Join us in Boston Friday, April 29th for the ARLIS/NA New England and VRA New England joint 2016 Spring Meeting.
We will be starting the day at the new Design and Media Center and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a light breakfast and business meetings. Later we will visit the Isabella Gardner Museum. Hope to see you all there!
Image: Munsell artifacts from the MassArt Munsell archives
Sarah Long is the recipient of the 2016 ARLIS/NA New England Chapter Annual Conference Travel Award.
Read on to learn about Sarah’s conference experience!
I’d like to thank the award selection committee and the chapter for this awesome opportunity to come back to Seattle. Granted that time was one week of graduate school orientation for the University of Washington online MLIS program, but I still felt an urge to return.
After spending almost all of last year’s conference at the registration desk, I was excited to get back in there and experience the conference and see Seattle. But I wasn’t quite done with the registration desk, I volunteered for the first shift Tuesday morning. My two hours consisted mostly of directing members of the Woodland Park Zoo to the other registration desk on the floor and checking in members of the executive board before their all-day meeting. After that, I was free to roam around the city.
Later that day I attended the Pioneer Square tour led by Alan Michelson of UW. While the tour started at Pioneer Square, Alan took us around the whole neighborhood, including the Gold Rush museum and describing nearly the complete architectural history of Seattle. He knew the complete story of nearly every building we passed. Luckily we had sunshine for entirety of the three hour tour.
The most important and helpful part of the conference were the two workshops I attended on Wednesday. The first workshop was the Career Development led by ArLiSNAP and VREPS. We received invaluable tips for carrying out job searches including sharing places to find job listings, how to communicate with and use references, and resources for maintaining relevancy in the field. More importantly we focused on persistence and maintaining positive outlooks and an open mind.
The second workshop was the first meeting of the year-long career mentoring program. The theme for this year is leadership, and we spent time brainstorming qualities of a good leader what we strive for in our careers. Before the workshop we were asked to create SMART goals (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevancy, Timeframe) to focus our objectives and gain perspective. The mentees completed exercises and received advice on how to approach our positions as mentees vis-à-vis communication, expectations, and support. During the second half of the workshop we met with our mentors to get to know them and edit our goals. My mentor, Yvette Cortes, and I discussed a plan for future meetings, establishing agendas, and goal-setting. The Committee members will be in touch with us all year providing readings and advice. The two workshops gave me with a boost in confidence and ambition for continuing my job search and getting involved in the organization.
During the rest of the conference, I attended the session on web archiving, new voices in the profession, the poster session where I got a volunteer opportunity, and sat in and took notes for the Documentation Committee. I met with colleagues from Houston and new friends and colleagues in New England, and got so much encouragement and understanding regarding my quest for employment. I had a remarkable time and hope to see all of you soon!
About Sarah: Sarah Long has a BA in Art History from Trinity University and MLIS from the University of Washington. She worked at the Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for eight years and currently resides in Providence, RI.
About the ARLIS/NA New England Chapter Travel Award: The Travel Award is intended to encourage the professional development of ARLIS/NA New England Chapter members by supporting travel to the ARLIS/NA annual conference.. Money for this award is generously donated by ARLIS/NA New England Chapter members.
Rebekah Scoggins is the recipient of the 2016 Elmar W. Seibel Scholarship, which she used to attend this year’s ARLIS/NA and VRA joint conference.
Read on to learn about Rebekah’s conference experience!
I used the Elmar W. Seibel Award to attend the 2016 ARLIS/NA + VRA Joint Conference in Seattle. It was an incredible experience. Right from the beginning of the conference, I felt like I was among people with similar interests and who were in the careers to which I aspire. I have never been in a situation where I was around so many art librarians and it felt amazing. When the conference started on Wednesday morning, my first event was the ArLiSNAP and VREPS Career Development workshop. This is such a great addition to the conference and a great resource for young professionals. The three moderators were very interesting and helpful. They all came from very different backgrounds, which gave me three different ideas of how being a young professional works, including discussions about resumes, interviewing, and networking. What was also great about the workshop was how interactive it was. The audience members were encouraged to share their experiences and perspectives as well as ask questions relating to the topics. Overall, I left with many things to consider and a better understanding of how the job search will go.
Over the course the conference, I was able to attend some amazing panels. I saw panels about the connections between museum educators and librarians; new ventures from visual resources professionals that expand their reach as professionals; innovations and uses of e-books in art libraries and publishing; how to implement the ACRL Information Literacy Framework in art and design institutions; how to incorporate new technologies over a variety of projects; numerous projects from newcomers to the organization and conference; discovering new ways to reach out to students and help them connect with the library and its resources; and the importance and relevance of open source materials to art librarianship. I took so many notes and feel like I learned so much. My head was full of so much information and so many ideas when I left the conference. I wish I could have seen every panel, but I picked the ones I found most interesting and informative for my future career. I hope that I will be able to attend many more ArLiS/NA conferences in the future so I can continue to see what my peers are working on throughout the country.
The special events and receptions that the conference held were great opportunities to mingle with the other attendees. Wednesday night, I attend the First Time Attendees and New Members reception. I was able to talk with people from all over the country and even made friends with a few fellow library students from Canada. I heard about what it was like to work at the Whitney Museum, the Met Museum Library, the University of Hawaii, and a few others. I met some of the board members as well as some people who have been members for years. It was a really great experience to see so many different people who are on the verge of their careers in one place. The welcome gala at the Seattle Art Museum was also amazing, especially since it brought the whole conference together in one place. I was also excited that we were allowed access to the museum. I met even more amazing people from around the country and learned all about their institutions as well as share stories about my own.
Overall, going to this conference was an enriching experience and I will always be grateful to the New England Chapter of ArLiS/NA for this opportunity.
About Rebekah: Rebekah will graduate with a master’s degree in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Cultural Heritage Informatics, in May from Simmons College. She also holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree in Art History. Originally from Georgia, Rebekah plans to move back to the south after graduation to find a job in art librarianship in an academic institution or museum.
About the Seibel Scholarship: Established in 2001, the Elmar W. Seibel Scholarship honors ARLIS/NA New England Chapter Life Member Elmar Seibel, a respected book dealer, bibliographer, curator, and collector. He is founder and president of Boston’s Ars Libri Ltd., which since 1976 has been a resource for scholars, librarians, collectors, and artists. The purpose of this award is to support and encourage future art librarians by helping to defray graduate school expenses. The Seibel Scholarship is made possible through the generous donations of ARLIS/NA New England members.
For those who couldn’t join us last week, or for those who did and want to relive the magic:
ARLIS/NA New England Chapter’s webinar Virtual Snapshot: What’s Up With Art Librarianship? is now available to view on the ARLIS/NA Learning Portal!
To watch the webinar on the Portal, follow this link. Access to the ARLIS/NA Learning Portal is open to anyone (not just ARLIS/NA members!) interested in current issues in art librarianship. You will be prompted to create a username and password. Additionally, the webinar is available to watch here on the ARLIS/NA New England YouTube channel.
The webinar is a virtual tour of the art library/visual resources profession. Whether you’re an art library veteran, art library-curious, or somewhere in between this is an illuminating look at some of the exciting work happening in the field right now.
Presenters and Topics
Jesi Buell, Instructional Design and Web Librarian, Colgate University
Information and Visual Literacy Instruction Tools
Digital Learning Objects (DLOs) are examples of a successful Blended Learning tool at Colgate University. These interactive, digital tutorials allow for student learning outside the classroom which increases time in Library sessions, put lessons in context, and encourages autodidactism. This presentation will show examples, give advice on best practices, and explain how the Instructional Design Librarian plans on putting together a visual literacy DLO.
Jasmine Burns, Image Technologies and Visual Literacy Librarian, Indiana University Bloomington
Visual Resource Collection Management
During this presentation, I will discuss my plans for a large data migration from a homegrown institutional image repository (created by my predecessor in the mid-1990s) into ARTstor’s SharedShelf. I will give a background of the structure and uses of current system, map out my overall migration plan, and share my projected timeline for the process.
Sarah Carter, Director, Bridwell Art Library at the University of Louisville
Creative Outreach and Programming
The Bridwell Art Library connected the artistic practice of self portraits to a wider audience by designing and implementing a social media campaign highlighting “Shelfies in Art History.” This presentation will focus on the collaborative exhibit design and promotion that made the exhibit and social media campaign a success with not only our patrons, but within the wider community of Louisville.
Lareese Hall, Architecture + Art Librarian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Artists’ Book Collections
If you had to use just six books in your artists’ book collection to explain your collection philosophy what would you choose? This is the premise for a video series that looks at artists’ books in academic environments and at what it means to “collect”.