The Historic New Orleans Collection Chair, Museum, Arts, and Humanities Division of SLA geraldp@hnoc.og Slate of Officers for 2007 By Martha McPhail, Penultimate Past-Chair The Nominating Committee of the Museums, Arts and Humanities Division gives notice to members of the annual election of officers. The election will take place at the Division’s Annual Business Meeting at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference in Baltimore on Monday, June 12, at 5:30 PM. The Nominating Committee reports the following slate of officers for the 2007 term. Chair-Elect Cameron received his B.A. in art history from University of California, Berkeley and his MSI from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been with the Getty Conservation Institute for 3 years, where he oversees the operations of the Institute's Information Center. Before joining GCI, he was Director of Collections and Access for the Japanese American National Museum. Cameron currently serves as Co-Editor of the MAHD Bulletin. Secretary Tatum Preston is the Librarian at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to working as a librarian, she has worked in both the corporate and non-profit arenas as an Americorps volunteer, an auditor, and a development associate. She currently serves as President of SLA's Alabama Chapter. Tatum holds a B.A. in English from Davidson College and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Alabama. Current elected officers will assume these posts for 2007: Chair John received his B.A. in history from California State University, Los Angeles and his MLS from California State University, Fullerton. He has been with Union Bank of California over 25 years and is currently cataloging the Union Bank of California Archives. John has served as Treasurer, President-Elect, President, and Past President of the Southern California Chapter; Membership Chair of MAHD; and is a member of Business & Finance Division, Solo Librarians, and the Baseball Caucus in addition to Museums, Arts, and Humanities. Past-Chair Continuing her second year of elected service: Treasurer Joyce received her BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Twenty years later, after many years in the graphic arts industry, she received her MLIS from the same institution in 2001. From 2001 to 2004, Joyce was Director of Library Services for The Art Institute of Charlotte. In September of 2004, she joined The Mint Museums as Librarian where she oversees three separate library facilities in The Mint Museum of Art and The Mint Museum of Craft + Design. Treasurer of MAHD is her first leadership position within SLA. Thank you to these members for serving our Division! An infusion of new members in 2005 has resulted in a healthy annual allotment from SLA headquarters. In addition, we have been fortunate to receive a number of sponsorships for 2006 conference programs. Sponsors include Minisis for our Monday MAHDness event, and Spacesaver, ESRI, and the Retired Librarians Caucus (KRET) for the Miles Harvey Lecture presented jointly with the Education Division. If you have the opportunity to come in contact with any of these vendors and/or members of KRET, be sure to give them a big thank you! Balance Sheet – as of 4/8/2006
Cash Flow – Income & Expense 1/1/2006 – 4/8/2006
Income comes from our annual dues allotment from SLA Headquarters, sponsorships – which are earmarked for specific conference events – and a transfer from the Division’s Pooled Fund to the checking account. The Pooled Fund is the Division funds that have been combined with other SLA Division funds for maximum investment return. Since it is a transfer from one of our accounts to the other, it also shows up in the Expense column. Expenses include deposits for 2006 conference events, travel expenses for the Division Chair and Division Chair-Elect to attend the winter SLA Leadership Summit in Houston, and bank charges reconciled from the old checking account. Respectfully
submitted, By Richard Urban Collaborative Access to
Virtual Museum Collection Information: Seeing Through the
Walls Collaborative Access to Virtual Museum Collection Information introduces readers to the challenges of making collections accessible through collaboration by providing case studies from six different projects. While each of the projects encountered unique problems and took different approaches to solving them, Callery does an excellent job tying together the major themes in her introduction. Collaborative projects are not only faced with the challenge of developing underlying technical standards but also need to bridge the varying professional practices among participants. Case studies from the King County Snapshots and Ohio Memory projects illustrate that these differences can be successfully negotiated by developing a common understanding of needs and goals. King County relied on local staff expertise, and a separate advisory committee was important to develop common practices and to negotiate with institutions where local practice differed from the standards. Ohio Memory took a more centralized approach that ensured data consistency across more than 300 institutions. The difficulties of finding common ground occurs not only between institutions, but also may require similar consensus seeking within your own staff. The Experience Music Project had the opportunity, as a new institution, to find common ground that allowed them to build an integrated system that not only served the needs of staff, but also could be shared with audiences through in-gallery and online interfaces. The National Museum of the American Indian contributes a thoughtful article to Collaborative Access that highlights their approach to including Native American communities in the development of online exhibits and digital collection records. Because information about NMAI collections originates across a hundred years of collecting, cultural bias, incorrect attributions and insufficient description of objects meant that simply digitizing these records would be inadequate. NMAI actively sought input from Native communities by conducting a series of workshops at NMAI and at other locations. Students were invited to select objects from the collections and provide richer and more descriptive information about the objects that was tightly tied to community understanding of their meaning and role in their culture. The problem of making collections come alive in this way is not limited to minority communities and museum projects of all types can learn important lessons from NMAI's approach to including communities in online projects. NMAI and natural history collections share a similar concern about the availability of information that is either culturally sensitive or may reveal the locations of endangered species or archeological sites. Callery contributes to the volume by reporting on surveys of natural history collection databases and their approach to handling the issue of sensitive materials. As these collections may also be the basis for taxonomic identification or other research, trust and authenticity is also an issue. Callery notes that a variety of approaches have been taken to clearly state that online records are an aid to resource discovery, but that actual collections need to be consulted to verify the authenticity and correctness of the records. Museum practice that have encouraged a high level of "individuality" in creating collections records can make it a difficult task to successfully strip records of sensitive information. NMAI demonstrates that ongoing communication with it's audiences is essential to identifying and modifying records that may no longer align with cultural sensitivities. Although historical materials, such as those in the King County and Ohio Memory projects, are used for different kinds of research insufficient attention has been paid to how issues of authenticity, etc. apply there as well. Because Collaborative Access was co-published simultaneously as an issue of the Journal of Internet Cataloging, it often feels more like a well assembled journal issue than a stand-alone or comprehensive review of approaches to virtual collections. Information about the projects included here can also be found in conference proceedings and in other online journals, however Callery's introduction helps tie the disparate approaches together more tightly. While a few articles do offer evaluative information and make links between changes in professional practice and impact on audiences, they could be strengthened with more information about concrete outcomes. For museums interested in succeeding with their own collaborative projects, Collaborative Access is a good companion to detailed "how-to" guides and digitization manuals because it highlights some of the real-world scenarios projects are likely to encounter. Joint Chapter Program a Rousing Success! On March 31, 2006, over 50 librarians from the North Carolina and South Carolina Chapters of the Special Libraries Association met for a joint program at The Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC. The program entitled “We Have a Web Site, Now What? Adding Value to Your Web Site.” featured five speakers and a panel discussion. EBSCO Information Services, the Metrolina Library Association and The Mint Museums sponsored the event. Distinguished guests included the presidents of both chapters: Eliza Robertson, Director of the Library at the National Humanities Center and President of NC/SLA and Dr. Robert Williams, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science and President of SC/SLA, as well as SLA President-Elect Rebecca Vargha of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Joy Robinson, Visual Resources Curator at Winthrop University and President-Elect/Program Chair of SC/SLA, and Debbie Balsamo, Federal Library Manager at the US Environmental Protection Agency Library and President-Elect/Program Chair of NC/SLA shared the “master of ceremony” duties. Host Librarian Joyce Weaver of The Mint Museums welcomed all the attendees. Helene Blowers, Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County where she has led the development of several award-winning web sites including the ALA-ALSC Notables Award winner BookHive.org, was the first presenter. Helene spoke about the concepts and practice of “Web 2.0” and its corollary, “Library 2.0” where the user becomes a participant; the content is open and interactive; and how Wikis, blogs, and RSS can be used to bring this dynamic to a library web site. Next up was the founding team of the web design company Interactive Knowledge, Tim Songer and Chuck Barger, whose work has also won numerous national web design award. Tim and Chuck demonstrated and spoke of the interactive elements they incorporate into their sites and showed some work under development, including a site for the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and an online database for the National Museum of Women in Art. Katherine Wisser of Duke University spoke next. She is Metadata Coordinator for NC ECHO, or North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online. After providing a history of this project, Katherine discussed how metadata is used to bring together the online presence of all the disparate cultural entities included in the project and make them accessible from a single source for the user. Lunch was next on the program and after dining; attendees were treated to a presentation by SC/SLA member and EBSCO representative, Karalyn Kavanaugh on EBSCO’s newest online offerings and services. The final speaker was Cindy McCracken, a user experience designer for Motricity, a company that provides ways for people to discover online content and make purchases through their mobile phones. Cindy’s expertise is on usability and she demonstrated, by critiquing some actual web sites, how some simple design changes can enhance the user experience and assist in making them repeat “customers.” She also provided some excellent references for usability design for attendees to take with them. A lively panel discussion followed that allowed many attendees to ask questions about the current technologies and the trends now evident in web site development. The program ended with a tour of the Mint Museum libraries by Joyce Weaver and self-guided tours of the museum galleries. All feedback from attendees was positive with such comments, as “This was cutting edge!” to “We needed this!” Due to the success of the program, the chapters are considering a joint program on an annual basis. For more information about the speakers and their work, see the following websites: 
At the joint NC/SLA-SC/SLA program in Charlotte, NC on March 31. Front row from the left: SC/SLA President Bob Williams, SC/SLA President-Elect/Program Chair Joy Robinson, NC/SLA President Eliza Robertson. Second row: Mint Museums Librarian Joyce Weaver, NC/SLA President Elect/Program Chair Debbie Balsamo. New Program added to Annual Conference: “Books that changed the world” Tuesday, June 13, 2006 1:30
PM - 3:00 PM Although many of the earth-shaking scientific publications that we are all familiar with represent discoveries and advances in the physical sciences and technology – Copernicus and Galileo challenging the belief that the Earth is the center of our solar system, for example – the natural sciences provide an equally broad array of books that have revolutionized the way we understand ourselves and the world we live in – and they often hit us much closer to home. Since the Renaissance, books heralding fundamental advances in botany and zoology, anatomy and medicine, geology and paleontology have changed our conception of Nature in ways both big and small. There are so many such works to choose from, in fact, that for this talk I have selected a variety of books that are not just important in the history of science and but are also personal favorites of mine, from Leonhart Fuchs’s De historia stirpium (1542) to Darwin’s & Wallace’s article heralding the theory of evolution in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society (1858). Short program with meeting to follow. KRET (Retired Members Caucus) annual business meeting and reception. Soon-to-be retired SLA members are welcome to attend. Audiences: All
attendees SLA Units: Retired Members Caucus Washington D.C. Chapter Sponsors: BASCH SUBSCRIPTIONS, INC. 2006 William B. Neff Scholarship Essay By Michelle M. Paquette We all want to believe that we possess it. It may define which language we speak, which religion we observe. It may imbue us with the pride of an identifying ethnicity, or relegate us to the position of a reviled nationality. Verbal battles are waged to stem its spread. Literal battles are fought to defend it. There are those of its kind which have conquered and dominated; others of its kind which have been encroached upon or swallowed whole. Some are viable and vital, countless are dead and obscured by time. Many proffer their wisdom, if we are but willing to listen. Of others only fractured images exist … as a warning … if we are but willing to see. It is a word which may be taken to identify the collective intellectual achievement of millions. In a different context, it may define the lifeways of some remote, dwindling minority. Derived from Latin, filtered through French, in the English language it is an amorphous, somewhat banal noun: culture. In the United States, in the first decade of the 21st century, the notion of culture – by whom it is maintained, by what means it is defined or disqualified, the appropriateness of its global dissemination – is a matter with which special librarians are intimately familiar. Despite budgetary constraints, sometimes in the face of censorship, and though occasionally susceptible to natural disaster, specialized repositories of memory in this country today enjoy a level of safety unprecedented in history. A special collection, a single-subject corpus, an industry- or profession-specific library may contain holdings which define, illustrate, preserve and/or communicate a unique sphere of culture. To touch on just a few examples: As the generation of men and women who led, planned for, participated in, and were victims of the actions of the Second World War slowly pass away, military libraries, Holocaust libraries and community public library oral history projects will assume extraordinary importance. Their librarians, administrators and boards of directors will shoulder the two-fold task of maintaining the dignity of exceptional spirit, while simultaneously acting as a voice for tremendous suffering. Similarly, many Native American languages and spiritual ceremonies are extant today only by a tendril, which frays daily with the ages and health of the few remaining tribal elder speakers and performers. The connection to these customs will eventually sever, not with a loud snap, but in heartbreaking silence. Professionals at reservation centers and tribal libraries face imperatives of their own, as guardians of ancient, varied and complex cultures. For our colleagues at religious and theological libraries, there may also be concern for “extinctions” among smaller sects, pressures of doctrinal re-interpretation, or loss due to vandalism or natural disaster. Organizations and congregations have life cycles, just as do individual humans. Having at hand the letters, sermons or speeches of earlier congregants, leaders or founders may provide embattled religious communities with the guidance, clarification, perspective or solace that they desperately need. While history, language and religion may certainly be considered key underpinnings of any “culture,” there are those who would argue that music and art are defining features, as well. As public primary and secondary education increasingly atrophies in service to the humanities, special collections devoted to art and music become lighthouses on rocky shores. Librarians devoted to visual, decorative, performing, folk or ethnic arts must strive to balance the protective instincts which have served their collections so well, with an acknowledgement of the dearth of opportunity that could be remedied by access to their collections. While not a panacea, digitalization and virtual collections (which mirror or sample actual holdings) can raise awareness and appreciation for many rare and valuable special collections – without exposing the physical objects to handling. For my last example, I would ask – what serves to define a nation, its people, and the reception they garner from the wider world any more than politics? Those special librarians who guide and promulgate the missions and legacies of Presidential, senatorial, congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative libraries manage a sphere of “culture” that deserves far more attention that it currently receives. Many of the judgments of history are based on decisions taken and initiatives set into motion by the men who hold political power. To defend, rationalize, explain, project into the future, analyze, demonize, lionize, and most certainly to understand any culture, one ought to try to grasp the motivations behind its politics. Special librarians may be thought of as “keepers of culture” in that they are often entrusted with the very best, the rarest, the most unique and the most quintessentially representative examples of a society’s goals, achievements, mistakes, tragedies, failures, reconciliations, resurrections and redemptions. Michelle is a graduate student at the University of Pittsburg School of Information Science. She will be receiving her Master’s of Library and Information Science, as well as a certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, in August. She has a B.A. in European Studies from Mount Holyoke College and an M.S. in Applied History from Carnegie Mellon University. Her areas of scholarship and personal interest include medieval manuscripts; iconography of St. Catherine of Alexandria; Christine de Pizan; book illustration from the 19th century Jugendstil period; and English female botanical illustrators of the Victorian Age. (* denotes student member)
The DMAH Bulletin is published four times a year by the Museums, Arts and Humanities Division of the Special Libraries Association. Deadlines for submission of advertisements and materials are as follows:
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