CFP - Special issue

CFP - Special issue, “Cultural Heritage in Crisis” to be published in Library Trends, 75(3), 2026.

In a recent issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Aronson et al write: “Cultural heritage represents the physical manifestation of the culture and history of a social group and forms a major component of its identity.”¹ A people’s culture, history, and social identity can be destroyed, censored, suppressed, purged, or rewritten through attacks on their cultural heritage as well as the institutions and systems that support and preserve the creation of knowledge, free speech, and artistic expression. Within the last three years alone, we have witnessed attempts by individuals, governments, and extremist groups to destroy a people’s culture and identity - whether through deliberate action or ignorance - with the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, war in Gaza in October 2023, and in 2025 the intentional removal and revision of content about the history of women, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, and people of color from government pages in the United States.

For this special issue of Library Trends, we interpret cultural heritage broadly, it may include physical tangible artifacts, such as books, manuscripts, art, sculpture, monuments, or buildings, as well as intangible artifacts, such as language, knowledge, folklore, and traditions. We also include digital cultural heritage, which may include websites, data, digital images, 3D models or visualizations, multimedia, etc. Proposals for this issue should focus on how cultural heritage professionals working in organizations with a mission to preserve and make cultural heritage accessible have engaged in activities such as digital activism, culturally responsive curation, preservation of physical or digital cultural heritage, or community-centered archives and collections within the context of cultural heritage in crisis. We are also interested in approaches, case studies, or theoretical approaches on how cultural heritage is created, preserved, or reconstructed before, during, or after crises within the library and archives profession.

Potential topics may include:

• Activism and community engagement
• Supporting open culture
• Culturally responsive curation/metadata practices
• Centering community and care in preservation of cultural heritage
• Anti-colonial practices in approaches to digital curation, metadata, archives, etc.
• Digital approaches to preserving or reconstructing cultural heritage (e.g. 3D modeling, machine learning, AI, linked data, etc.)
• Developing institutional collaboration and partnership with damaged libraries and archives
• Digital repatriation of cultural heritage
• Crisis documentation and rapid response archiving
• Countering disinformation

Article length: 7,500-9,500 words

Prospective authors are invited to submit a 300-500 word abstract outlining their proposed article by July 25, 2025. Decisions about the abstracts will be communicated by August 1, 2025. Final articles should be 7,500-9,500 words (including bibliographic references). The issues will use an open peer review process in which article authors review two manuscripts by other contributors. As part of submitting an article proposal, authors will be asked to commit to participation in this process as both an author and a reviewer.

Important dates

• July 25, 2025 – Article proposals due
• August 1, 2025 – Author notifications
• December 15, 2025 – Article manuscripts due
• January 1, 2026 – Peer Reviews assigned
• February 1, 2026 – Peer Reviews due
• February 15, 2026 - Peer reviews returned to authors
• March 15, 2026 - Revised articles due to guest editors
• April 2026 – Finalize manuscripts / submit for publication

Inquiries about the planned issues and ideas for articles should be directed to Anna Kijas (Tufts University) and Andreas Segerberg (University of Gothenburg), Guest Co-Editors of Library Trends (anna.kijas at tufts.edu / andreas.segerberg at gu.se). Proposals for articles should be submitted via an online proposal form. Proposals are due July 25, 2025.

Citation Style: For proposals, authors may use any citation style. For manuscripts, authors should use the Chicago Manual of Style’s author-date format.

More information about the journal, including author instructions, is available on the Library Trends website.