Opening Spaces for Creative and Critical Enquiry

A lot of thought has gone into how to write this book chapter - partly in terms of content, but primarily in relation to the awareness that, as three collaborating authors, we are all different in terms of how we approach what we do. We acknowledge that, whilst our aims and motivations in doing what we do connect and are similar, one of the greatest strengths (and, at least potentially, challenges) lies in the different perspectives and knowledges we bring to planning, developing and delivering workshops. This in itself is not a challenge, our co-operation developing organically and synergistically to take full advantage of what we each bring to the work we do. The challenge presents itself when considering how to share our practice(s) with others, in the form of a co-written book chapter! There is a tendency for co-written texts to be presented as a singular, unified voice. When discussing how to write this chapter, we realised this is not how we wanted to proceed. Instead, we recognised the need to write in a way that mirrors how we work together: disparate voices and perspectives that complement each other.

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Approved draft of a co-written book chapter for "Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries" - a recent publication from Facet Publishing, edited by Jess Crilly (former Associate Director for Content and Discovery, Library Services at UAL) and Regina Everett (Director of Library, Archives and Learning Services at the University of East London).

This is a preprint of a chapter accepted for publication by Facet Publishing. This extract has been taken from the authors' original manuscript and has not been edited.

The definitive version of this piece may be found in Crilly and Everett, Narrative Expansions, 2021, Facet Publishing, which can be purchased from www.facetpublishing.co.uk

The authors agree not to update the preprint or replace it with the published version of the chapter.