Art Libraries Society of North America 32nd Annual Conference
Roosevelt Hotel, New York, NY - April 15-21, 2004 

 

Book Arts Roundtable Meeting

Sun. April 19, 2004

 

30 people signed the attendance sheet

 

The Executive Board approved the petition for the Book Arts Discussion Group to be granted Roundtable status.  We will appoint the positions of Moderator, Vice-Moderator and Recorder/Update Liaison via email shortly after the conference.

 

Our first point of business was to discuss the charge and goals of the new Roundtable.  The lively discussion provided some terrific ideas, which are summarized (in no particular order) below.  A formal version of charge will be put to a vote by the membership.

 

Charge:

¨       To focus attention on the book arts

¨       To promote the exchange of information about the book arts

¨       To discuss current issues affecting the book arts, especially as pertaining to library and museum practices

¨       To encourage and support scholarship about the book arts

 

Goals:

  1. Promote/Develop standardization of descriptive language used in the cataloging of and literature about the book arts
  2. Promote awareness of practicing book artists and availability of book arts for curatorial and collection purposes
  3. Identity institutions with book arts collection and develop a brief description of the interest and scope of these collections.  Make this list publicly available to interested parties, such as book artists wishing to place their work in institutional collections.
  4. Promote discussion between artists and curators of the subject of marketing and pricing of book arts/artists’ books.
  5. Explore preservation issues such as the care and use of hands-on collections, storage, longevity of materials and structures used by artists.
  6. Collect, discuss and share collection development policies (explore this issue orally first as many CD policies are not written)
  7. Collect and share grant information
  8. Collect and share strategies for developing sufficient funds to support collection activities (purchase / cataloging / preservation / exhibition / publication)
  9. Investigate how to promote collections to different audiences.
  10. Collect and share knowledge of regional collections and their buying practices.  Consider regional collection development collaborations to create more diversity within individual collections.

 

Suggested actions to support these goals:

¨       Develop a list of institutional collections that actively purchase book arts.  Provide contact information, purchase parameters, and preferred method of contact

¨       Create a weblog (instead of email list) where all could read it but only Roundtable members could post

¨       Develop a book arts exhibit (for conference or possibly to travel)

¨       Develop a CD policy conference session

¨       Develop a conference session to explore the problems of cataloging artists’ books

¨       Explore the possibility of partnering with other library organizations with similar interests such as RBMS

 

Announcements:

¨       From Lousie Neaderland:

After 21 years, the ISCA Quarterly of Xerographic prints and artists' books,
arguably the longest running assemblage project in the world, has folded its tent with the June 2003 Annual Box of Artists Books. Two complete sets of the Quarterly as well as many back issues are still available. If you plan to visit Printed Matter during your stay in our city, and are unfamiliar with the Quarterly, we hope you will check them out there. In September 2004, the 1st Annual ISCA Bookarts Jam, a very limited edition of xerographic and computergraphic books will replace the Quarterly. Twenty five copies of the edition of seventy five will be available to institutions
and private collectors. The exact number of bookworks and the price of the
collection has not been finalized yet, but please contact Louise Neaderland,
Director of the ISCA if you would like to receive more information when it
becomes available. E-mail<isca4art2b@aol.com>. More information about the ISCA can be found on our homepage <members.aol.com/isca4art2b/I.S.C.A./HomePage.html>

¨       Barbara Bader, a doctoral candidate in the History of Art at Oxford University, is writing her thesis on an issue regarding the book arts.  She kindly provided a summary of her research for the group.  Jae hopes to be able to invite her to participate in the conference in a more formal manner in the future.

o       Bader’s Summary:

I am currently writing my doctorate at the History of Art Department entitled Artist’s Books: The Institutional Reception of a New Artistic Medium. The purpose of this study is to examine how the artist’s book was perceived and dealt with by libraries and museums since its outset in the mid-60s. It analyses the ways in which institutions have been responding to this new art form, comparing collecting theories and current praxis vis-à-vis the challenges of changing practices and realities in a rapidly transforming art world. The institutional reception of the artist’s book - which has its roots in the Conceptual and early Media Art and which sits at the threshold to Digital Art - stands exemplarily for a wide range of art forms which, by testing the limits of what art can be, collectively escape present-day museological norms and standards.

Although much information can be gathered from secondary literature, especially from exhibition catalogues, I will seek and analyze primary documentation within pioneering institutions in order to cast new light on the people and the motivating forces involved and interacting in the founding and handling of artist’s book collections. Research in libraries and museums will be necessary to answer questions raised in two main areas:

Firstly, I hope to clarify why and how these collections were established and built up, and, furthermore, to define and examine the role of key players in this process. By way of case studies, I will investigate the histories particularly of pioneering collections such as the MoMA library in New York, the Tate und National Art Library in London, as well as the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

A second aim will be to analyze past and current museological praxis, i.e. how artist’s books have been acquired, classified, stored, exhibited, defined, communicated, and, since a few years, also commissioned and produced by libraries and museums.

Methodologically, this doctorate is based, on the one hand, on case studies, archival research, as well as on interviews. On the other hand, it analyses the discourse of the artist’s book in the institutional context, mainly looking at exhibition catalogues as one of the principal means of communication of collecting institutions.

¨       Lyn Korenic of the Kohler Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison, shared the prototype of their new color brochure that promotes the artists’ books collection.  She discussed the possible uses of the brochure being considered by the library.

 

Update on Web Projects:

¨       Fred Hillbrunner or the SAIC shared the recent improvements to the database of artists’ books in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection.  This is a stand-alone database created from imported and modified OCLC records for the almost 4000 artists’ books held in the collection.  Fred’s goal was to improve usability of the design by removing visual clutter on the screen and including thumbnail images and grouping work by points of access such as foreign language works or interesting structures.  Fred discussed how the SAIC is dealing with issues of image stealing, the question of standardized language to describe the books, and choosing access points.  He gave several handouts, including a defined list of descriptors used in the database.

¨       Jae Rossman passed out a handout of a few screen shots of the Book Arts Ephemera Database pilot project at the Arts Library at Yale and stated that an article about the development of this project appeared in Art Documentation last fall.