In Town and Out of Bounds

«From February 25 to March 1, the New York chapter of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) hosted our organization's annual conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. Several Met librarians planned and participated, helping the New York conference break records for attendance—we welcomed a total of 908 art information professionals from sixteen countries! With the powers vested in me as program co-chair (which was a lot of work, but very rewarding), I present to you a few highlights.»

The five-day program (with tours and workshops primarily on days one and five, and sessions, meetings, and special events on days two and four) was themed "Out of Bounds" in honor of New York's history of creative thinking and leadership on the cutting edge in all forms of the arts. It was our intention to bring this same approach to art librarianship: to think about our profession and its practices in different ways, and from a variety of vantage points.

Gwen Mayhew coordinated the workshops held on the first and last days, nearly all of which sold out. This year, the workshops offered topics as diverse as salary negotiation skills (with a focus on closing the gender pay gap), tools for critical and radical librarianship, and space planning techniques and analysis for growing print collections.

As per our "President's Choice" tradition, ARLIS/NA President Eumie Imm-Stroukoff (Emily Fisher Landau Director of the Research Center, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum) developed a special session for the conference. Eumie's session addressed diversity and racial equity within ARLIS/NA, kicking off a discussion of how we can move our organization and its leadership in the right direction. Fantastically facilitated by Nasha Taylor (Program Manager, Year Up Greater Philadelphia) and Melinda Brown (Site Director, Higher Education Programs, Year Up Greater Philadelphia), it established a safe space and got us started—but it's also clear that this was just a beginning and that we have a lot of work left to do.

Tina Lidogoster was the exhibits coordinator, wrangling eighty-two vendors, book dealers, and publishers (a record number) to provide attendees with a wide variety of opportunities to stay current in the field, peruse visually and intellectually stimulating publications, and even do a little business.

Librarian William Blueher took part in a panel discussion on social media, "#artlibraries: Taking the Pulse of Social Media in Art Library Environments." His presentation—"A Blog Is Not a Tweet Is Not a Gram Is Not a Pin: Creating Platform-Specific Social Media Policies"—focused on developing customized guidelines and strategies for engaging with a broad range of social channels. And librarian Tina Lidogoster participated in a workshop geared towards students and new professionals, "ArLiSNAP Career Development Workshop," where she was part of a group that fielded questions from the librarians of the future.

Watson Library staff contributed two of the thirty-three posters on view during the conference. Librarians Jill Kehoe and Seth Persons presented on our recently redesigned online catalog, Watsonline, in "It Takes a Village: A Catalog Redesigned." Book conservators Andrijana Sajic and Jenny Davis created a poster on pest management, "Integrated Pest Management Planning at Thomas J. Watson Library," which included an insect trap on the poster (below).

The conference closed with an enjoyable convocation—featuring our keynote speaker, the artist and publisher Paul Chan—plus our annual awards ceremony and a reception in the nave of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.