Art Libraries Society
Central Plains
ARLIS/CP is a chapter of:
Dates, Location of Fall Meeting Announced
Mark your calendars now for our Fall Chapter Meeting to be held in Lincoln, NE, September 18-20. Kay Logan-Peters, Access and Branch Services Librarian at the University of Nebraska, will be our host. Kay and Tori Gregory, current Chair Elect of ARLIS/CP, are planning a fascinating program on art textiles in conjunction with the recently reopened International Quilt Study Center and Museum.
Denver Conference Report by Tori Gregory
I kicked off a busy conference with a session entitled “Scholarly Publications and the Art, Architecture, VR Library”, which presented Open Access journals as a possible or partial solution for libraries, which are profoundly impacted by the ever-increasing cost of traditional paper and electronic journals, and for scholars in the arts and humanities, who face increasing difficulty in getting their work published. Fewer scholarly books are being published, and publishers are less willing to take a chance on art monographs.
For most faculty, the goal of publication is impact and influence. If they publish in a journal with a high impact factor, they become more influential in their own field. Open Access works because of the browsing that faculty do. While searching for certain articles, if they find a new Open Access journal that they didn’t know existed, the faculty will start to use it. This increases the number of times the journal is cited in the literature, which increases impact factors for the journal. This formula has the potential to solve the cost problem and actually raise impact factors, because more people can access journals that are openly available on the Internet than those that are indexed in databases only available with a subscription.
Some examples of Open Access projects that have worked include the Public Library of Science http://www.pplos.org; PubMed Central Archives http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov; and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com. In addition, there will soon be an open access archive available for Art and Architecture scholars. On April 1, 2009, the Society of Architecture Historians will launch SAH AVRN, the Architecture Visual Network, an online library of architecture and landscape images for research and teaching. The images come primarily from MIT, Brown University, and the University of Virginia, all of which are partners in developing AVRN. The hope for the collection is that it will allow art historians to make connections, see patterns and new contexts for the images it contains. To that end, AVRN will include QuickTime VR movies and Microsoft PhotoSynth, a new technology that will hyperlink related images.
Because my liaison duties extend to fashion and design as well as fine art, I next attended a session entitled “No Doubt About it: Fashion is an Art” and learned about tools for fashion research and marketing that every academic library should have. Fashion is a global industry now. Fabric manufactured in Bangladesh will be sewn into clothing in China, and then sold to the US. The used clothes will later be sold back to poorer countries, where they will experience a second life. Because of this, it is wise for libraries with fashion design and marketing collections to invest in resources on global economy and production and well as resources more specifically dedicated to fashion. Resources specifically mentioned in the session are FashionDex publications such as the Small Design Company’s Guide to Wholesale Fabric and Trends; books on merchandising to certain generations and their shopping habits (e.g. generation x); and books on fashion forecasting. The presenters promised that specific titles would be available at some point on the ARLIS/NA website. Databases to consider for fashion research are Style Sight, a searchable image database; Factiva, and Lexis-Nexis. The latter two are important because they grant access to news articles about the fashion market and Hoover’s, respectively.
I also took some time to visit the Web 2.0 Kiosk in the Exhibits Hall. To be quite honest, up to this point I have resisted learning much about Web 2.0 technology. I’ve felt a little overwhelmed by it, feeling that it was “just another thing to learn” and fearing it might be really complicated. However, I’ve recently been motivated to learn more about wikis and blogs, and so I visited the Kiosk. The Kiosk was organized by ARLIS Students and New Professionals (ARLIS SNAP). The Kiosk was one of the “firsts” that occurred in Denver, and it was a wonderful opportunity to learn in a low-key environment. I came away with new knowledge of this technology, and a few ideas about how I can apply it to my job. I still am not sure if students will respond positively to librarians trying to keep up with technology by blogging and podcasting and being on Face Book. I fear we may come across as “sad”, like their parents trying to be cool. Nonetheless, there are some applications for this technology that are less obvious, and it’s good to understand what’s happening with new tools and technologies.
At the ARTstor User’s Group, I learned that ARTstor has plans to add another 9,000 images to their current collections. In June 2008, they will release a new platform, which they’re calling ARTstor 3.0. The most notable feature of the new platform is “clustering”, which will eliminate duplicates of images by linking them all together. Only the best image will return in the search results, but the user can view all the duplicate images with a click. As always, ARTstor welcome requests for particular collections or types of images. Users may email Christine Kuan, Director of Collection Development, at christine.kuan@artstor.org to make these requests for content.
The final session I attended was “Women Artists of the American West”. What influence have women had on the art world, and how female artists infuse their art with their own identity were some of the discussion topics. For generations, long before women artists were recognized as such, women have created art. They have been quilters, and weavers, and artisans making baskets and pots, all items used in daily life. In the late 1800s, women began to make a living as artists. This was often easier in the West, because the social strictures preventing women from certain professions and activities were not in place in the new territory. There were many women painters and photographers in the West in the late 19th century, even a well-known female architect. Women also became sculptors, but that medium was not as popular in the West. Art provides women an opportunity to connect with their identity as females; as mothers and daughters, or members of a tribe. Art and creativity can shape the individual as surely as they shape the art.
The conference wasn’t all work. I also took a tour of Denver’s Mountain Parks, which visited Red Rocks Amphitheater and the Buffalo Bill Cody Gravesite and Museum. I visited the Denver Art Museum to see the Quilts of Gees bend, an exhibit I’ve only dreamed of seeing for a very long time. I also ate Indian, Thai and Vietnamese food, which I don’t have access to at home in Stillwater. Denver is such an exciting and diverse city! The next time I go, I want to see some additional museums and more of Dinosaur Ridge and its authenticated Iguanodon footprints. I am very appreciative to ARLIS/CP for the travel grant that allowed me to attend this conference.
Some related links:
Dinosaur Ridge
http://www.frontrangeliving.com/outdoors/DinosaurRidge.htm
Buffalo Bill Cody
http://www.travelphotobase.com/s/CODY.HTM
http://www.srmason-sj.org/council/journal/aug99/Boyerbill.html
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
(This is a traveling exhibit. It has been in Houston, London, Boston, Atlanta and now Denver. The article linked below was written in 2003, when awareness of the quilts first hit the world at large, but it provides good background.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=970364
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=498