The ARLIS 2018 Winter Conference will be held in New York City from February 25-March 1. Registration for the conference is now open, and we hope that you’ll consider attending one of ArLiSNAP’s events while you’re in town.
At our annual meeting we will discuss what ArLiSNAP has been up to in the last year and our plans for 2018. Let us know what kind of content and information you hope to see in the next year and hear about upcoming opportunities to volunteer and participate in our community.
ArLiSNAP Night Out!
Tuesday, February 27 | 7:30pm
Join ArLiSNAP at The Stag’s Head on Tuesday, February 27 @ 7:30 PM. Our night out is an opportunity to meet other students and new professionals from around the country to talk about our conference experiences. The pub is just a short walk from the conference, at 252 E 51st St, and we hope to see many of you there!
Register for our Workshop
Thursday, March 1 | 9:00am – 1:00pm
Attend ArLiSNAP’s career development workshop featuring a career advice panel hosted by our co-moderator Breanne Crumpton. Get tips on writing the perfect cover letter and receive expert and peer critiques on your resume. In our final panel, learn more about the academic publishing industry and how to get started as an author.
The workshop is free! Read more about our speakers and activities here.
Questions about ArLiSNAP’s events at the winter conference? Email our conference liaison at michelle.wilson(at)rutgers.edu
The Southeast Chapter of ARLIS/NA is accepting proposals for presentations and lightning rounds for the 2017 Annual Conference, which will be held in Savannah Georgia from November 15-17. The lightning rounds are particularly great opportunities for students and young professionals to present their work and gain valuable conference experience.
Lightning Round Proposals
Lightning rounds are meant as a way to share a topic or innovative idea in a fast and concise yet comprehensive visual presentation. Each round will follow the PechaKucha Lightning Talk format of no more than 20 slides, timed at 20 seconds apiece. Topics should reflect an area of interest within art libraries, such as: assessment, collections, digital scholarship, instruction, outreach, or spaces.
Eligibility : Currently enrolled students in a MLIS, Museum Studies, Fine Arts, Design Arts, ArtHistory, or related graduate program New professionals in one of the aforementioned fields (under 5 years post-degree) Proposals should contain a title and short description of the presentation you would give, as well as your name, phone number, email address, institutional affiliation (if any), and whether you are designated as a student or young professional.
Please submit proposals for moderated PechaKucha Lightning Round presentations to programplanningcommittee@gmail.com by September 15, 2017.
Presentation Proposals (20 minutes + Q&A)
Presentations may include, but are not limited to, the following topics and themes:
Programming Spaces: Makerspaces, Renovations, New Construction, Learning Labs
Proposals should contain a title and short description of the presentation you would give, as well as your name, phone number, email address, and institutional affiliation (if any).
Please submit presentation proposals to programplanningcommittee@gmail.com by September 15, 2017.
Proposal guidelines above are copied from a message from the Southeast Chapter’s 2017 Program Planning Committee, who is comprised of:
Patricia Gimenez, Chair
Katy Parker
Leah Sherman
Teresa Burk
Marissa Mozek
Heather Koopmans
Two major deadlines for the 2017 ARLIS/NA Conference in New Orleans are coming up within the next week!
Travel awards:
Applications for travel awards, three of which are specifically allocated for student travel! All travel award applications are due Monday, October 31, and current membership in ARLIS/NA is only required for one of the student awards. For more information, check out the Conference Award Travel page of the ARLIS/NA website and find application form here.
New Voices in the Profession:
The New Voices in the Profession session of the ARLIS/NA annual conference is always a great opportunity for students and new professionals to present their work and get some conference experience while engaging with the larger ARLIS/NA community. The deadline to submit a proposal for the 2017 conference in New Orleans is this Friday, October 28!
Details from the Professional Development Committee:
Paper proposals for the New Voices in the Profession session at the 2017 ARLIS/NA conference in New Orleans are now being accepted!
New Voices in the Profession showcases exceptional academic work by students and new professionals (under 5 years post MLS). Paper topics should relate strongly to Art Librarianship, but could also pertain to digital library projects, visual resources, archives, library instruction, reference and the changing nature of libraries, among other topics. Paper topics that relate to the conference theme of collaboration and diversity, “Arts du Monde,” will be given special consideration.
To see papers presented in past sessions, please view Conference Proceedings from previous years on the ARLIS website (https://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences). Papers will be selected by representatives from ArLiSNAP and the ARLIS/NA Professional Development Committee.
If interested, please submit the following to Ian McDermott, imcdermott (at) lagcc.cuny.edu by October 28, 2016:
Presentation title
Presentation abstract (250 words)
Your name, institutional affiliation, and email address
Friday May 13 and Saturday May 14, 2016Co-hosted by the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) and the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI), University of Toronto St. George.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Monday, February 29, 2016.
Notification of acceptance: Mid-March 2016.
Keynote Speakers
The Otolith Group, London-based art collective
Lisa Parks, Professor of Film & Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Julian Stallabrass, Professor of Modern & Contemporary Art, The Courtauld Institute of ArtThe Image/Interface symposium will explore the notion of technologies as physical objects—things, tools, apparatus, and the physically situated environment—for producing, receiving, and engaging with the increasing immateriality of imagery and visual cultures. The symposium foregrounds the materiality of technological practice while examining the reception, use, and sharing of cultural and political expression as well as the communication of embodied or situated knowledge and experiences.
We invite artists, creative practitioners, and scholars from across the fields of Media and Journalism Studies, Art History, and Visual Communication to present recent research and artistic work that critically reconsiders images in relation to:
● the materiality of the screen, the lens, and the interface
● the social and political ramifications of immersion, embodiment, and interactivity
● information sharing, surveillance and counter-surveillance
● the digital expression, construction and/or obfuscation of identity, gender, or ethnicity
● media-oriented social engagement, collaboration and social knowledge creation
Scholars from all stages of their careers (including PhD students) are welcome to apply. A honorarium at CARFAC rates will be offered to artists and creative practitioners.
The symposium will take place at JHI on Friday May 13 and at UTSC on Saturday May 14. If selected, each presenter will participate in a thematic panel and be asked to prepare a presentation of about 15-20 minutes. We ask that invitees attend the events on both days.
The Image/Interface symposium is part of the JHI 2015-2016 Program for the Arts. The program theme “Things that Matter” investigates how material culture carries “affective, social, cultural, historical, religious, economic, and political meanings and relation” and how things “provide insights into how people make sense of experience and come together as societies” (humanities.utoronto.ca/Announce_ProgArts15-16).
➔ An abstract (maximum 300 words). The abstract should indicate the format of your proposed presentation, i.e. academic paper or creative work.
➔ Institutional affiliation and short bio (maximum 200 words).
➔For Artists and Creative Practitioners:
-a CV (maximum 5 pages)
-a PDF portfolio (maximum 5MB)For more information please contact:
· Ruoyun Bai, Associate Professor of Media Studies
· Kenzie Burchell, Assistant Professor of Journalism
· Evie Yi Gu, Assistant Professor of Art History
· Will Kwan, Associate Professor of Studio
This year I made my first trip to the Society of American Archivists annual meeting, which was held in Washington DC. It was my first time attending a large conference, so it was a lot to take in, but I think I made the most of my time there without getting too overwhelmed! It was a quick trip, I only was there for one-and-a-half days, so unfortunately I don’t have a comprehensive report to give, but below are some of my impressions and opinions on the happenings at the conference and my experience as a first-timer.
My main reason for attending the conference was to network and augment my job search. I met with someone to look over my resume and discuss strategies for applying, and she was very helpful in giving me suggestions of places to apply to and offering to pass my resume along to colleagues. Other offerings for attendees in the midst of applying to jobs were not as helpful, however. There was a job board with postings, most of which were already on SAA’s website, and a place to post your resume, but I didn’t get the sense that either area was attracting that much attention or that career and job search services were a strong point of the conference as a whole.
As for professional development, the session I found most interesting, beneficial and probably the most useful to ArLiSNAP members, was a roundtable on visual materials cataloguing and access. In it, a panel discussed the new Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Graphics) guidelines, how they differ from and and relate to existing guidelines and how they can be implemented using MARC (DCRM(G) can also be used in EAD as well). First a “live cataloguing demo” was presented and then we split up into smaller groups to try our hand at using the guidelines to catalogue a photo album. When we reconvened as a larger group, each one had thought of different ways of titling and describing the materials (and some heated arguments ensued). It was a good reminder that there can be multiple “right” ways to catalogue, and that cataloguing is an art with guidelines to follow, but no real hard fast rules. In a room full of seasoned cataloguers all using the same set of guidelines to describe the same materials, differences abounded. Knowing that veteran cataloguers faced some of the same cataloguing quandaries I have as a new professional was reassuring, if not a bit unbalancing as well. I also attended sessions on preventative conservation, deaccessioning and teaching with primary resources. If anyone is particularly interested in preventative conservation, I have a handout from the session listing some great resources for disaster planning and risk management which I would be happy to share.
I also attended the Museum Archives Section meeting. Primarily this was a business meeting for officers, but it was interesting to see which museums were represented and what issues were discussed. Funding and administrative support seemed to be the main hot-button issues, which is not surprising coming from the non-profit sector. For those of us working in museums and other non-profit arts institutions, funding issues and defending the importance of library and archives’ place in the arts are probably things we will all have to deal with at some point in our careers.
I went solo, which might seem scary to some, but between my jam-packed schedule and the general bustle of the conference it didn’t leave much time to be intimidated. Plus, it being a fairly small professional circle, it wasn’t hard to spot former classmates and colleagues. So, even though I went alone, for much of the time I was with people I knew or networking and making new acquaintances. The biggest hindrance to attending was the cost. Being a recent graduate, I got student pricing which helped out immensely, but still there was the cost of the plane ticket, hotel room, food and transportation. I would highly recommend that any current students thinking of attending next year try to involve themselves in some way, whether it be submitting a poster or serving as a member of their SAA student chapter, to get some financial help from their program to attend.
Overall, I felt it was a great experience. There was a lot to offer for those interested in art and visual materials, and good representation from museums and other arts and cultural institutions. My goal was to network and I definitely made some great, and I hope lasting, connections. Besides trying to get help with funding, my biggest piece of advice would be to go in with a specific goal. Having networking and job hunting in my mind helped to keep me focused and not feel like I had to do everything.
Did anyone else go this year? What did you think? If anyone has specific questions about the conference itself, the sessions I attended or attending in general, feel free to email me!
ArchivesNext (a.k.a. Kate Theimer) has been crowdsourcing money for scholarships so that people can attend the Society of American Archivists yearly conference.
We’re giving money to people to fund their registration for the SAA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Rather than pay for full travel or lodging for just a few people, I try to give a little bit of help to as many people as possible. This effort is not affiliated with SAA in any way. Your donations are not tax deductible. It’s simple. You send me money. I give it all away within a few weeks to colleagues who need it.
The SAA conference this year is August 10-16, 2014. The scholarships are awarded by random draw and, while individual awards may not be large, the money has the potential to help out lots of people like us to attend this amazing conference for the first time. You need to be an SAA member to apply. My quick math based on the information provided is that scholarships are probably in the $200 range.
On Saturday June 28 I will draw names out of a hat and notify the lucky people. This will allow you to register by the early-bird deadline of July 7. Once you forward me the confirmation of your registration, I will send you a check.
…. One year there were a surprisingly large number of people whose names got pulled from the hat who backed out because they hadn’t realized how high the other costs of attending the meeting would be…. please do a bit of homework first and make sure you think you really can attend the conference before you apply.
For both donors and applicants, the deadline this year is June 27th.
The Conference Program Committee, the Professional Development Committee, and the Art Library Students & New ARLIS Professionals Section (ArLiSNAP) are pleased to announce that the Emerging Technology Forum will be featured again in Washington. The session will be held on Saturday, May 3, from 2:30 until 4:30 pm at the Grand Hyatt.
The Emerging Technology Forum will feature presenters sharing their knowledge of cutting-edge technologies through hands-on demonstrations at technology stations and brief presentations.
PLEASE NOTE: The Forum will be held concurrently with the exhibits and the poster sessions.
Have you harnessed a technology tool to make your job more efficient, your teaching more effective, or your collections more accessible? Consider sharing your expertise and experience with your fellow conference attendees.
Submission deadline: Friday, February 21, 2014
Requirements for Participation:
Presenters will be required to prepare a hands-on component to demonstrate tableside at a technology station for the duration of the 2-hour session, prepare and give a brief five-minute presentation to a larger group during the 2-hour session, and provide handouts about the technology.
Presenters will be asked to provide their own hardware (laptops/tablets, etc.) for their demonstration station. WiFi will be provided.
Possible Topics:
Blogging (example: Tumblr)
Citation Management (example: Zotero)
Concept Mapping (examples: Compendium, FreeMind)
Crowdsourcing
Content Management Systems (examples: Omeka, Drupal)
GIS Mapping
Photo Sharing
Social Media (example: Pinterest)
Demonstrations of free or open-source technologies are preferred.
Examples of presentations featured in the inaugural forum held in Pasadena in 2013:
Olivia Miller is a recent MSLS graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, and winner of the ARLIS/SE 2013 Professional Development Travel Award.
The Pasadena conference was an excellent first-time experience for me with ARLIS/NA! My favorite session was probably the “Evolution of Art Reference and Instruction” on Saturday. As a future hopeful reference and instruction librarian, it was exciting to hear about how others incorporate research into their professional lives. Speakers touched on subjects such as assessing online reference, librarian and faculty collaboration for graduate courses, providing reference and instruction for Arts Management students, and various mobile technologies that can be used for reference and instruction. I would argue that one of the best elements of the conference was just the ability to see what others believe to be important enough to dedicate the time to research and share it with others.
Presenting my topic talk, “Power Up: How to Collect for Video Game Design Students,” at the Art and Design School Division was an amazing opportunity to share my research and have great conversations with others about my ideas. Even if my collection suggestions end up not working for some institutions, I hope they at least sparked more ideas and got attendees to thinking more about these students as a user group that would highly benefit from their attention.
Getting involved with the Graphic Novel SIG was a perfect end to a fun conference weekend. A personal and academic interest with this format brought me to the meeting, but the fact that it was new and everyone there seemed so excited about starting this new group made me want to try to help out. At this point in my professional career (the point where I’m on the job hunt), I had a hard time feeling like I could dedicate myself to a Division, Section, or SIG without knowing where I will be professionally in a few months or next year. The Graphic Novel SIG seems to be made up of individuals with a variety of interests in graphic novels, be it from a perspective of cataloging, collecting, reference, programming, space planning, and more. I felt very comfortable being in an unusual place in my career with the attendees (not that I didn’t in others, just this one moreso). I hope that wherever I end up starting my professional career at, I will be able to incorporate graphic novels into collections or programming.
ALA 2013 is drawing to a close, and we hope those of you who made it to the Windy City had a fulfilling experience!
We’re looking for a few good arlisnappers to provide a post-conference writeup. Did you participate in any VRC or art library-relevant sessions or see a great poster session? Visit any of Chicago’s incredible museums and want to tell us about an exhibit? Bonus points if you made it to any ACRL-Arts section meetings!
Even if you didn’t make it to any arts-focused events, what did you see that might generally be applicable to the arlisnap and ARLIS/NA community and new librarians? Interesting applications of existing or new technology? Creative approaches to instruction or outreach? Discussions of non-traditional collections? Cataloging for the zine librarian?
Tell us all about it! Email me (Stephanie) or Ellen with your details and an outline of your ALA experience. (You don’t need to have your post ready to go just yet, but we can get you scheduled.)
Erin Elzi is a Technical Services Librarian at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture in NYC.
ACRL 2013: Professional Development Cross-Training
The annual ARLIS conference is rapidly closing in, and while I know many of you are gearing up for the first (or third… or 23rd) time, I’ve just returned from ACRL 2013. The theme of the conference was: Imagine, Innovate, Inspire, and I’m feeling just that – Inspired! Innovated! Imaginative! So lend me you ear while I tell you about an important part of professional development: cross-training.
Full disclosure, I’ve never been to the national ARLIS conference. It’s not that I actively avoid it, it’s just that I’ve received full-support, either through the professional development budget-line or via scholarships granted by my MLS school, to attend SLA, CAA, the IA Summit and ACRL. It’s also not that my workplace will not support a trip to ARLIS, but rather that all the other librarians here go to it, so I figure there’s greater benefit to our institution if I attend other conferences. Cross-training, or the process of stepping outside your daily, specialized frame of reference, helps make you more than an information professional. It makes you an information ninja. Ninjas are all at once fast, stealthy and powerful. Professional development cross-training does the same thing by strengthening the skills and knowledge you already have, while introducing ideas to help you solve problems or find that perfect tool you need to get a project off the ground.
Fortunately, my institution supports my quest for ninja status, and each year I basically have my pick of which conference to attend. Last year it was the IA Summit, which was relevant at the time, since we were in the initial stages of redesigning our OPAC. Two years ago I attended my first ACRL conference, while I was still a student, under the guises of a press pass (Here’s a tip: Offer to cover a conference for a publication. It may take care of your registration fee and is a great chance to get published!). While I had known going into library school that I wanted to work in academia – the 2011 ACRL conference reinforced that in every way. I tend to feel a bit out of place when it comes to networking-type situations, and let’s be honest – the networking opportunities are a major reason students go to these conferences. But at the ACRL conference, I never once felt out of place, or unwelcome due to my not-quite-professional-yet status. Much the same way the ARLIS-NY goes out of their way to make MLS students here in New York feel all warm and fuzzy and extraordinarily welcome in their chosen profession. Shop around if you’re still in school – you may find your library niche somewhere unexpected, even within the limitless boundaries of the ARLIS realm.
Beautiful Subject Analysis Visualization Poster presented by David Polley and Brianna Marshall
What was so innovative and inspiring and imaginative at ACRL this year? The uber-popular topics this year seemed to be information literacy instruction and data curation. While the greater part of these sessions addressed the needs of undergraduates, or disciplines in the hard sciences, I still walked away with some new tools and methodologies we can use for our grad-student only population here at the Bard Graduate Center. Including some fun open-source stuff, like new data visualization tools. Including this MOOC, which has finished, but the materials and lectures are still available.
“Digital Humanities” were also all over the place – both literally and figuratively. The ambiguous term found its way into panels and poster sessions covering everything from community building to subject analysis to online exhibitions to ACRL’s very own THATCamp. Digital Humanities are hot, people! And the projects taking place under its umbrella are often multi-media affairs and involve primary sources – things we art information pros tend to know a thing or two about. Get on board!
Omeka DH Poster session presented by Marc Bess of UNC, Charlotte.
Then there were the sessions that more overtly rubbed elbows with the ARLIS crowd. A few librarians at the University of Michigan are Mapping the Motor City’s Cinemas. Another group at the University of Florida presented on raising collection awareness through online exhibits. A duo attempting to create a digital collection of street art documentation discussed the inherent challenges with such an undertaking. If sessions that address larger issues are more your thing than individual projects, how about a panel on building metadata to make better surrogates for images and objects (hint – let’s describe the object in our own words and go from there instead of fitting the items into imperfect, existing controlled vocabularies), or how to incorporate feminist pedagogy into any teaching opportunity (which is primarily about decentralizing the classroom). Or one of the many sessions that covered assessment and proving the value of your library – not as sexy a topic as the others, but increasingly important for many institutions.
Of course there’s always room for improvement (ACRL, if you’re listening, we want more sessions on diversity and grad student services!), but there’s also no doubt in my mind that you found at least one thing in this brief ACRL recap that sparked your interest or is applicable to your own professional or scholarly needs. And that’s just a tip of the iceberg – I came back with pages upon pages of notes. Just fathom how much you would get out of attending it yourself!
The Honnld/Mudd Library at Claremont College holds a ReBook book arts competition each year. Brilliant!
So, should you go to ARLIS this year, and the year after that, and the year after that? OF COURSE! But don’t write off other conference opportunities as well. In addition to elevating you to ninja rank, a willingness to attend other conferences can increase your ability to attend anything at all. If you lack institutional support, or if ARLIS never comes to your town, an ALA or ACRL or SAA conference that ends up in a city near you means all you have to pay is the registration fee. I know I plan on finally making my first ARLIS conference appearance in 2014 – D.C. is just a mere bus ride away from NYC!
If you’re already going to ARLIS as your one professional development opportunity this year, you can still get some cross-training done simply by attending sessions that may not appear to be your forte. Are you in reference? Join a discussion on authority records! Catalogers, stop by a session on collection development! Architectural archivists, listen in on the panel of fashion bloggers! See, being a ninja is easy!
Oh – and a final lesson I learned at ACRL: if your library doesn’t already have one, get a button maker! Everyone loves a good button, it’s cheap PR, and making them is like chicken soup for the weary researcher, staff member, and even the faculty or curator’s soul. But it looks like ArLiSANP already knew that!
