ARLIS/NA
30th / VRA 20th
Seminar
1
Me,
Myself and I: The Solo Professional
Co-moderators:
Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Georgia O'Keeffe
Museum
Paul Glassman, New York School of Interior Design
Recorder:
Allison Colborne, College of Santa Fe
This well attended
session was co-moderated by Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Librarian and Archives Manager
at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and Paul Glassman, Director of the Library, New
York School of Interior Design.
Following a brief
acknowledgment of Eumie-Imm Stroukoff's original idea for the session and
accompanying discussion group by Daniel Starr, incoming President of ARLIS/NA,
Paul Glassman welcomed everyone and then introduced the session talking about
the reality of the solo professional: needing to be aware of various management
techniques and of institutional cultures by providing customer service, managing
finance, pursuing advocacy, managing time, and developing marketing and public
relations. He then talked about how the solo professional's effectiveness in the
future will likely depend on technology and role adaptation and reinvention. He
concluded by noting that, in the future, more library professionals are likely
to find themselves being solo librarians.
After noting that
this session was developed from ideas raised at last year's group discussion,
Eumie Imm-Stroukoff introduced the first of the session participants, Susan
Baerwald, Library Director at Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK), the largest
architectural firm in the world, headquartered in St. Louis, and an active
member in the Special Libraries Association. Ms. Baerwald began with a quick
slide presentation to orient the audience to the corporate and professional
setting at HOK in St. Louis, a full-service architecture firm. She described the
library facility, its holdings of eight thousand books and three hundred
periodicals, the many personal collections of books and materials located in
offices and workspaces throughout HOK, the product catalog collection, and the
digitized slide collection that makes images available to everyone at the firm.
A key factor to her survival at HOK is the staunch support she has from Gyo
Obata, one of the principals at the firm. In the corporate setting, her position
is considered overhead. In terms of the issues she faces, she noted that the
library is not automated and is using sign-out cards, because "it is
difficult to convince management to purchase software." Another challenge
she noted is creating staff positions, because the principals, despite the fact
that the library is heavily used, are reluctant to increase non-billable costs.
She talked about the importance of the product literature collection and of
architectural models, and described how they are used. She also described the
kinds of reference questions she receives by providing actual examples, and
discussed how practitioners employ images to convey ideas. In her concluding
remarks, Ms. Baerwald indicated that the advantages and disadvantages of being a
solo professional stem from the same source, in that while she enjoys the
independence of being HOK's sole information professional, she has no one else
to talk to about professional concerns because no one else knows her job. At the
same time, she noted that she is part of the team and that maintaining a
collaborative spirit eases the challenge considerably.
Next, Mr. Glassman
introduced Joan M. Benedetti, Librarian Cataloger, Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, and formerly the solo professional at the former Craft & Folk Art
Museum (CFAM), also in Los Angeles. Ms. Benedetti gave an overview of CFAM and
of her professional history there, relating how she began as a volunteer.
Because of financial burdens, CFAM closed in 1998. The library collections and
Ms. Benedetti moved to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the
archives moved to University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Benedetti remarked
that she quickly became adept at deaccessioning and transferring library
collections. After describing LACMA, its library and collections, Ms. Benedetti
told the audience that she missed having her own domain and her interactions
with the staff at CFAM. She also pointed out that she is much more isolated at
LACMA than she was as the solo professional at CFAM. She then talked about the
benefits and drawbacks of her move from CFAM to LACMA from a cataloging
perspective, and discussed how the impact of going from a one-person library to
a large institution with 150,000 volumes affected how she cataloged. With the
move to a large library that adheres to Library of Congress authority records
and uses Art and Architecture Thesaurus subject headings only, she no longer has
the freedom to create the more appropriate subjects headings she had been
accustomed to creating at CFAM. Instead, she benefited from access to numerous
professional resources. Ms. Benedetti then asked the audience how many people
attending do their own cataloging. She reported on the survey she had conducted
for the ARLIS/NA Museum Libraries Division, and told the audience that almost
everyone who replied to the survey does their own cataloging. In conclusion, Ms.
Benedetti told the audience that she derived great satisfaction from being a
solo librarian.
Maryly A. Snow,
Librarian, Architecture Visual Resources Library, University of California,
Berkeley, was introduced by Eumie Imm-Stroukoff. Ms. Snow pointed out that she
does not work in a one-person library, but rather in a one-professional library.
She then talked about the benefits of being a solo professional, such as making
her own decisions, including changing the title of her position. She talked
about the library's overhead, relative to the small number of people served, the
importance of hiring people who are intelligent, training and mentoring people
you know will leave, and the importance of the collegial network within the
library, professional contacts with the UC Sliders, the California Digital
Library, VRA, and ARLIS/NA. She also talked about visibility and the importance
of attending faculty meetings, for example, so as to be more fully accepted by
faculty as a professional. She also talked about the importance of taking time
away from the job for continuing education.
Paul Glassman then
introduced Pat Wagner, a library management consultant and partner in Pattern
Research, located in Denver. Ms. Wagner has been in business for the past
twenty-seven years, providing a wide range of services for a diverse clientele,
including locating individuals with expertise and information that does not
exist in published sources. She has also produced eight audiotape guides on
topics such as leadership and stress management. Ms. Wagner talked about three
levels of job responsibilities: tasks, management, and leadership. Tasks were
defined as the details in front of us that need to be fixed. Management was
defined as maintaining communication, organizing, planning, and foresight.
Leadership was characterized by risk, the future, and investing in relationships
with people. Then Ms. Wagner shifted the focus to a questionnaire she had
distributed, which helped participants identify areas in which they might take
more time to develop the leadership and managerial components of their
positions, to secure the resources needed for success; which sacred cows we may
be attached to; how to learn from the people that come to us; and how to ask for
what we need.
After a lively question-and-answer period, Ms. Imm-Stroukoff invited participants to attend the solo librarians discussion group, scheduled to run directly after the session.