ARLIS 2014: Reaching New Peaks

For about the last three years, since I took over running the library from my predecessor, I've often felt I've been playing an arduous game of catch-up. On the face of it I've been running this place in much the same way, with certain things improved (like unique classmarks for different books) and cataloguing certain things which needed to be made more visible, like our collection of Sotheby's and Christie's catalogues, but underneath the surface I have been scrabbling around like a mad thing, trying to find out everything I need to know to actually do a good job, not just as far as the staff here are concerned, because let's face it, none of them are librarians and don't actually know how great a resource it could be.

ARLIS was one of those things under the surface - I'm a relatively new member, and a personal one at that. Work doesn't appear to have ever bothered with it, nor the librarian, which meant it was very difficult to justify to my line manager exactly why we needed to join up. I gave up trying in the end, and just joined for myself. The worst part was, I'd never even heard of it until a passing comment from one of the librarians at the Faculty of Architecture and the History of Art*. I don't know why it hadn't occured to me that such a thing might exist - after all, I knew about IAML, and BIALL, and there'd even been a conference in Cambridge when I was working in an art library - how had I missed that?!

Manchester, by PimlicoBadger

Anyway, though I'm seriously pants at networking, often the best bit about going to conferences is talking to people and making new contacts. I felt like I owed it to the library to try and put us on the radar a bit, so that was one of the aims, to say to people "Hi! My library exists!" The second aim was to learn as much as I could about all the things I should be doing and don't know to do - all those unknown unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld might call them. Thirdly, in addition to telling people about me and my library, I wanted also to find out about them and their libraries, and perhaps organise some visits to libraries like mine, to find out how they cope with challenges similar to the ones I face. And finally, one of the breakout sessions was on Gaming in the Library. I'd seen so much about this sort of thing happening all over Twitter, and was insanely jealous at the thought of all these people getting to play with Lego and calling it work, and was keen to find out more!

Sweet stash!

So off I went, daunted at the prospect of driving 4 1/2 hours, alone, to a place I hadn't been to since I was about 15 (and only to visit MUFC's ground and get my shirt personalised with Cantona's name and number), to spend the next three days with about 70 strangers. Why was I doing this to myself again? It wasn't even as if work was paying for it either! Anyway, I arrived, registered, and made approving noises at the quality of freebie stash, including a pen that lights up when you hit someone something with it, and got started on my Arlis Adventure!

There were so many talks from a wide variety of speakers - lecturers, researchers, students, artists, curators and librarians, that to try and list them all would just take far longer than I can stand to write, and - I'm sure - you can stand to read. The programme is available, and I think different people are writing up each session for the Arlis newsletter, so I won't try and describe every single session, just the points that I took home.

Some of the things libraries can do really well

The keynote speech: "Library Futures: Opportunities Not Threats". The speaker was pretty controversial, coming to a subject-specific conference and telling us they'd got rid of all their subject librarians (except for music and foreign languages). However, there was also a lot of value in what she had to say. One point she listed everything that librarians and libraries can be good at - I think I got most of them down. Another point I thought was important was that the library strategy should be bold and align itself stringently with the strategy of the parent institution. Theirs stated: "The library will be vital to [achieving this stretch goal]" - very bold indeed! Finally she stated that libraries should be considered partners, not servants, by their institutions. How much would I love this to be the case here?!

This was from a talk about the refurbishment of Manchester Central Library. Their music library now has guitars and drums for silent playing as well as keyboards - brilliant idea, and I would love to see this in Cambridge Central Library too!

This was a lovely illustration of the sort of work that The National Archives does (although the speaker took great pains to assure us she'd never seen an archive quite in that condition!). I had no idea they were part of the Ministry of Justice, which I suppose makes sense when I think about it, but I was surprised to learn this.

The release of what sounds to be a wonderful resource: The Art Discovery Group Catalogue, which indexes the holdings of 60 art libraries around the world. Promote this to your users! Apparently they're exploring solutions for libraries with significant art holdings within a larger general collection too.

For the visits, I went on the tour of John Rylands Library, which I'll cover in a separate post, along with the breakout sessions. The conference reception and dinner on the second night was held at Manchester Museum, which has some fabulous natural history collections.

Meet Stan

Here's Stan, the second most complete T-Rex in the world, with the most complete skull.

I think this was Percy, it might
have been the other one though..

And there's Percy the Plesiosaur.

Definitely an interesting place to have a dinner!

Finally a couple of points from the Library Impact Data Project talk. I'd seen some earlier findings presented at a lib@cam conference a few years before which were really interesting. Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but when evidence strongly suggests that people who use libraries will get better degrees, that's a good position to start from in discussions at your university. Even more powerful was the statement that those who do not engage with their library at all are more likely to drop out of university entirely! There's a follow-up project happening now, JiscLAMP.

What did I learn? Here are my final thoughts and findings:

• There was a lot of value placed in kinaesthetic learning, and being able to handle things, not just look at them - this from all the academics, students and librarians present, and not just those from art backgrounds.
• There was a definite tension between the need (and desire!) to provide a personalised/boutique service a la Priestner & Tilley, and the fact that art libraries are being marginalised or lumped in with other services.
• I learnt there were specific needs that art-related subjects have that other subjects don't - for example, most art books are massive, therefore art students need more deskspace!
• One librarian said she felt "bruised, damaged", from having to fight the same battles over and over again, and this conference was a way of rediscovering the passion she had for the job. It was nice that we could support each other, but at the same time I think it's really sad that we do have to constantly defend the existence of even the really specialist libraries with unique and significant collections.
• A lot of non-librarians were keen to impress upon us just how vital the library collections were for their work - both as research material and as a source of inspiration - and informed us it wasn't just librarians who are passionate about the collections!
• I couldn't help but notice the not-insignificant North American contingent of librarians, which says a lot about the quality of the conference, I think. Also enabled wider sharing of experiences and expertise, which was great!
• I got to meet lots of librarians and information professionals from a wide variety of institutions - mostly universities, but also the Henry Moore Institute and the Scottish National Gallery. But no two university art libraries seemed alike either, covering a wide range of subjects too - art history, visual arts, 3-D arts, fashion design, architecture...

All in all, it was a great opportunity. I met lots of wonderful people, learnt lots of new things, and about key resources I'll want to try and obtain for my library. It was a valuable half-week away, and hopefully I can get involved again next year!

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*Incidentally I found out about the existence of the Faculty and Departmental Libraries meetings the same way - but much more recently. I still need to find out where Basecamp actually is too.