President's Choice: People-Centered Practice, ARLIS/NA Conference 2025
From Meredith Hale
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Selected as the ARLIS/NA 2025 President’s Choice Session, People-Centered Practice: Art Libraries as Hubs for Community, Creativity, and Change brings together three powerful presentations that showcase the evolving role of art libraries as dynamic, inclusive spaces for outreach, innovation, and collaboration. This panel explores how art librarians are cultivating community through digital consortia, culturally responsive programming, and mentorship-driven experiential learning.
Cultivating Community in CARTA: Growing and Sustaining an Art Library Collaborative - Sumitra Duncan and Malia Van Heukelem
As a consortium, CARTA embodies a collaborative spirit among art libraries dedicated to preserving and providing access to essential web-based content for art historical scholarship. This program unifies participating organizations through shared infrastructure, pooled expertise, and coordinated collecting activities, significantly expanding the range of web-published, born-digital materials available for art research and study. To date, 41 members have preserved and made accessible over 1,000 web-based art resources, totaling over 16 TB of data, with continued growth.
In the past year, this community of art librarians has undergone a transformation, adopting a sustainable membership model of self-governance that has expanded the direction and reach of its activities and impact. With a recent Digital Art History grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the collaborative has continued its "collections as data" instruction opportunities for digital art historians through a series of workshops, or "datathons" focused on research use cases of web archive data. These datathons showcase innovative methods for building custom research collections relevant to digital art history, generating, accessing, and analyzing research-ready datasets from CARTA collections, and publishing and preserving these datasets in ways that promote computational engagement, scholarship, and research.
Additionally, engagement with the CARTA community and the broader art librarian community in collaborative collection-building will commence in fall 2024 and continue into early 2025. With the launch of a communal collection-building process, both the membership and collections will expand to support a greater diversity of involvement and input, strategically guiding collection growth in directions determined by the membership. Currently, the membership is exploring ways to enrich the collections with web resources representing a broad spectrum of geographies and underrepresented communities.
During this presentation, members of CARTA will share ongoing efforts to deepen the sense of community among members, facilitate contributions to the growing collection, and encourage collaborative research initiatives that will impact current and future understandings of digital art history.
Living the Library: Case Studies of Black Artists as Community Builders - Siobhan McKissic and April Sheridan
Black artists have long engaged in the practice of wearing many hats: maker, designer, teacher, community builder, activist and more. This paper explores how Black artists' specific roles as community builders can inform the also multi-faceted profession of art librarianship. To understand Black modes of being, contextualize visual history, and connect past, present, and future, the writers focus on three artists, Lois Mailou Jones, Robert Earl Paige, and Krista Franklin, all of whom employ pan-Africanist and feminist theory in their practices.
Looking at the artists' works, publishing methods, and community engagement strategies, common themes unfold: the significance of everyday materiality, preservation of collective histories, and the shift from individual to community-based storytelling.
The authors analyze how these artists create entry points for research that facilitate discussions on new cultural topics and suggest innovative approaches for collection development, instructional praxis, and outreach. The findings have implications for enhancing the role of art libraries in advocating for diverse perspectives, connecting communities, and fostering a thriving cultural ecosystem.
People over Preservation: Expanding Access to Special Collections through Pedagogical Practice - Ruth Thomas, Heidi Bechler, and Maddie Hayko
It is established that the professional experience gained during a Masters in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program is essential to securing a job after graduation. Yet many of the professional experiences available to students are surface level and task-oriented. In special collections, it is especially difficult to find project-oriented, hands-on experience when librarians prioritize preservation over access. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, three MLIS students sought meaningful student jobs while the Kohler Art Library was understaffed. This branch art library boasts an extensive artists' book collection and is staffed by one librarian, two library assistants, and undergraduate and graduate student workers. A mutually beneficial relationship formed between the library director and the MLIS students interested in art librarianship and special collections.
Over the course of the two-year degree program, these students completed projects in processing, preservation, and instruction related to artists' books. These projects were based on a combination of library needs and student interests. Under the guidance of the head librarian, students conducted in-depth research to inform and implement best practices in their areas of interest. Through their projects, students created preservation standards, increased catalog access, and facilitated special collections instruction.
These experiences inspired the students' professional interests and the jobs they applied to, developed students' project management and leadership skills, and were essential to securing full-time positions. The Kohler Art Library balanced preservation and access while utilizing student labor to complete essential collections projects. This case study demonstrates how an art library can enhance a minimal art librarianship curriculum through mentorship and experience.
This recording is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Cultivating Community in CARTA: Growing and Sustaining an Art Library Collaborative - Sumitra Duncan and Malia Van Heukelem
As a consortium, CARTA embodies a collaborative spirit among art libraries dedicated to preserving and providing access to essential web-based content for art historical scholarship. This program unifies participating organizations through shared infrastructure, pooled expertise, and coordinated collecting activities, significantly expanding the range of web-published, born-digital materials available for art research and study. To date, 41 members have preserved and made accessible over 1,000 web-based art resources, totaling over 16 TB of data, with continued growth.
In the past year, this community of art librarians has undergone a transformation, adopting a sustainable membership model of self-governance that has expanded the direction and reach of its activities and impact. With a recent Digital Art History grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the collaborative has continued its "collections as data" instruction opportunities for digital art historians through a series of workshops, or "datathons" focused on research use cases of web archive data. These datathons showcase innovative methods for building custom research collections relevant to digital art history, generating, accessing, and analyzing research-ready datasets from CARTA collections, and publishing and preserving these datasets in ways that promote computational engagement, scholarship, and research.
Additionally, engagement with the CARTA community and the broader art librarian community in collaborative collection-building will commence in fall 2024 and continue into early 2025. With the launch of a communal collection-building process, both the membership and collections will expand to support a greater diversity of involvement and input, strategically guiding collection growth in directions determined by the membership. Currently, the membership is exploring ways to enrich the collections with web resources representing a broad spectrum of geographies and underrepresented communities.
During this presentation, members of CARTA will share ongoing efforts to deepen the sense of community among members, facilitate contributions to the growing collection, and encourage collaborative research initiatives that will impact current and future understandings of digital art history.
Living the Library: Case Studies of Black Artists as Community Builders - Siobhan McKissic and April Sheridan
Black artists have long engaged in the practice of wearing many hats: maker, designer, teacher, community builder, activist and more. This paper explores how Black artists' specific roles as community builders can inform the also multi-faceted profession of art librarianship. To understand Black modes of being, contextualize visual history, and connect past, present, and future, the writers focus on three artists, Lois Mailou Jones, Robert Earl Paige, and Krista Franklin, all of whom employ pan-Africanist and feminist theory in their practices.
Looking at the artists' works, publishing methods, and community engagement strategies, common themes unfold: the significance of everyday materiality, preservation of collective histories, and the shift from individual to community-based storytelling.
The authors analyze how these artists create entry points for research that facilitate discussions on new cultural topics and suggest innovative approaches for collection development, instructional praxis, and outreach. The findings have implications for enhancing the role of art libraries in advocating for diverse perspectives, connecting communities, and fostering a thriving cultural ecosystem.
People over Preservation: Expanding Access to Special Collections through Pedagogical Practice - Ruth Thomas, Heidi Bechler, and Maddie Hayko
It is established that the professional experience gained during a Masters in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program is essential to securing a job after graduation. Yet many of the professional experiences available to students are surface level and task-oriented. In special collections, it is especially difficult to find project-oriented, hands-on experience when librarians prioritize preservation over access. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, three MLIS students sought meaningful student jobs while the Kohler Art Library was understaffed. This branch art library boasts an extensive artists' book collection and is staffed by one librarian, two library assistants, and undergraduate and graduate student workers. A mutually beneficial relationship formed between the library director and the MLIS students interested in art librarianship and special collections.
Over the course of the two-year degree program, these students completed projects in processing, preservation, and instruction related to artists' books. These projects were based on a combination of library needs and student interests. Under the guidance of the head librarian, students conducted in-depth research to inform and implement best practices in their areas of interest. Through their projects, students created preservation standards, increased catalog access, and facilitated special collections instruction.
These experiences inspired the students' professional interests and the jobs they applied to, developed students' project management and leadership skills, and were essential to securing full-time positions. The Kohler Art Library balanced preservation and access while utilizing student labor to complete essential collections projects. This case study demonstrates how an art library can enhance a minimal art librarianship curriculum through mentorship and experience.
This recording is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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