Minutes for the Management Issues Round Table

April 20, 2004

Moderated by Bella Karr Gerlich

1. Minute Taking - Moira Steven volunteered to record the minutes of the meeting.

2. Management Issues Official Website – Karen McKenzie (Art Gallery of Ontario), Jacqui Allen (Dallas Museum of Art) and Bella Karr Gerlich (Carnegie Mellon University) were instrumental in the design of the website (http://uldev.library.cmu.edu/Research/Arts/arlis_2004). The web designers would like feedback and comments on the site and suggestions for future development. Bella offered to maintain the site for the time being. The site will be linked to the ARLIS/NA site for easy access after the site is approved by the Roundtable members. It is hoped that in future items can be cross-posted within ARLIS. Questions regarding a centralized website were raised, with comments that it should be part of the ARLIS/NA strategic plan and that a centralized location should also be part of the current ARLIS/NA website review.

3. Curriculum Management Document (CMD) Comments – the CMD was offered for comments by the group. Suggestions included addition Digital Project Management as a management issue. The document will be added to the Management Issues Roundtable website for review by other interested ARLIS members. It will also include links to documents from the recent and future workshops when possible. The group can also look for sponsorship. Moira Steven volunteered to do editing and review as the document develops. Margaret Webster (Cornell University) indicated she had had preliminary discussions with the board regarding the Houston Conference planning group to ensure management issues considered in the program. She also mentioned that the two workshops held this conference lost money; this means that we have to bring the costs down while still attracting a high enough attendance. The budget needs to be kept in mind and while we are providing a service to the Society we must not lose money in the process. Suggestions for decreasing costs included hiring locally rather than importing speakers/workshop leaders; requesting the host city to assist in locating suitable presenters; recruiting ARLIS members for workshop leaders; presenting one workshop at a time. The history of the management workshops has been that the St. Louis conference had attendance in the 30s, there were none in Baltimore because the program committee did not approve them, and the NY conference had fewer attendees than hoped (23 and 28 respectively for the two sessions).

4. Nominees for Roundtable Positions – Bella Karr Gerlich (Carnegie Mellon University) will remain as moderator, with Al Willis (Hampton University) as Vice-Moderator and Jamie MacInnis as the Update Editor.

5. Program Suggestions – Topics included:

- core competencies in management

- assessing instruction (partnering with RISS?)

- solo librarianship and management

- collection development of a diversity of materials in times of stagnant or declining budgets – presents a special management challenge (“doing more with less”/”doing the same with a lot less”)

Other ideas stressed having a “workshop” section of a session, which would not then have any constrictions of topic. Planning and facilitators would be needed and the form would be a presentation followed by a breakout session.

Collaboration with a local Special Libraries Association Chapter might be a way to expand the program, particularly as they have been working on Core Competencies for several years. A literature review might also yield suggestions for speakers. The focus has to remain, however, management issues for art libraries.

Ideas will be distributed to the Management Issues Roundtable and ARLIS/NA via the listserv to solicit comments.

6. Special Funding – The group discussed obtaining special funding for a survey of needs with questions such as:

- What are the unique challenges of managing an art library?

- What management skills development do you have/do you need?

These and others could be folded into the environmental assessment being completed by ARLIS/NA and become part of the strategic planning documents. There may not be funding available for a separate survey, but we should be able to use the listserv for an informal information gathering to craft formal questions for the Strategic Planning questionnaire. The group will need to pass all items through Margaret Webster.

7. Other Items – a suggestion was made for an Occasional Paper on assessment forms used in art schools (re: user satisfaction surveys, bibliographic instruction feedback, etc.). The group can solicit interested participants via the listserv.

Management Issues Roundtable Attendees – April 20, 2004

Moira Steven Atlanta College of Art moira.steven@woodruffcenter.org

Diane Sammet Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale dsammet@aii.edu

Jacqui Allen Dallas Museum of Art jallen@dallasmuseumofart.org

Kathleen List Ringling School of Art and Design klist@ringling.edu

Cynthia Johnson Pratt Institute cjohnso2@pratt.edu

Linda Seckelson Metropolitan Museum of Art

Watson Library linda.seckelson@metmuseum.org

Jamie MacInnis Art Institute of California – SF macinnij@aii.edu

Hugh Wilburn Harvard Design School hwilburn@gsd.harvard.edu

Dana Beth VCU School of the Arts in Qatar dbeth@qf.org.qa

Lynda S. White University of Virginia lswby@virginia.edu

Bonnie Reed Texas Tech University bonnie.reed@ttu.edu

Margaret Webster Cornell University mnw3@cornell.edu

Martha Walker Cornell University maw6@cornell.edu

Emily Roth Metropolitan Museum of Art

Library & Teachers Resource Ctr emily.roth@metmuseum.org

Trudy Jacoby Princeton University tjacoby@princeton.edu

Jack Robertson Thomas Jefferson Foundation jrobertson@monticello.org

Alfred Willis Hampton University alfred.wills@hampton.edu

Bella Karr Gerlich Carnegie Mellon University bg2r@andrew.cmu.edu