It's Raining Librarians

«Earlier this month, a number of librarians from Watson Library flew out to Seattle for the 2016 Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) + Visual Resources Association (VRA) Conference. We were there to share ideas and innovations from the previous year, as well as visit some of Seattle's superb art museums and libraries. Several Watson librarians contributed to the conference's activities, and included posters produced by Dana Hart, Naomi Niles, and Gwen Mayhew, and talks by William Blueher, Leah High, John Lindaman, and Tony White. In this post we'll look at a few highlights from the trip.»

The Reading Room at the University of Washington Library. Photo by Tamara Fultz

Little did we know when we signed up for a tour of the University of Washington special collections (Book Arts & Rare Book Collections) that we would also be seeing a very Harry Potter–ish reading room, but here it is in all its glory. The book-arts collection at the University of Washington is one of a kind and not to be missed. Curator Sandra Kroupa has been cultivating artists and thereby acquiring unique artists' books for 47 years, and the outstanding collection shows what such singular devotion can do. For three hours we were dazzled by the works of artists like Julie Chen (Watson Library also has her Chrysalis—check it out!), Kathryn Leonard, and many others.

Manager for Library Administration Dana Hart shows off her travel award in the Exhibitor's Hall of the conference. Photo by Tina Lidogoster

Librarians John Lindaman and Dana Hart (photographed above) attended the Space Planning Special Interest Group Meeting (and no, it's not that kind of space, although a space station library would be pretty awesome; in fact, Dana is thinking of going as an astronaut-librarian next year). They talked about facilities maintenance, stacks management, renovations, and relocations—in short, all the behind-the-scenes stuff it takes to keep libraries looking good and running smoothly. It was fun to hear about some of the challenges other libraries face. One particularly noteworthy anecdote involved a library that only had a spiral staircase connecting its three floors, making it very difficult to move oversized folios between the levels. Thank goodness Watson has an elevator!

The Market Theater Gum Wall, located in Post Alley under Seattle's Pike Place Market. Photo by Tamara Fultz

Many of us took at least one lunch break to saunter down to the public market known as Pike Place Market. Several of us got there just in time to see the fish toss at one of the seafood stands (luckily no one was hit by a flying salmon!), and we had some tasty chowder at Pike Place Chowder. Our final destination, though, was the infamous Gum Wall, located in an alley hidden under the market itself: a wall completely covered in half-chewed bubblegum (nearby stores brazenly advertise that they sell gum). A longtime resident of Seattle told me they had just "cleaned" the wall, but as you can see by our photo, the local gum chewers are quickly rectifying the situation.

Left: E-newsletters for Art Libraries (detail), by Dana Hart and Leah High, a poster presented during the ARLIS/NA 2016 Conference. Right: Penny Baker, collections management librarian at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library, presents her talk, "Resistance to Armpit: The Clark's Venice Biennale Web Collection Four Years On," during the conference session "The Web Sits for Its Portrait: Web Archiving Process and Product." Photos by Dan Lipcan

Our colleagues Dana Hart and Leah High put together a smart-looking poster about the new Watson Library quarterly newsletter—to which you can subscribe. We were surprised to find out about our "Top Locations by Opens" metric, which tracks where readers were when they opened the premiere issue, and that Lebanon and Myanmar made the top six!

One enjoyable and informative session we attended, among several, was focused on web archiving. Billed appetizingly as a "content and metadata sandwich," presenters from Rhizome, NYARC, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library discussed the "process and product" of their efforts to preserve important (and sometimes fleeting) art-related content on the web. One of the more interesting takeaways during this session came from the National Digital Stewardship Resident–New York City at Rhizome, Morgan McKeehan, who demonstrated the open-source and browser-based web archiving tool Webrecorder. Using Webrecorder, anyone with a web browser can create "high-fidelity, standards-compliant archives of the web as you browse," a very exciting development in web, and personal, archiving. It will be interesting to see how web archiving initiatives and technologies develop over the next few years, especially as tools are now available directly to users.

Annual ARLIS/NA award winners are announced at the conference, and we couldn't have been more excited and proud when Alisa LaGamma's Kongo: Power and Majesty, an exhibition catalogue published by The Met, was awarded the 37th annual George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award. Established in 1980, the Wittenborn Award honors the memory of George Wittenborn, a premier New York art-book dealer and publisher, and is given annually to North American publications demonstrating excellence in art publishing.

Convocation reception held at the Seattle Public Library. Photo by Christina Manzella

The conference concluded with a reception at the Rem Koolhaas–designed Seattle Public Library, which is a perfect setting for a bunch of art librarians. We enjoyed food and drink with our colleagues in this enchanting glass-enclosed space, recapping what was for all a truly rich and rewarding conference. People are already getting excited for next year's event, which will take place in New Orleans.