Saturday July 11

Arts 50th Anniversary

I’m taking advantage of the wireless internet access ALA is providing at the conference center to post a few notes about this morning’s Arts activities.  The turnout for both All-Committees and the Discussion Forum was amazing, and Chair Lucie Stylianopoulos represented us at the ACRL101 orientation session, which resulted in some welcome new faces at the Discussion Forum.

The Discussion Forum departed from our usual informal member presentations.  Instead we held a general discussion on the current and possible future state of arts librarianship.  Discussion began with our reactions to the reported demise of the BHA database, and grew into discussion of the future of databases of concern to the arts: coverage, stability, economics, the demand for full text, the viability of Google Scholar, and how we can work with providers to affect future content.

We talked about the recent and rapid phasing out of slide libraries and visual resources librarians, and ways in which we can promote our unique skills in the face of dwindling budgets: working collaboratively with non-arts disciplines to extend awareness of visual resources and services, and taking on leadership roles in the critical areas of new media literacies and copyright and fair use.

Other topics included outreach to classroom faculty, particularly in the performing arts, the need to make non-arts-oriented citation style arbiters such as the APA aware of their lack of guidelines for citing media, mentoring as a possible future direction for the Section, and the need for future discussion of emerging changes in the ways that research is conducted.  Thanks to Beth Kerr for leading the discussions.

It was a stimulating morning and a promising start to the conference.  Many thanks to everyone who attended.

BTW, Carrie Bertling, Reference & Instruction Librarian at Towson University in Maryland, has graciously agreed to succeed me as moderator of this blog as I prepare to become Section Chair.  I’ll still be posting from time to time (and I hope more of you become contributors here too), but watch for Carrie’s voice here soon.  Welcome, Carrie, and thank you!!

Bill