ArLiS: Closing Thoughts

The past several posts here at The Dean Files have been about my experiences and thoughts on the content presented and shared at ArLiS/NA’s annual conference (2011) in Minneapolis. I focused primarily on the content of the conference, and not on the conference itself. In reflecting on the content, I gave a great deal of thought to the presentation and the format of the content, and I have some constructive criticism in four points I would like to share with you, reader.



The presentations at this conference were generally linked by themes, with several presentations fitting into the overall theme of a session. This method of presentation has both its strengths, as well as its weaknesses. Having the full session broken up into smaller presentations helps to hold the audience’s attention, and allows some limited time for questions. However, the themes can be misleading in that not all of the presentations directly support the overall theme. Perhaps the organizers wanted to include some specific presentations, but didn’t quite know which theme they fit into, and so simply “shoehorned” them into this session or that. Regardless of the structuring, it would be helpful to both presenters and attendees to have the presentations hew more closely to the theme of a given session.

The attendees of this conference were (as the name suggests) art librarians from many different backgrounds. Some came from academic libraries at universities, some from public libraries with strong fine art collections, and others (like myself) came from museum libraries. While it seems that we do indeed have many similarities, it would be helpful to have a bit more division between sessions for the different specializations of art librarians. For example, perhaps one day of the conference could have the academic librarians together for a series of sessions, and the art museum librarians could have their own extended sessions, each dealing with topics of special interest to the division. It is important to “build bridges” between different areas of art librarianship, but at the same time, there are very specific issues that each subset deals with, and having more focused time to discuss and explore those issues would be helpful.

My next point is simply on overall critique on presentation preparation and styles. There were some presenters who were excellent, some were mediocre, and some were (frankly) terrible. Having some standardized format for presentations would help fight against the some of the worst presentations, and some improved energy and enthusiasm on the part of the presenters themselves would go a long way. Also, having a standardized format for the presentation slides themselves, and having them loaded all together would help to save time in transitions – allowing for more questions. To me, those transitions were often detrimental to the overall session, filled with awkwardness and apologies that could be easily prevented by some work by the moderator or whomever beforehand.

The Powerpoint presentations were the most troublesome aspect of the conference for me. I imagine this is not surprising to you, as I am an adherent of the thoughts of Edward Tufte in this area, as well as any kind of infographics. The slides generally competed with the speaker for the audience’s attention, and as I observed, typically the slide would be changed, the audience members would read the slide, and then zone out until the slide was changed. As Mr., Tufte indicates, the most effective slides were those not comprised of text, but of images that supported the speaker’s points. These images could be humorous, or of a work of art, or even tangentially related – but these slides supported the presenter’s message, rather than running roughshod over them. Indeed, if the content of the Powerpoint is better than your actual presentation, perhaps one might revise your presentation. As professionals with a bent to design and art, we should really know better, and should expect that the audience expects well-designed, thoughtful slides supporting a presentation.

Overall, I think these are things which are probably said over and over about conferences, but hopefully someone out there will listen and take these things to heart. What about your conference experiences, reader? Any input – I’d love to hear from you!