2010 Lois Swan Jones Award Recipient Report from Elizabeth Schaub

It is a great honor to receive the 2010 Lois Swan Jones Award. Thank you to my fellow chapter members for supporting this award and to the committee for selecting me as this year’s recipient. The financial support provided by this award helped make my conference attendance possible.

Boston was still enjoying a vibrant spring in late April. There were tulips and cherry blossoms everywhere and the city seemed abuzz with activity after its post-winter reawakening. The conference programmers are to be commended for providing a very action packed, information rich schedule. My conference experience began on Friday, April 23 with two half-day workshops. The morning workshop, “Televising the Revolution: Designing & Building the Right Channel for Online Instruction,” covered instructional design principles to address information and visual literacy challenges. Working in a visual resources collection nested in a school of architecture, I was particularly interested in discussion around the topic of visual literacy. Visual literacy is a nascent field increasingly recognized as encompassing a set of skills important for today’s students; currently the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) is in the process of developing a set of visual literacy standards that will complement their information literacy standards. Workshop leaders Kaila Bussert and Sussette Newberry walked attendees through the process of developing an effective instructional module and provided an in-depth list of resources and tools to assist with development of instructional materials.

The afternoon workshop I attended, “Meeting User Expectations—Strategies for Supporting New Technologies in the Arts Library,” was held off-site at MassArt. Workshop leaders Hannah Bennett and Carolyn Caizzi began the workshop by stimulating conversation around defining who our users are, their expectations, and how best to address their needs. I was particularly impressed with Hannah’s use of jing—a free product that allows one to create video tutorials—to create custom video responses to reference questions. It was very inspiring and I hope to be able to use jing in a similar way.

The 38th Annual ARLIS/NA Convocation was a relatively short but meaningful event where award winners were honored followed by the welcome party and convocation reception. This was an opportunity for colleagues to network with old friends as well as to meet first-time attendees.

Saturday, April 24 began with an early morning ARLIS/NA Texas-Mexico chapter meeting. As always it was nice to see familiar faces and connect with the Texas contingent. The chapter’s fall meeting, to be held in Houston in November, was discussed along with business related to the chapter’s Web site, listserv, and recruitment of Mexican members. Following the chapter meeting I attended session A “Confronting the Future: Articulating Purpose, Documenting Value.” It was a very engaging session. Jeanne Brown spoke about the value of assessment and strategies for using and presenting data effectively to university administrators. Jolene de Verges addressed the emerging future for image professionals who are navigating a landscape radically altered by the Digital Age and how these changes influence image collection building and services. In the afternoon I attended session F, “Revisiting the Past, Embracing the Future.” Allison Benedetti and Jolene de Verges discussed MIT’s FACADE (Future-proofing Architectural Computer-Aided DEsign) project at http://facade.mit.edu/. This project—supported by a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to the MIT Libraries—included research to determine best practices for CAD files during their entire lifecycle. In addition, Patricia Kosco Cossard and Kimberly Detterbeck presented their project to create an online resource documenting ancient Stabiae. Session H “Information Literacy Theories and Competencies in Practice: Making Information Literacy Instruction Relevant To Faculty and Students” presented both the theory and the practice driving effective information literacy instruction. Nichole Beatty’s explanation of how we translate verbal cues into visual ones was fascinating. Rina Vecchiloa’s presentation of her experience working with faculty and students to integrate information literacy instruction into the classroom was equally engaging.

Saturday evening I met with Summer Educational Institute (SEI) Team members Alix Reiskind and Nina Kay Stephenson. ARLIS/NA Board Education Liaison and VRA Foundation Board of Director Chair Elisa Lanzi joined us as well. Our meeting was productive and we look forward to welcoming SEI attendees to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in June. Following this meeting I met up with ARLIS/NA Texas-Mexico chapter members in the lobby for an informal gathering.

Sunday morning, April 25, I attended the leadership breakfast. It was an opportunity for attendees to hear from the Board, a representative from the ARLIS/NA management firm TEI, and news from local chapter leaders about regional activities. Session L “Divide and Collaborate: Building Digital Collections One Piece at a Time” provided two digital collection case studies. Tom Riedel presented Regis University’s Santo Collection online project and Deborah Kempe and Dan Lipcan discussed the collaborative projects of the NYARC consortium (The Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries of The Metropolitan Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Museum of Modern Art) in partnership with JSTOR to create comprehensive digital collections of New York gallery publications. Along with co-presenter Elisa Lanzi, I presented a paper during session N, “Permanent Beta: Evolving Role of Visual Resource Professionals.” My paper was focused on the successful scenarios outlined in the Visual Resources Association’s White Paper “Advocating for Visual Resources Management in Educational and Cultural Institutions.” Elisa Lanzi’s paper focused on the transformation that visual resources professionals have made or in the process of making in response to a constantly changing, complex environment. Carole Ann Fabian gracefully moderated our session.

Sunday’s membership meeting lunch provided an opportunity for a change in Board leadership and for various Board officers to report to the membership about Society business. The lunch concluded with an enticing promotional video encouraging participants to attend next year’s joint conference with the Visual Resources Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Sunday afternoon’s session O “Creative Practice in Cyberspace” provided an interesting mix of perspectives. Heather Saunders, an artist and librarian, discussed her approach to blogging and how it informed her creative process and Heather Koopmans presented her research into how artists seek and use online information. During Sunday’s poster sessions ARLIS/NA Texas-Mexico chapter member Tara Spies presented her use of social networking tools and applications to promote resources and services to Art and Design faculty and students. The other two posters focused on teaching students the ethics and legal issues related to image appropriation and using assessment to analyze the effectiveness of information literacy instruction.

My conference experience came to a close with the Visual Resources Division meeting. It was a chance for attendees to discuss areas for focus over the coming year and ideas for conference programming in 2011.