Challenge Accepted! Cataloging Artists’ Books and Special Collections
When: October 20, 2026 at 1:00 pm EDT / 12:00 pm CDT / 10:00 am PDT
Registration Link: https://nga.zoomgov.com/
Please feel free to submit questions for our presenters when you register. There will also be time for open discussion and Q&A during the session.
This meeting is open to both ARLIS/NA members and non-members but participation is limited to members only.
Speakers
Gretchen Berkman, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Gretchen Berkman (she/her) is the artists' book and special formats cataloger at the National Gallery of Art Library. Her undergraduate degree is in art history and she worked as an interior designer for a while before pivoting to librarianship in her 30's.
The National Gallery of Art Library recently acquired an extensive collection of photobooks from the historian and collector Manfred Heiting. This collection consists of approximately 4800 volumes spanning the history of photography from the 19th century until now. One of the things that makes this collection unique from a cataloging perspective is that most items lie at the intersection of artist’s books, photobooks, and fine press books. I want to highlight some of the challenges we will tackle as we create bibliographic records, as well as some of the ways the collector was able to develop an encyclopedic history of photography and photographic printing processes through this collection. Finally, I want to showcase a few highlights of the Manfred Heiting Library.
Allie McCormack, University of Utah
Allie McCormack (she/her) is the Original Cataloger for Special Collections at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. She catalogs a wide variety of materials ranging from medieval manuscripts to contemporary book art objects and supervises a team of two excellent catalogers.
Emily Hernandez, University of Utah
Emily Hernandez (she/her) is the Visual Books Project Assistant at the Marriott Library. Informed by her background in book and art history, Emily develops new terminology for Opening Artists’ Books and remediates the records for the artists’ books in the Marriott Library Special Collections.
A team at the University of Utah's Marriott Library Special Collections has been remediating catalog records for artists' books and fine press books for several years. Combining the expertise of a book arts faculty member, a special collections cataloger, and a dedicated cataloging assistant, the three have enhanced records to account not only for the structural properties of books but also their textual, material, and conceptual qualities. Paired with the development of Opening Artists' Books, a visual thesaurus that links maker/creator terminology with controlled vocabularies, the project seeks to set a new standard for artists' books metadata.