Facet Publishing

Summary

Visually oriented collections are a defining characteristic of art and design libraries. From sumptuous print books to rich digital images, publications with unusual formats and three-dimensional objects, art librarians need to work with specialized vendors and follow non-traditional procedures for acquisition, cataloguing, promotion and preservation of these collections. Librarians can also use creative methods to integrate these materials into the curriculum for research and inspiration. Authors in this section explore the changing nature of visual resources collections – from analogue to digital – and the impact on staff and facilities; best practices for the development of new digital collections; the use of archives and special collections to help spark students’ imaginations; the creation and management of artists’ book collections and the countless ways they may be used to inspire and inform art and design students; the rapidly changing publishing landscape for exhibition catalogues, collection catalogues, catalogues raisonnés, sales catalogues and art ephemera; and recommendations for acquiring, organizing and promoting materials collections to support programmes in art, design and architecture.

Summary

Introduction

Art and design libraries do not look like or position themselves the way they did in the past. Team rooms, maker spaces and galleries have been added. Arts collections are hybrid but rarely all digital. Resources such as material samples are being collected. Staff job titles and duties have shifted. Libraries are different, but much of what is being done currently or is being considered builds on the past. Libraries evolve, responding to internal challenges and outside forces.

This chapter explores some recent library trends and their effect on art and design libraries in particular. It uses a survey distributed in October 2016 by the author to relevant listservs, a literature search and over 40 years of work experience to identify evolving trends in buildings, staffing and collections and to define how and why they are occurring. The author sent the 16-question survey covering many aspects of arts librarianship to ARLIS-L (Art Libraries Society of North America), ARLIS-LINK (ARLIS/UK & Ireland: the Art Libraries Society), AASL-L (Association of Architecture School Librarians), and ACRL/ARTS (Arts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries). The full survey and the responses may be viewed on Facet Publishing's website (bit.ly/OparSurvey).

Services

Circulation

‘Public service’ was the old umbrella term for activities related to assisting the public. Reference, circulation and instruction were considered essential, and staffing was structured accordingly. These services remain central to the library's mission, but administratively they may reside in different departments. Circulation desks are still present, but self-service options have been added. At the Architecture Library of the University of Maryland, for example, self-checkout is the norm (Frank, 2016). In some libraries, circulation and reference are handled at the same desk, with staff from different units working side by side.

Non-circulating libraries do exist, but the trend is to circulate most materials and increase access. Pragmatic libraries may see circulation as a quick way to secure shelf space. Art and design libraries must consider circulation policies for challenging formats, such as pop-up books or portfolios with loose plates. Some libraries choose to restrict circulation of these formats.

Summary

Introduction

In a professional context, visual resources refers to the line of work that encompasses creating and managing collections of visual content. Working primarily with images, but also with video, virtual reality and other new media, visual resources professionals are involved heavily in digitization, cataloguing and preservation of these materials. In general, visual resources departments are found in academic institutions and museums, but they also exist in public and private libraries and archives. Some businesses may have visual resources units, often operating under a different name, such as digital asset management.

The study of art history relies heavily on image technologies (Kohl, 2012). Interaction with visual materials has also risen dramatically in the internet age. By staying on the cutting edge of technology, visual resource professionals can continue to provide targeted, meaningful advice to their patrons on finding, creating and using images effectively and ethically.

What are visual resources centres?

In the past, visual resources centres existed as slide libraries. Developments of photog - raphy and magic lantern slides in the 19th century enabled the study of art history as the discipline known today; without reproducible images, the study of art was limited. Art history degree programmes developed alongside early slide libraries, which included glass lantern slides and printed image collections for study.

By the 1950s, the development of 35mm slides provided a vast improvement over large, clunky lantern slides. Magic lantern projectors were susceptible to fires, but 35mm projectors ran safely and efficiently. The 35mm slides provided rich colour and were more portable. Slide libraries were necessary to house collections of images for the teaching of art history – everything from cave paintings to modern art (Kohl, 2012).

Towards the end of the 20th century, as the use of digital images increased, slide libraries underwent an immense transition. Slides gradually fell out of favour and today are rarely used for teaching. Visual resources centres shifted their efforts from creating slides to digitizing them. This continues to be an ongoing effort for many visual resource offices, having had hundreds of thousands of analogue images in their collections.

Summary

Introduction

One of the most persistent challenges special collections librarians face is how to explain what they do. Casual conversations with strangers – to prevent them from becoming protracted – require omission of the word ‘archivist’ and the negative definition, ‘It's the stuff you can't check out of the library.’ This is an oversimplification, of course, but in truth there are not many other commonalities with other occupations to point to when describing archives and special collections. Given the potentially infinite range of collection formats and topics, absolute definitions are elusive. The answer to every archival question accommodates ambiguity and may often be ‘it depends’. It is much easier to explain the few tangible qualities, like rules and restrictions, or to characterize special collections by how they differ from ‘regular’ collections.

This might seem like a rather abstract conundrum, but it becomes very concrete when the job is to describe these materials. Description is an essential library service of which readers may be unaware. The catalogue reveals where the desired item is; the item is retrieved. That seems easy. But the description of materials in special collections is often more complex, and sometimes even the fundamental nomenclature indicating what an item is can be difficult to identify. In a closed-stack environment, the stakes are higher since browsing is precluded, making accurate and detailed description is essential. There are few shortcuts for patrons that bring intellectual serendipity, like determining where an author's work or subject is shelved and then going there to see which book is the one they want. (With the word ‘see’ we have the linguistic bias toward visuality, the ocularcentric conflation of ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ [Rose, 2012, Chapter 1.1]). Users might not be aware that manu - scripts and unique materials even exist, much less how to look for them in a catalogue search. Thus for cataloguers of special collections, the task is not simply to make known items findable, but rather to describe the uncommon qualities of unknown items to an audience that cannot see them in a way that makes them not only retrievable, but also desirable.

Summary

Introduction

Teaching is at the core of the work of many academic librarians, with information literacy as the focus. But how do we define information literacy? And what skills and dispositions constitute information literacy? The way we articulate the definition of information literacy has a direct effect on how we teach it. The Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (the standards) from the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) set forward a set of common skills and abilities an information literate student possesses. Now the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (the Framework) posits six ‘big ideas’ or frames that an information literate individual understands (2015a). It represents the culmination of a shifting pedagogical landscape in librarianship. The six frames are intentionally complex and wide ranging in scope. When the frames intersect with research practices within disciplines, they take on different shadings and modulations and are useful in multiple ways. When we apply the Framework from an art and design perspective, what might these ideas look like?

The shifting landscape of information literacy pedagogy

The adoption of the Framework and the rescinding of the standards in 2016 was the result of a sea change in thinking about information literacy. Despite their usefulness, a simple update of the standards could not solve some of their intrinsic issues nor bring them in line with current teaching practices. The standards are essentially a linear progression of many discrete research skills and steps. By overloading learning objectives and giving all components equal priority, no skills were identified as especially crucial (Hofer, Brunetti and Townsend, 2013, 110). Its prescribed order of steps suggested one way to carry out research and one way to understand information literacy; its prescriptive approach models the workflows of often privileged, high-achieving students whose work process most closely aligns with our own as academics and librarians (Elmborg, 2006, 194). Problematically, the

standards do not address the social and political aspects of information, and they present an essentially positivist construction of information – as absolutes separate from context (Foasberg, 2015). The standards position students as mere finders and users of external and discrete units of information, rather than as critical participants in their communities.

Summary

Why pursue a marketing plan?

Typically, definitions of marketing tell us what it is not: it is not advertising; it is not publicity; it is not outreach. But marketing does allow us to understand our audiences: our readers, our users, our constituents – however we refer to the people we hope to serve. And as we learn more about the people we hope to serve, we can communicate the value of academic libraries in a shared language. We can describe the benefit rather than the feature. For example, rather than boasting of the quality of cataloguing, we can offer the promise of finding what our patrons are looking for easily and quickly. Thus, a marketing plan is an exercise in showing empathy for our patrons. It is an opportunity to connect with users, to share the value of library services, and to tell a story that resonates. People take interest in propositions that relieve pain points and thereby make their lives easier. A marketing plan helps us intersect with our patrons’ needs. It helps us communicate value and evangelize.

Change management

With the cosmic changes the digital universe has brought to the place of libraries in the academic enterprise, adopting an entrepreneurial approach to change is essential for the successful organization, which adapts its core competencies to support innovation (Thota and Munir, 2011). And that innovation should centre on the expectations of users.

The most compelling reason to create a marketing plan is to help the library change, help it grow as an organism and ensure sustainability for the future. To envision change, we need first to understand the organization: its personality, culture and behaviour. In their theory of change management, Bolman and Deal established four frames – metaphorical lenses – through which organizations and their leaders picture themselves: structural, human resource, political and symbolic. The greater the number of frames through which an organization is viewed, the more comprehensive the understanding of its culture. Each ‘captures a vital slice of organizational reality’ (2014, 9):

Summary

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the practices, approaches and discourses that make up the diverse field of digital art history. The author first describes the general discourse around digital art history, exploring how art historians and arts information professionals have defined digital art history and positioned digital art history practices in relation to the broader field of art history. He then outlines specific tools and methods, offering examples of projects. Finally, he considers the role that art and design libraries, archives and museums can play in supporting scholars, students and the wider public in pursuing, creating and sharing digital art history projects.

Art and design librarians and other arts information professionals have a critical role to play in the future of digital art history. Identifying what this role might be is especially difficult, as digital art history is a moving target, developing in relation to dynamic technologies that promise an increasing range of possibilities. However, by mapping out the past and present of the field, information professionals will be better equipped to respond strategically to technological developments and work together towards a future of strong digital art historical scholarship.

The digital in art history

Digital technologies undeniably occupy a prominent position in nearly all aspects of current art historical research activities, teaching and knowledge production. Although relatively few in the field self-identify as ‘digital’ art historians, essentially all art history scholars depend on digital technologies to carry out their work, including such ubiquitous tools as PowerPoint and online library catalogues. The digital image repository, though, is perhaps the most significant digital resource to date for art history scholarship. Drucker (2013) refers to this phase of building up repositories of digital resources as digitized art history, work that has included scanning analogue images and crafting metadata descriptions. This work has also laid the foundation for what Drucker distinguishes as digital art history: the application of digital methods and computational analysis to the study of artworks and other art history research materials. With this still-growing infrastructure of digital resources, art historians can use computational tools to investigate objects of art historical research to new ends.

Summary

Introduction

Library marketing expert Nancy Dowd published an article in 2013 titled ‘Social Media: libraries are posting, but is anyone listening?’ (Dowd, 2013). Dowd points out that although the majority of libraries use social media to disseminate information to their communities, many do not keep track of their efforts or claim success in getting followers to interact. With this in mind, libraries that want to create or revitalize their social media presence should consider devising a plan. This chapter presents highlights from a social media case study carried out at the Emily Carr University (ECU) of Art and Design Library in Vancouver, British Columbia. Through the experience of the study, the authors outline ways in which organizations can develop objectives for their social media usage, strategies to increase online presence and interaction with their communities and methods to assess their presence. They also discuss some innovative ways libraries use social media, focusing on the visually rich field of art libraries.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design Library: social media case study

In spring 2013, the ECU Library made a push to energize and bolster its social media presence and formed a social media committee to support this project (Webb and Laing, 2015, 137–51). The committee met to discuss why social media was being used, what goals would be achieved by its use, who would be responsible for each platform, the type of content that would be posted, and how success would be measured. These were some of the goals set out by the committee:

Summary

In the late 2000s manuals, such as Terry Reese and Kyle Banerjee's Building Digital Libraries (2007), provided a detailed guide to the creation of digital collections. This chapter does not seek to supplant the guidance provided in this and other texts, but to focus on the best practices, to emphasize the fluid nature of collection building and to recognize potential beyond the collection to create new knowledge and interoperability.

Introduction to digital collections

Institutions, groups and individuals create digital collections that comprise a number of different types. A collection might stand alone (for a course or an exhibition), serve as a digital archive, contribute to a digital humanities project, enhance an institution's digital repository, or aggregate a multiple collections, such as Artstor or the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA; https://dp.la/).

Regardless of type, all digital collections have two basic components: the digital file and its associated metadata. This is true whether the original materials are textual, visual, audio, video or three-dimensional objects. The digital file can either be born-digital, such as an image captured using a digital camera or created on a computer, or it can be a digital surrogate of an analogue original. The associated metadata includes descriptive, adminis - trative, technical and preservation metadata that aid in the discovery, use and management of the digital file. The content of your collection determines some of the decisions you will make regarding file types, metadata schema and presentation possibilities. Whether your collection is temporary or permanent, institutional or aggregated, or focused on art, science or history, the same rules and best practices apply.

Getting started

Motivators for planning and building digital collections include preservation of rare or fragile materials, providing access to unique or valuable materials, and increasing exposure to all collection items.

No matter the reason for building a collection, there are several questions you will want to answer as you develop a project plan and workflow. Good planning eases the format migration, data creation and the pursuit of future projects. It also enables simultaneous sharing of content in multiple venues. The only constant in digital collections is change, and you need to be sure your content can adapt to new technology and tools for storage, access and delivery.

Summary

Introduction

One of the most exciting aspects of digital mapping projects is their ability to speak to users and facilitate discussion. In many ways, printed maps can do the same thing. If you take a historical map of a city that shows population density and place it in front of a group of students or community members, it will not be long before a discussion begins on neighbourhood change, migration patterns, or visualization techniques and methods. In her introduction to Infinite City: a San Francisco atlas, Rebecca Solnit writes that ‘every place is if not infinite then practically inexhaustible’ (Solnit, Pease and Siegel, 2010, 2). As a result, maps provide a framework for interpretation, discussion and reflective thinking. In many ways, academic librarianship, much like a map, is rooted in providing information to an audience. The mechanism for this exchange of information is multifaceted, and it can occur in a classroom, within collection development policies, at the reference desk, in a research guide, or during an online chat. This chapter asks, ‘Why not use a map?’

The digital map-making process is one method for librarians to experiment in providing access to information and sharing that information to a wide audience of users. As digital humanities-based research becomes more prevalent in academia, how can librarians leverage some of the methods and tools used to create our own digital projects to advance emerging literacies and reframe our library collections for new audiences? Moreover, as we develop partnerships with faculty in the classroom, how can we become engaged in pedagogy that helps not only add value to, but also shapes a syllabus? The results of a recent international survey that asked questions of art and design librarians in higher education pointed to emerging tasks that ‘relate to online communication and services’ and concluded that ‘librarians might serve as guides who create original information and direct users to supplemental resources’ (Carpenter et al., 2010, 22, 27).

In the following pages, we hope to expand on this finding by discussing two mapping projects that point to and highlight existing resources and offer a way for users to reinterpret these collections for their own research.

Summary

Introduction

We are now nearly two decades into the new century, and the digital revolution continues to accelerate. Big data, social media and virtual reality – these are just the latest phenomena to push the boundaries of library collections and services. Busy students with expectations of immediate, remote access to content can find the print-dependent art library anachronistic and frustrating. The concept of slow scholarship and the pedagogical strategies of ‘deceleration, patience and immersive attention’ are a hard sell when faculty must contend with large lecture courses and paper deadlines loom. As academic art libraries strive to be relevant in an increasingly digital world, it is worth reflecting on the character and usefulness of their least accessible yet most distinctive holdings – special collections. For meditations on slow learning and temporal intelligence in art history pedagogy, see Singerman (2016, 73–84) and Roberts (2013) respectively.

Scope and value of special collections

The term ‘special collections’ is inexact and is interpreted differently by individual libraries. Here it refers broadly to those materials afforded extra physical protection, usually through closed shelving, mediated handling and climate control. Although antiquarian books are a core component – so much so that ‘special collections’ and ‘rare books’ are often used interchangeably – it should be emphasized that many modern and non-codex materials are candidates. Criteria for special collections include rarity (survival in limited numbers), fragility (the need for special handling), vulnerability to mutilation and substantial market value. For an extended discussion of the policies and selection criteria used to identify special collections and rare books materials in art research libraries, see Rinaldo (2007).

An individual selection need meet only one of these criteria, and even libraries that supposedly do not collect rare books will find items in stacks or vertical files that merit added protection. Examples commonly found in art libraries, beyond antiquarian books, are avant-garde journals, broadsides, contemporary artists’ books, exhibition ephemera and fine facsimiles. Audiovisual materials are not addressed in this chapter although they are part of special collections in many art libraries and bring with them related security and preservation challenges. At colleges and universities where special collections are concentrated in a central rare books department, they are nonetheless a resource that will benefit from the art librarian's attention.

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10 - The different generations of Chief Data Officers

Index

18 - The data revolution

12 - How to present yourself as a Chief Data Officer

17 - The Chief Data Officer and data governance

Contents

19 - Advice to business owners, CEOs and the board

7 - The Chief Data Officer as a disruptor

Part II - Materials and collection management

Summary

2 - Evolution not revolution: evolving trends in art and design libraries

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6 - Visual resources: from analogue to digital and beyond

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Frontmatter

13 - Seeing the bigger picture: archival description of visual information

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15 - Teaching with threshold concepts and the ACRL Framework in the art and design context

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28 - Marketing plans made simple

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21 - The ever-shifting landscape: mapping the present and future of digital art histories

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29 - Engaging with social media

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7 - Developing digital collections

Summary

22 - Critical cARTography: mapping spaces for dialogue about identity and artistic practices

Summary

16 - Teaching by the book: art history pedagogy and special collections

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