Jean Ann Croft
Preservation Librarian

Preservation of Books and Documents – A Pittsburgh Approach. Pittsburgh Bibliophiles - March 18, 1999

Doris S. Hayashikawa
Coordinator, Digital Research Library

Asian Stereotypes : a presentation to LIS 2568: Multicultural Resources & Services, Summer Session 2, 1998, as a guest lecturer. 

Summary:  Explored the topic of stereotypes using Asians as an example and considered issues of majority membership vs membership in an identifiable minority.

Ray Anne Lockard
Head, Frick Fine Arts Library

Organized and chaired session entitled CALLING THE TENDER:  THE
HISTORY OF ART LIBRARIANSHIP IN CANADA at the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 1999

Speakers included:  Dr. Melva Dwyer, Professor Emerita, Library Science, University of British Columbia - "The Canadian Art Libraries Section and Its History."

Jo Beglo, National Gallery of Canada Library - "Collecting for a Nation: The National Gallery of Canada Library, Past, Present, Future."

Ilga Leja, Director of The Nova Scotia School of Art and Design Library, "The
Development of Art Library Services in Atlantic Canada: The Case Study of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design."

Daphne Dufresne, Director of the Art Library, University of Quebec, Montreal, "The University of Quebec at Montrial and Art Librarianship in Quebec."

Canadian art librarians have taken important leadership roles and won awards in ARLIS/NA, as well as authored award winning reference tools that provide  invaluable access to information on Canadian art.  We know, however, very little about art libraries in Canada.  They developed out of a strong spirit of  independence and perserverance in spite of the fact that they did so without the support of the flamboyant benefactors that established many art libraries in the United States. This session examined the history of art librarianship in Canada and the development of libraries in a museum, an art school and an academic art library.
 
 

Organized and chaired session entitled WHEN FINALLY AROUSED: ADVOCATING AGAINST ART AND BOOK CENSORSHIP at the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 1999.

Censorship continues to plague artists, bookstore owners, librarians and the public.  Such cases have mounted in both number and vigor since the rise of the conservative religious right movement in the United States and Canada.  The censorship issue usually involves sexually explicit images and the debate about aesthetic value and/or artistic merit.  It is no coincidence that many of the censored materials are also expressive of lesbian/gay sex.  This session focused on the Canadian legal case LITTLE SISTERS VS. CANADIAN CUSTOMS in which the Vancouver store Little Sisters Art and Book Emporium sued Canadian Customs in 1982; the case was not heard by a court in British Columbia until 1996 and will be argued before the Canadian Supreme Court sometime this year.

This session included the world premiere of a performance art piece by the
performance art collective, KISS AND TELL.  Members of the group were
witnesses at the Little Sisters trial; speakers included Janine Fuller, owner of Little Sisters and the person who filed the suit; and Professor Becki Ross, professor of Women's Studies, University of British Columbia, also a witness at the trial.  The entire session was filmed by Canadian filmmaker Peter Callen and will be included in his forthcoming documentary on sex and censorship.

At the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 1999, organized and chaired the session STAVING OFF STARVATION'S WOLF:  WPA ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST; presented paper on the panel entitled 'THE LODGE THAT WOULD REIGN LIKE NO OTHER':  OREGON'S TIMBERLINE LODGE, A WPA LEGACY 

Beginning with the Wall Street crash of 1929, US citizens soon found themselves living in an altered world -- unemployment, bread lines and relief lines.  But it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal that saved the US artist from economic destruction and established a significant historic precedent for federal support of the arts.  New Deal art programs created jobs for destitute artists from 1934-1943.

While research on New Deal art has begun on such WPA projects as those created in Illinois, very little has been published on the WPA projects that saved artists in the Pacific Northwest.  Timberline Lodge, erected on Mt. Hood in Oregon is the most renowned of these projects, but beautiful bridges were also constructed, photographs taken, murals painted and sculptures were erected.  This session examined important WPA projects in the Pacific Northwest from four different perspectives. Others included:

Catherine Johnson, Lily Art Library, Indiana University, Bloomington "Portland Preserved: The Photographic Work of Minor White for the WPA, 1938-1939."

David Martin, Martin-Zambito Fine Arts Gallery, Seattle, Washington - "WPA
Artists in Washington State."

Roger Van Oosten, Seattle author - "WPA Murals in the Pacific Northwest."
 
 

Presented a paper entitled INCLUSIVE/EXCLUSIVE:  ARE THE LIBRARY
SOURCES WE HAVE MEETING OUR DIVERSITY NEEDS? on the panel
entitled SERVING DIVERSE COMMUNITIES / BUILDING DIVERSE COLLECTIONS at the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Philadelphia, March 1998.

My inquiry began with an investigation of the reference tools and sources commonly available in academic art libraries. As the focus of art and architectural historical studies has expanded in scope to include cultural studies, gay studies, womens studies, and cultural production worldwide, the inadequacies of current reference tools to address these areas has become more pronounced.  Three geocultural areas --  Africa, Asia, and Canada -- were selected for illustration. In each instance the tool, either by design or by oversight, fails to cover one of these three major scholarly foci  be it the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA),  ArtBibliographies Modern, Art Index or The Encyclopedia of World Art.

The recently published Dictionary of Art (1996) performed better than its earlier counterparts, devoting extensive paging to the arts of Africa and China, yet still fell short in representing African-American artists or women artists. The Bibliography of Gay and Lesbian Art, which will appear in a revised edition in 2000, remains a more definitive resource for gay and lesbian artists. Specific reference sources for Canadian, African, and Asian arts were identified and critiqued. The value inherent in library catalogs and monographic series, as well as titles outside the disciplines of art and architecture history (such as anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology) was emphasized.

Several means were outlined by which art information managers can "internationalize" the list of available reference sources: Inform publishers of the relevant resources we lack and need; lobby for specialized indexes derived from the DOA index volume; create library guides and web sites to keep our users educated and updated; create additional resources ourselves, as Mary Williamson did in compiling Art and Architecture in Canada (1991); and encourage our colleagues in countries around the world to become a part of ARLIS/NA.
 
 

Co-chaired a panel entitled PINK PAPERS AND LAVENDER FILES:
PRESERVING LESBIAN / GAY ART HISTORY IN ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS at the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Philadelphia, March 1998.

During the session sponsored by GLIRT and the Diversity Committee the 1997
conference in San Antonio, ARLIS members learned how challenging it is to be lesbian/gay inclusive in collection development. This year (1998), we continued the discussion of accessibility to materials on lesbian and gay artists by focusing on what can be found in archives collections. Many institutional archives exclude the papers of lesbians and gay men in their comunities, others include them. While lesbian and gay archives exist in all of the major cities of the country, many of them do not include information on the lesbian/gay artists in their communities. Furthermore, few people, including those in the lesbian/gay community, know of archival collections.

Philadelphia hosts two excellent resources: the Lesbian and Gay Library and Archives of Philadelphia and the AIDS Information Network. This panel marked the fifth anniversary of GLIRT by addressing from a variety of perspectives how selected archives across the country collect and make accessible materials on the lesbian and gay artists in their communities.

Patrick Moore, Director of the  Estate Project for Artists with AIDS - Mr. Moore will addressed the perspective of estate planning and accompanied his presentation with a Power Point presentation on artworks in the EPAA Collection.

Janet Parks, Drawings Curator, Avery Library, Columbia University - Ms. Parks spoke on the collection of architectural drawings by architects who have died of AIDS.  It is a collection unique in the country and has been developed by Ms. Parks.

John Smith, Archivist, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh - Mr. Smith discussed the Archives and Study Center at The Andy Warhol Museum and addressed the issues of working with an enormous cache collected by a single artist.

Joe Romano, Slide Registry of Gay and Lesbian Art, Oberlin College - Mr. Romano addressed the topic from the visual resources perspective and introduced attendees to the unique slide registry that he has developed at Oberlin College.  The collection represents submissions from gay and lesbian artists across the country.

Stephan Nonack, Boston Atheneaum - "Visual Images Research for 'Public Faces/Private Lives': Boston's Lesbian and Gay History."  Mr. Nonack examined the research issues with which he was confronted while working on the important exhibition he curated in Boston.
 

Aunt Helen, Pittsburgh's Gentlewoman Avenger. Paper presented to the Pittsburgh Bibliophiles, February 19, 1999 (illustrated with slides)

Rush G. Miller
University Librarian/Director, University Library System

Wireless LAN in Hillman Library. Presented at a LAMA pre-conference entitled Hub-Bub related to wiring issues for facilities.

Building Global Partnerships in the 21st Century: Envisioning the Global Virtual Library. Keynote address for New Missions Conference at Peking University.

Sachie Noguchi
Japanese Bibliographer & Japan Information Center Coordinator

University of Virginia / University of Pittsburgh Japanese Text Initiative. A paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. during the meeting of the Commitee on Library Technology of the Council on East Asian Libraries.

In September: European Association of Japanese Resources Specialists Anuual Conference, Leuven, Belgium, presented the same title as above but updated version of the paper.

Ammon Ripple
Reference/Public Services Librarian, Information Sciences Library

INFSCI 1030 - Information Storage and Retrieval. As an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications, I taught this three credit course to undergraduate students in the BSIS program during the Spring 1999 term.

University of Pittsburgh/Wake Forest University Instructional Technology Mini-Conference. May 20, 1998: I facilitated a session on intellectual property issues related to digital course-related resources and electronic course reserves. The session was attended by faculty members of both universities.

Resources and Services for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered
Populations. Guest Lecture in LIS 2568: Multicultural Resources and Services (taught by M.K. Biagini and S. Alman). Along with Ray Anne Lockard and Karen Zundel, I presented this lecture to MLIS students which gave an overview of information resources and services for g/l/b/t library patrons as well as some of the important issues affecting g/l/b/t people.

Locating Reference Resources for Librarians on the Internet. July 20-22, 1998: Rachel Callison and I developed and co-taught this three-day workshop as visiting lecturers in the School of Information Sciences' Professional Development program. The course was designed for librarians and educators who want to use the Internet more effectively for reference and research.  Course information is available at http://www.pitt.edu/~inscilib/refclass/.

Karen Rondestvedt
Slavic Bibliographer

The Warsaw International Book Fair and Its Audience. With Izabella Tomljanovich (Dickinson College). Presented as part of panel Book Fairs at annual meeting of AAASS, September 1998. 

Russian-American Book and Serials Exchanges Viewed from the United
States (in Russian). Presented as part of International Seminar of Slavic
Department Librarians, State Public Historical Library, Moscow, Russia,
October 1998. Presented a modified English version at ULS brown bag presentation.

David Rosenberg
Faculty Librarian, Archives

The Remington Rand Strike of 1947: a presentation to Herkimer County (NY) Historical Society in connection with exhibit of UE materials: May, 1998.

Communism and Anti-Communism in Pittsburgh,  Cold War and the Working: a presentation to Class Conference, Boyce Campus, CCAC: September, 1998.

Christianity, Corporations and the Holocaust: A German Corporate Head Apologizes to Elie Wiesel in Pittsburgh: a presentation to Fifth Biennial Conference on Christianity and the Holocaust, Princeton Mariott
Hotel: October 18, 1998. (to be published in 1999 in the Proceedings of the
Conference).

Kate Thomes
Head, Bevier Engineering Library

Poster Session on Scholarly Communication/Journals Crisis: a presentation to the American Society for Engineering Education meeting in Seattle.

Tom Twiss
Reference/Instruction Librarian, Hillman Library 

Validating Brief Tests of Collection Strength. Presentation at New Jersey Library Association Annual Spring Conference at the 1998 Research Forum.

Abstract: This study attempted to assess the validity of "brief test" methodology developed by Howard White for evaluating the strength of subject area collections.  Two tests were prepared for Soviet history and were applied to the collections of five libraries.  Results of the tests were then compared with each other, with results from a previous brief test in Russian history, with evaluations performed by librarians, and with reasonable expectations regarding these collections.  This study strongly supports White's claims for the validity of this methodology for measuring the strength of library collections.

Peter Zhou 
Head, East Asian Library

Building excellence through global partnership, Presented to Pitt
Board of Trustees' Academic and Library Affairs Committee, May, 1998

Taught a full-credit, semester-long course in Texts and sources in
East Asian Studies,  Interdisciplinary MA Program for Asian Studies,
Fall, 1998.