ArLiS: Saturday, March 26

Several interesting sessions filled up my Saturday attending ArLiS in Minneapolis. My day was filled with many sessions, but the two that interested me were about book clubs in an art library, as well as ebooks in the same setting.



Libraries seem to be the natural organization to host a book club, but art libraries (especially those in museums) need to build on the experiences of other organizations to host a book club with a minimum of problems in order to avoid squandering their limited resources. Susan Augustine from the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago shared her experiences with managing a book club over an extended period of time, giving a great list of things to, and not to, do. Her first recommendation was to involve more than just the library in the book club – that drawing upon the resources of other departments within the museum helps make the club stronger. Involving the expertise of the museum’s education, membership, marketing, and publication departments gives the club much better quality, as well as broader institutional support. Choosing what to read is also important for the club and some helpful suggestions, such as using polls for the club members to choose, having it tangentially related to an exhibition or a work in the permanent collection, as well as vetting potential choices for quality is important. Ms. Augustine suggested that a blog for the club was not helpful – and in general, the comments were of poor quality, with a great deal of spam. Perhaps having a blog with no comments would be helpful to this end.

In a word, the use of ebooks in the art library setting is a mess. Illustrative matter is key to the content in art books, as well as in books collected by art libraries in general. Jennifer Friedman from Harvard highlighted some concerns that has not received much attention: the use of illustrations in ebooks. Most often the artwork reproduced in a print version of a book is not reproduced in the electronic version of a book – a square with some disclaimer text appears. Some librarians are working with publishers on this issue, with mixed results. Many of the reproduction agreements cover only reproductions in print, but not in electronic format. It really is up to librarians and publishers to find a middle way in ensuring that images are in both print and electronic copies of books.

Though I didn’t have a great deal to write about, Saturday was a really interesting day. I felt as though I finally got my legs under me (so to speak) for the conference, and also started thinking critically about presentations, styles, and such – which I will share with you at a later date.