification and studies memes as a format of cultural praxis as well as a narrative genre and a teaching tool. Olena Pavlova analyzes the data from a Viber channel that existed during the storming and capture of Mariupol, Ukraine (March - August 2022) and reconstructs the media community of the channel as a form of grass-roots activism.
Chair: Brendan Nieubuurt, University of Michigan
Papers:
“The Russia’s War on Ukraine Collection: Preserving Information about the Ongoing War,” Olha Aleksic, Harvard University
“The SUCHO Ukrainian War Memes Collection: An International Collaborative Born-Digital Archiving Initiative,” Anna Rakityanskaya, Harvard University
“Meme Praxis on the Topic of the Russian-Ukrainian War in the Context of Post-Colonial Studies,” Mariya Rohozha, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine)
“The Life and Death of Mariupol Citizen’s Viber Channel: Postcolonial Media Reality of the Surrounded City,” Olena Pavlova, Humboldt University Berlin (Germany)
Decolonization, and Recolonization through Information Technology and Law
Sun, December 3, 12:00 to 1:45pm EST (12:00 to 1:45pm EST), Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor, Franklin Hall 13
In a world that is undergoing a profound economic and cultural reorganization, the imperative to decolonize regions from centuries of abuse and exploitation runs up against the current installation of information technology that permeates geographical and political boundaries, driven by imperialistic goals of command and control of populations everywhere. U.S. technology enterprises seeking global dominance in partnership with global elites are called “empires.” Strategic methods of invasion, theft, subjugation, and new legal regimes engineered for private profit and surveillance are disguised as friendly, “open,” and in the “public interest;” people cannot distinguish between decolonization and recolonization. The roundtable will address developments in copyright law that aim to flip rights in intellectual and creative labor from people to technology corporations; artificial intelligence; whether efforts to “save” Ukrainian intellectual property heritage are efforts to seize it; the porous veil between open access, open markets, and “open societies” as a strategy to capture post-Communist societies; pirate “shadow libraries” originating in Russia and Eastern Europe and other piracy efforts disguised as “traditional libraries,” and use of non-profit and library groups to gain power for technology corporations in the intellectual property landscape, as efforts in recolonization. The roundtable format is intended to promote a lively discussion.
Chair: Janice Pilch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Roundtable members:
Thomas Keenan, Princeton University
Ksenya Kiebuzinski, University of Toronto (Canada)
Barbara Brigida Krupa, Stanford University
Janice Pilch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Isabelle Schenkel, UNC Chapel Hill