Art Libraries Society of
Roosevelt Hotel
Session IX: Matters of Scale: the
Nature of the Smaller Art Library
Moderator
Sarah
E. McCleskey,
Clemson University
Sarah introduced the session and
speakers by referring to the unique challenges of smaller museum and art and
design school libraries. She anticipated
the speakers' positive and pro-active approaches in addressing the
marginalization of small libraries:
Speakers
Claudia
Covert, Library
Director, Corcoran College of Art and Design and Museum of Art, Lessons
Learned and Applied and Loree Bourgoin, Librarian, Lyme Academy College of
Fine Arts, A Matter of Scale: Managing Small Art Libraries—a joint
presentation
INTRODUCTION
Emphasizing a triad of collaboration,
outreach, and advocacy, the speakers began with a specific set of
recommendations from Judith A. Seiss, publisher and
editor of The One Person Library newsletter: time management techniques, such as
advertising only what you have and what you can do; delegating; providing good
customer service and follow-through; filing every day; assigning themes
(collection development, donations) to days of the month; maintaining
pre-formatted spreadsheets for efficient data collection; and making to-do
lists.
OUTREACH & COLLABORATION
The speakers presented their libraries,
the Corcoran Library and the Krieble Library, as case studies, beginning with
outreach and collaboration. The Corcoran
Library Liaisons meets three times annually and comprise students,
faculty, and museum staff. The summer
meeting is a purchasing trip, and in the spring meeting, the committee
addresses collection development guidelines.
The Corcoran Library Council serves as an outreach tool, sponsoring
public lectures; book donations, including artist's books, increased as a
result. Accreditation serves as leverage
for additional online resources. A
newsletter, Library Lexicon, designed by a college work-study graphic design
student, provides additional promotion of the library's missions and services,
and in addition it advertises the library's Web address. With continual growth in usage of the Krieble
Library, there have been parallel increases in staff and holdings. A faculty retreat was a good opportunity to
assess library services through a user survey.
The librarian met with the faculty in groups, as well as with department
heads and new faculty, resulting in active participation in material selection,
bibliographic instruction, and advocacy.
The Academic Affairs Committee developed a formal advisory group for the
library, with liaisons to studio and academic departments, students, and the
board of trustees.
ASSESSMENT
In the area of assessment, a survey at
the Corcoran is the outlet for praise as well as for criticism. At Lyme surveys and accreditation self-study
teams have been helpful activities for gathering assessment data.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Opportunities for the professional
staff to attend conferences are essential, yielding important ideas for
development of the library, such as offering special congratulations to student
award winners who were also avid library users.
Sharing of policies, strategies, and purchasing has real benefits.
STAFFING
At the Corcoran, an internship program,
despite the time investment, yielded very positive results. At the Krieble, several highly skilled
volunteers were recruited through a formal volunteer program, which was
promoted on the library Web site. At the
same time, reliance on support staff for cataloging and basic reference is
necessary.
SPACE PLANNING
Negotiation with outside stakeholders
is essential.
TECHNOLOGY
Outsourcing as much as possible has
real advantages in institutions with limited human resources. Consortial agreements for group purchasing of
databases are important. Linking with
faculty to bringing library resources into the classroom via technology
represents sounds collaboration.
REFERENCE & INSTRUCTION
At the Corcoran, despite the initial investment
of time, instruction, whether of docents, faculty, or students, ultimately had
great benefits: saving time in reference, increasing donations, raising
circulation. At Lyme, open sessions and
orientations at the beginning of semesters grew through word of mouth. Assignment-based and class-specific sessions
have very positive results.
FUND RAISING
Advocacy to faculty, trustees, and
development staff is essential.
CONCLUSION
Outreach, collaboration, and advocacy
are a useful mantra. Knowledge of fiscal
cycles, coupled with an external focus, insures a healthy future for a small
facility.
Polly
McCord, Architecture
Librarian, Architecture Library, University of Arizona. Little Fish in a Big
Pond, or How to Get Heard in a Team Environment
As the University considered the
elimination of certain academic programs, the discipline of planning was
relocated within the academic environment, from the College of Architecture to
the Graduate College. This symbolized an
ongoing shift in management structure, beginning in 1992, when a team
environment was introduced. In 1999
planning was added to architecture, resulting in the College of Architecture,
Planning and Landscape Architecture. The
team organization chart is essentially horizontal, with classified staff having
a seat at the management table.
Restructuring changes focused on the largest service centers and centers
of employee population, with the following issues resulting: supervision of staff in the architecture
library, control over the circulation desk, management of customer service, and
security. Student staff are supervised
externally. The effect of this on the
library is profound, since project teams are cross-functional: the architecture library falls within the
fine arts and humanities team, except that circulation is governed by the
materials access team. A prototype fine
arts libratory (sic) resulted in reference staff, reserves, and library staff
moving from the architecture library to the new facility, even though most
collections remained in the other location.
Developments in 2003-2004 include a
reduction in library hours by 50%, the need for paging of most materials,
unhappy customers, and endangerment of renewed accreditation by NAAB (National
Architectural Accrediting Board).
Changes were explained to the NAAB through an amendment to the
self-study report.
The result of this unconventional
management structure is problematic, in that the library director is never
independent and finds herself with responsibility but without authority.
Ruth
Wallach, Head
Librarian, Architecture and Fine Arts Library, University of Southern
California.
What’s in a Brand? The Platonic Cave of
Librarianship
The University of
Southern California is a private institution of higher learning, with fourteen
libraries in addition to the main library.
There is a continuous process of team building and matrix building,
resulting at times in an underground level of activity for accomplishing
results.
In 1945 General
Education in a Free Society; Report of the Harvard Committee (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press), known
as the red book, was published. It
presents a liberal ideology to counteract Communism and recommends a series of
texts to provide a vocabulary of ideas shared as a unifying experience. In 1970 academia witnessed a backlash against
the blind ideals of a meritocracy.
Perhaps the golden age of higher education occurred between these two
eras, during which time the number of undergraduates increased by 500%. By the late 1960s, a new community college
was founded each week. After 1975 growth
leveled off, and during the last 25 years there has been a premium placed on
life experience and an emphasis on life-long learning. Traditional higher education was seen as the
transferral of content, whereas in today's highly technological environment,
change, driven by economics and market-driven forces, is paramount. Competition is driving universities to look
at skill levels, to redefine their niches, and to embrace other institutions.
What effect do these
trends have on libraries? They force
them to assess how their collections and services add value to the university
and to assess what their collections and maintenance actually cost. As the management of universities is more and
more in the throes of assessment and branding, conceptualizing the ideal user
of services is important. Why, however,
is this problematic? The answer lies in
the reality that funders are not users, and that their interests may not
conform to the mission of the university.
Further, with this trend the boundaries of scholarship have expanded,
with library catalogs mimicking Amazon.com and students turning in papers
culled from the World Wide Web.
Therefore, we find ourselves on a slippery slope of branding and must
determine to whom we compare ourselves.
What libraries do have
is a set of principles that define our professional responsibilities. To what extent should matrix organizations
reflect what art librarians do? What do art
librarians do that contributes to branding?
Perhaps they have more credibility with their constituencies than with
their administrations. There are several
characteristics of art librarians as a professional group that may render the
centralized model inefficient, if in fact the main library is privileged: they are self-organizing, with a
responsibility to specialized communities, and at the same time navigate the
pull toward the generic.
In an article in The
Guardian ("How to . . . use a library," October 18, 2003), Guy
Browning wrote,
"Libraries are
brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting
punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.
"
--Recorded by Paul
Glassman
Sponsor
