ArLiSNAP (Art Library Students and New ARLIS Professionals) and VREPS (Visual Resources Emerging Professionals and Students) are pleased to announce our 2017 Fall Virtual Conference: Critical Librarianship in the Arts. The conference will take place at 1pm CST October 14, 2017.
As defined on critlib.org, critical librarianship is “a movement of library workers dedicated to bringing social justice principles into our work in libraries.” We are pleased to welcome keynote speaker Jennifer Ferretti, Digital Initiatives Librarian of Maryland Institute, College of Art, who will be be speaking on what critical librarianship means to her in a keynote address:
Art is Information (and neither are neutral).
Our keynote lecture will be followed by 1.5 to 2 hours of presentations by students and new professionals discussing projects with a focus on Critical Librarianship. Our speaker panel will include:
Arielle Lavigne, University of Washington
“Processing Protests in the Pacific Northwest – Technically and Emotionally”
Following the Women’s March on Seattle, archivists at the University of Washington solicited donations of images from the Women’s March, and from the seemingly continuous stream of marches, protests, and rallies that have followed it. This presentation addresses questions the archive has been dealing with as they collect and process these collections, discusses the resources relied on in attempting to develop controlled vocabulary that was explicitly anti-racist and feminist, and shares some of the images that are most illustrative of the difficulties they experienced.
Marianne R. Williams, University of Arkansas
“X Degrees of Separation: Exploring Visual Literacy through Google’s Experimental Search Strategies”
Google Arts and Culture has launched a series of online experiments using machine learning techniques that analyze the aesthetic elements of artworks and allow for the browsing of huge amounts of visual information. How can a tool like this be used in curatorial practice or visual research, and what issues or problems might arise?
Haylee Freeman, UCLA
“The Writing on the Wall: An Inspection of Graffiti Terminology and Bias in Controlled Vocabularies”
Technological tools and systems used and created within libraries, archives, and museums are often thought of as insignificant and neutral, and yet the systems are often sites where bias is both reflected and reinforced. Despite the continual development of the Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) this presentation highlights the failure of the AAT in representing, in depth, underrepresented art forms. This presentation expands, illustrating how critical race theory can be utilized as a framework that identifies the underrepresentation of graffiti in the AAT as racial bias.
Mari Khasmanyan, UC Santa Barbara
“On Mission: Forging Community Through San Francisco’s Chicano Print Collections”
San Francisco’s iconic Mission Gráfica and La Raza Graphics print collections were a major addition to the world-class Chicana/o Latino graphic print holdings of the UC Santa Barbara’s California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives. Challenges in acquiring, preserving, processing, and providing culturally relevant physical and digital access yield insights into understanding the Chicano/Latino visual arts movement.
Only current ARLIS/NA and VRA members may attend this event. Additional access approvals may be made on a case-by-case basis. Registration will close two hours before the start of the webinar. For assistance, please contact webinars@arlisna.org.
Michelle Wilson, ArLiSNAP Conference Liaison
