2007 Lois Swan Jones Professional Development Award Recipient Report from Beverly Mitchell

TX/MX Chapter Report

Thank you to chapter members of ARLIS Texas-Mexico for the Lois Swan Jones travel grant award. The opportunity to attend the conference was a rewarding professional experience. Over the course of the two and a half days I attended the ARLIS/NA conference in Atlanta, I went to several sessions and meetings. As a whole, I found it very helpful simply to go to these scheduled events to learn about their purpose and function, and the First-time Attendees Orientation session on Thursday evening helped to orient me and make me feel welcome at the conference. On Sunday, before my departure back to Texas, I attended the Wittenborn committee meeting chaired by the outgoing chair Terrie Wilson. I am looking forward to working with this committee this year, and I feel it an honor to be asked to contribute. In addition, it was my pleasure to meet members of both ARLIS/NA and the TX/MX chapter. Below are the sessions and meetings that I attended.

FRIDAY, APRIL 27TH

• Session 2: Communication and Collaboration: Working with Faculty for Information Fluency – As a reference librarian one of my duties is teaching art and art history students how to find scholarly information or images of art for their research. I was particularly interested in this session, and the presenters gave me some good ideas for possibly making my classes more effective and targeted toward teaching students to look up materials in the library or outside of it. Jennifer Parker’s presentation on creating one-hour credit instruction courses in art was very concrete in her discussion. I am not at the point of developing a credited instruction program, but it gave me the idea of creating tests or pop quizzes to assess student learning. That being said, a credited instruction program is a plan that we want to consider at the Hamon Arts Library. Jennifer also gave us the address for the course outline on her website, which I recommend for anyone who teaches how to search art and art history resources: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/art/ARTS1010.htm . I anticipate that the feedback from these tests will be immensely helpful. Lucie Stylianopoulos, who was actually a pleasure just to meet and chat with, gave a presentation that encouraged me to make better use of some of my architecture resources in my teaching. Claudia Covert outlined several core competencies to serve as a guide through the teaching process. She also emphasized pre- and post-testing for instruction sessions.

• Session 4: Art Libraries: New and Improved – My interest in this session was space planning issues. Linda R. McKee, Head Librarian at the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art Library, and Artis Wick, the Assistant Librarian discussed and showed their new library and its facilities. They discussed planning for space ahead of time and the importance of insisting on what needs and future needs your library has for space and use. They also discussed their very helpful system of counting and marking off linear feet for the move. Laura Schwartz showed images of the UT Austin’s Fine Arts Library renovation, which included getting more space for materials and improved facilities for students. To discover their needs, they collected extensive observational and use data. Among one of several impressive changes was how, by removing high partitions, they created a feeling of open and more expansive space in the library. Carol Terry, Director of Library Services, RISD, gave a wonderful presentation of RISD’s unique opportunity to house the Fleet Library collection in a 1917 bank building across the river from the school. The new space not only provide much needed room for the collection and expanded study areas, but it also gave staff the ability to create a new community environment extending beyond the students’ needs to the community of Providence, Rhode Island. The Fleet Library website provides a nicely detailed pdf on their new building, and it is worth reading for any new and creative ideas on library space planning: http://www.risd.edu/pdf/fleetlibraryrisd.pdf .

• Reference and Information Services Section Meeting – this section was the most relevant to my position, and it is definitely a section that I would like to keep up with on their activities.

• Volunteered at the services desk – I enjoyed this activity. It helped me with a few questions of my own, and it gave me the chance to meet other librarians. Natalia Lonchyna, who helped manage the volunteers, was gracious and quite helpful.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28TH

• ARTstor Users Group meeting – I found this Users Group very worthwhile. I regularly teach students and faculty how to search and use the tools in ARTstor. There were a few announcements that I had not read or heard about. I’m glad to know that ARTstor is migrating to a new platform, Ajax, and that images for scholarly publication from a limited number of collections will be available to users. Max Marmor, who has been so instrumental in developing the image collections in ARTstor, will now serve as the President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

• Session 8: Going Outside, Coming in from the Cold: Outsourcing, Moonlighting, and Consulting – What I found most useful from this session was Carol K. Rusk’s talk, “Liberating the Library: Creative Solutions to Shrinking Budgets and Human Resources.” Grant writing for large library or archival projects and managing volunteers or part-time staff are central concerns for all libraries managing their resources with a limited budget.

• Took advantage of visiting the High Museum. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to the see The Gates of Paradise exhibition and become more familiar with the Museum’s collection.

• Academic Division Meeting – Since this is a new division, there was a lot of discussion about its purpose and what direction it should or might take over the next year. I learned that there is the desire for academic art librarians to have a presence in ARLIS as a division distinct from museum librarians. On the part of some attendees, there seemed to be the need for programs that address the services unique to those provided by academic art librarians. Attendees were encouraged to come up with topics relevant to this division for next year’s conference. I am currently enrolled in this list-serv, and the topics suggested for next year’s conference are interesting and quite worthwhile.