REPORT

Leadership Update

2002-2003 board members are as follows:

Moderator: Judy Donovan (Delaware College of Art & Design)
Co-Moderator: Erika Dowell (Indiana University)
Update Editor: Kelley Weaver (Community College of Philadelphia)

BRIEF NARRATIVE

Continuing professional education in the area of art library reference has been the focus of RISS this year. Barbara Prior of the Clarence Ward Art Library at Oberlin College, who has organized the very popular “They Never Covered This in Library School” workshops at ARLIS, has proposed that RISS establish a standing committee to be charged with organizing one of these workshops for every ARLIS/ NA annual meeting. Barbara has offered to chair this committee. The committee would formalize the workshops, ensure they are offered every year, and provide a forum to discuss what future workshops should cover. She further recommended that someone from the city of the upcoming conference be assigned to this committee every year—possibly a RISS member—who can make local arrangements for the workshops. She also suggested that it may be useful to have a liaison with the Collection Development Committee to help find subject specialists who could be approached to teach the workshops. Barbara’s proposal will be the focus of our business meeting in Baltimore in 2003.

Kelley Weaver, our Update Editor, wrote a lengthy column about this proposal in the February ’03 issue of Update. We will be announcing our agenda to discuss this topic on the ARLIS listserv, in hope of generating interest from members who have interest in this proposal who might not be current RISS members,

Liv Valmestad continues to maintain the RISS website. RISS will not be sponsoring a session in Baltimore this year; our expectation is that we will plan and sponsor one of the above workshops for the 2004 meeting.

ARLIS/NA STRATEGIC PLAN

RISS is responsible for the following action items:

9. Continue to promote efforts of librarians who teach. Promote dissemination of instructional materials through LOEX Clearinghouse for Library Instruction. (I D)

6. Contribute to the establishment of professional development and continuing education programs of the Society. (II A)

To address both of the above, the establishment of the permanent standing committee on the “Library School” workshops has been outlined this year and will be formalized and implemented at our meeting in Baltimore. We will appoint a member to coordinate the dissemination of educational materials produced for these workshops (i.e. bibliographies and other instructional handouts) via the LOEX Clearinghouse. The workshops—plus the content of “Library school “ workshops taught in the past, in turn may be of use to address the action item below (which is not currently specifically assigned to RISS):

5. Develop a core curriculum for art librarianship and visual resources curatorship and create a strategy, working closely with the Executive Board, for active recommendation of this course in graduate programs. (I A)

Regarding this item: No completed action taken at this time.

1 Investigate the development of an "ARLIS/NA stamp of approval" for art web sites. This type of "award" could be proudly displayed on web sites as a sign of integrity and high quality and would promote ARLIS/NA as an organization of experts in art information. (III C)

Regarding this item: A RISS-sponsored session in Los Angeles in 2001 (“Too much of a good thing?: Selection, Collection Development and Cataloging of Art/Design Web Sites”) resulted in a proposal that RISS develop a “Core Collection” of extremely high quality web-sites for members to link on institutional sites. Discussion of this has continued, mostly in the area of establishing criteria for quality sites, but no significant progress has been made by RISS. This topic will continue to be an agenda item at the 2004 meeting. RISS may need further guidance on how to proceed with this, and whether or not collaboration with other Divisions or Sections may be required.