Category: Event Reviews

Digital life: New Museum archive system ARIES

Private Tour to Frick Art Reference Collection.

In their roles of preserving tangible and intangible heritage, museums have documented a corpus of knowledge that is fundamental for societies. However, this orientation, which has paid more attention to artifacts, is one of the reasons why museums are perceived as distant institutions that are more concerned with the past, and that are more at the service of the intellectual elite of the museums (MacDonald and Alsford, 2010). Consequently, museums, beyond being places to collect, preserve, study, and exhibit, are redefining themselves and making efforts to respond to a fast paced information society by incorporating more interactive museum management information technologies.

Frick Art Reference collection is a leading organization for digitizing their collection it is dedicated their resources to collect, preserve, study, exhibit, and shared through online. Frick Art Reference Library’s mission is to provide public access to materials and programs related to the study of fine and decorative arts created in the Western tradition from the fourth to the twentieth century.

Entering Frick Art Reference Library(FARL)

In order to visit the Frick Art Reference Library, you need to be 18 and older and you need to be registered or pre-registered through online. for security issue Coats, umbrellas, camera, and laptop cases, and bags larger than 9″ x 12″ x 3″ must be checked.

Stephen J. Bury

Stephen J. Bury is a scholar, art historian and the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City. Meeting Stephen J. Bury was a strange experience to me, especially right after I read his essay about his plans about digitalizing Frick Collection: Embedding a culture of innovation at the Frick art reference library in Technology and digital initiatives: innovative approaches for museums / edited by Juilee Decker.  He introduced ARIES and equipment they use for documenting works.

ARIES: ARt Image Exploration Space

Louisa Wood Ruby, the Head of Research at The Frick Art Reference Library gave us to talk about the open source program they developed. As an emerging museum and digital culture professionals, I hope to create a culture of openness and accessibility in museums, so that visitors can reduce their fear of institutions and have a better understanding of the contents of collections and exhibitions. ARIES is the perfect example for  Libraries in incorporating technologies.

ARIES is an open source developed by members of the Digital Art History Lab (DAHL) collaborated with New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazill. This program is originally created to help to visually compare the artwork it saves tremendous time for art historian and curator.

ARIES follows Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s theory of “information management” system and it became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web. Berners-Lee eventually released the code for his system — for free — It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over the Internet. (Digital life in 2025: Experts predict the internet will become ‘like electricity’-less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill by Prof. Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie)https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/831785/mod_resource/content/0/PIP_Report_Future_of_the_Internet_Predictions_031114.pdf

ARIES is free program for all and it is designed not just for the art historian and researcher, it is designed for everyone who is interest in the collection in Frick Art Reference Library(FARL)

Art historians have traditionally used physical light boxes to prepare exhibits or curate collections. which is exhausting and time-consuming ARIES is created to address problems. It is an image Exploration Space, an interactive image manipulation system that enables the exploration and organization of fine digital art. The system allows images to be compared in multiple ways, offering dynamic overlays analogous to a physical light box, and supporting advanced image comparisons and feature-matching functions, available through computational image processing.

 

ARIES is still under the development and they recently added tracking program for dispersal of an artist’s work. Tacking work would be really useful for curating exhibitions.

 

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Achieving Digital at the Met

 I attended an event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by Professor Villaespesa for Info School students. While there, we heard from Loic Tallon, the museum’s Chief Digital Officer, and Jennie Choi, the General Manager of Collection Information. We heard about their work at the museum and their approaches to the idea of digital at an institution as large and as entrenched in its ways as the Met can be.

One of Tallon’s central theses to his work at the Met is that “the strategy of centralizing responsibility for digital transformation within a single, distinct department is reaching its limits. Now a broader institutional approach is needed.” It’s a theme he’s written on for the Met’s blog and a topic he discussed during his talk. The boundaries for digital initiatives in museums are wavy, indistinct lines. In his blog post, he charts out different responsibilities that fall under the scope of “digital” at various museums around the country. No two museums approach it the same way, and it comes increasingly reductive to limit certain processes to a digital department, when the reality is that all departments should be examining their workflows for places they can adapt and embrace new technologies.

At the Met, the Digital department is comprised of three teams: a team dedicated to collections information and data management, a team of content producers, and a team for product development. Tallon described their work as divided between the two paths people can take to interact with the museum. The first path is the in person experience. When a visitor enters the Met’s physical spaces, what work can the digital team do to enhance their experience? The second path is for the remote user, who interacts with the Met’s collection and its services online. What does the digital team need to accomplish to present the museum to the rest of the world?

The first path is generally constrained by space and exhibit demands, but the possibilities for the second path are wide open. The questions regarding digital at the Met are similar to the ones the High asked itself for its physical gallery reinstallation. How does a museum stay relevant, provide the best representation of its collection, and engage with as many people as possible?

At the Met, the answer was to invest more heavily in digital. Tallon admitted that the museum’s online presence had very little effect on the museum’s bottom line. And yet, it’s a presence worth building on as the world increasingly engages with itself online. Last year, the Met launched it’s Open Access intiative. They made high quality images of their public domain collection available to anyone under a Creative Commons Zero license and worked with Wikimedia and Google to make their images more accessible on the web. Just last month in October, they made those images along with information about all the works in the museum’s collection available via API.

Since the launch of the Open Access initiative, the Met has been able to reach a larger audience with images from their collection. While it hasn’t resulted in a significant increase in traffic to the Met’s website, its images are available on Wikipedia pages and Google search results. These other platforms allow a wider audience to engage with the Met’s collection, including users who speak a language other than English–something the Met itself would never have been able to do on its own. The API is only a month old, so results remain to be seen. Those interested in updates should keep an eye on Tallon’s posts on the Met’s blog.

In the second half, we heard from Jennie Choi, General Manager of Collection Information. With over 20 years of experience at the Met, she had some really interesting insights into the museum’s metadata. The primary piece of software used at the Met is The Museum System, a full collections management system that feeds its information into other parts of the Met, including NetX, the museum’s digital asset management system, and the museum’s information kiosks.

The Met has a long history of making and keeping records on its collection, but it’s only in the last few years that it has created a set of cataloguing standards and worked across departments to standardize data like artist names and object provenance. Previously, each curatorial department was responsible for its own records, which created heavy inconsistencies in how works were labeled and could be found online. Choi was on a team that worked with curators over two years to bring all that metadata under one roof and continues to work with departments to bulk out information available on works from the collection.

Choi’s latest project is tagging works from the collection with content keywords–something that’s never previously been done. In an initial pass through the collection, the museum outsourced the work to a team of 70 who worked 24/7 for three months to assign various tags to works. They looked for things like objects featured in paintings, or whether the work depicted a man or woman. There have already been major challenges to this. Using such a large group of taggers created inconsistencies, and the lack of a standard created inaccuracies. There were also cultural differences that hindered the quality of the documentation. For example, it was hard for the team to accurately identify satire in the drawings collection. Given the opportunity to do it again, Choi says she would’ve preferred to work with a smaller team with more training over a longer period of time. Due to the nature of the project funding, the initial work had to be completed within three months and the tags need to be reviewed before they can be added to public-facing systems.

I thought this was a fascinating look behind the digital initiatives at the Met. It felt perfectly in line with my observation of the High. Both institutions are in the midst of interrogating their stewardship of their respective collections. In the High’s case, it was of their actual physical space. For the Met, a full scale physical reorganization is improbable, but they have untapped potential in carving out a digital space of their own.

Posted on by Clarissa Liu 0

Event- Inclusive Design 24

The event I attended is an online event on web accessibility called the Inclusive Design 24 conference. It was the 5th annual ID24, which is a 24-hour live stream international event where different topics were discussed from October 10th to October 11th. I did not watch the full 24 hours, but I was able to catch some of the talks and have gone back to watch more of it since, as they were streamed and saved on YouTube. This seemed like an important event to partake in, as it is relevant to a few of my projects this semester (including my final paper for this class) as well as is a good event for everyone in the information profession to view as it provides new ideas and thoughts on the state of web accessibility. It is also a unique event because the 24 hours of streaming allows it to include numerous international voices which can often not be included in events or conferences that require physical attendance, especially for the disability community. This allows every type of person to participate in the event through presenting or watching the hours of content, without being required to travel. Additionally, because this is the 5th year of this event, it operates relatively fluidly, and the people involved seem excited by the conversation and size of the event. Everyone presenting was very happy to be representing an organization or be an expert in the field to share their insights and ideas on the issues.

What they are trying to do is not limit creativity of web design but encourage people to take into consideration a whole bunch of different disabilities, so the internet feels like a place of inclusion and equality, and helps people participating in the medium instead of discouraging them. This event also coincided nicely with our readings also discussed on October 10th on user centered design/ design justice, showing how an inclusive thought process can be implemented in the real-world practice of creation. Making everything high contrast (though high contrast is not the same for everyone) and sites easy to click is beneficial for not only low vision users, but to those users on the website outside in the sunlight. Taking into account who has access, and the value of making things accessible in a sensory way but also where connection is limited. The group is trying to connect all people, whatever circumstance, every way they can for the future.

While the event itself seemed low budget with some questionable connection and presentations at times, and I am not sure most people would actually commit to watching 24 hours of this all at once, but it was a very global event, and is an attempt to connect and take into consideration numerous types of technology consumers. There were different college groups who watched at various times, and a decent amount of twitter engagement. The hashtag #ID24, was used throughout the event, and the tweets were positive, and there is the ability to communicate with what the speakers were talking about.

The most important lesson I think I took from the event is that you are not creating an experience (even though the word user experience implies exactly that) your creating an environment for people to experience. Whether it is entirely usable at face value to the user, or if they can easily adapt and add to it (i.e. screen readers, different methods of selecting content, inverted colors or customized high contrast settings) to make it personalized and accessible, the structure of what your creating is the environment. In terms of accessibility, they also emphasized that the basics are what gets overlooked a lot of times in web design and that is what leaves people behind. Web designers often skip over the basic structure of a website, like the html, which is really where most of the accessible adaptations take place, because the websites personal style does not matter as much as the content if some sort of adapter is going to alter the style anyway.

The underlying theme is that people care about accessibility, but it is a big undertaking for people that do not know how to go about implementing components into their design. People know they are excluding people, but it is hard to start the process of designing better. They discussed a lot of different topics, from high contrast mode, accessible online payments, WordPress, the list goes on and on within the 24 hours of content.  

When thinking about the readings this semester, it goes back to design justice. They are very good at pointing out what does not work and why a lot of the websites out there are poorly designed for accessibility. Additionally, there is not one right solution for everyone, but there are things that can make it better for everyone. The more control the user in some of the design choices, like contrast and color, that might be a better solution then designing one website to fit everyone’s needs from the moment they type in the URL.

This event gives a lot of voices of the disabled design community a larger platform of which to speak. As Costanza-Chock writes,

The key lessons include: involving members of the community that is most directly affected by the issue that you are focusing on is crucial, both because it’s ethical, and also because the tacit and experiential knowledge of community members is sure to produce ideas, approaches and innovations that a non-member of the community would be very unlikely to come up with. It is also possible to create formal community accountability mechanisms in design processes (Costanza-Chock 9).

There is a lot still to be done in creating a web that is designed with all people in mind, hence this event has been occurring for the past 5 years, and likely as computer technology changes there will always be more things to discuss when it comes to designing content for inclusivity. It seems likely this event will continue for years to come bringing about new thoughts, ideas and innovations in web accessibility.

Bibliography

Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice. pp 1-14.

https://inclusivedesign24.org/2018/

Posted on by Paula Cafiero 0

#NoHateALA: What’s next for our community? – Event Review

On October 16th, the group Racial and Social Justice in the Library hosted a meeting titled “#NoHateALA: What’s next for our community?” for librarians and information professionals. Two organizers, one librarian from the New York Institute of Technology and one librarian from the NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, spoke to a small group of three information professionals from various libraries. I agreed to keep the names of the organizers and attendees anonymous.

The meeting, held at the Metropolitan New York Library Council’s Midtown office, was organized to discuss the the American Library Association’s recent decision to put forth an amendment to the Library Bill of Rights that sanctioned hate groups meeting in public libraries. This decision sparked outrage among those in the library and information profession as well as among community members. Due to this outrage, the amendment was rescinded and a new version will be released. Nevertheless, ALA’s decision to allow hate groups to meet in public libraries has created a crisis in the profession. This meeting was organized to discuss what this amendment means for the profession and how we should respond as a community.

The meeting began with an introduction to the amendment and a recap of the events surrounding the passing of the amendment. The amendment was initially brought up when a librarian approached the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee about the KKK being given meeting space in their library. The IFC discussed the issue and ultimately decided that, based on the First Amendment right to free speech, the ALA should officially allow hate groups to have a presence in libraries. The amendment passed, only to be rescinded in August after information professionals on Twitter expressed their anger at the amendment with the hashtag #NoHateALA.

The two organizers posed several questions pre-written on posters to generate discussion among meeting participants. As we discussed each question, post-it notes were added to the posters. The questions were:

  1. What or who is ALA for? Is it for librarians?
  2. Is ALA working for us? How can ALA work better for us?
  3. Are there other professional organizations doing this better? How so?
  4. Can neutrality [in libraries] be an instrument for violence? For prejudice?

In response to the first question, one organizer immediately replied with a definitive “No, it’s not for librarians.” As an African American woman and a librarian, she explained that as soon as hate groups were allowed into the library, they were terrorizing her existence. Overall, the group agreed that hate groups probably shouldn’t be allowed in library spaces if ALA and libraries want to continue to promote “diversity” among their staff and patrons and keep the staff and patrons safe.

ALA was described during the meeting as a “guiding force” of the profession, and it was acknowledged that acting counter to the wishes or rules of ALA could be basis for losing a job, particularly for librarians that are already vulnerable (whom are often the same librarians that are affected by the presence of hate groups in libraries!). The professional risk involved in defying ALA can be more than symbolic.

There was a lot of discussion about the legality of the actions of hate groups and the ALA, but I and others argued that purely legal pathways to social change are quite often not the most effective, nor do they necessarily reflect the moral or ethical choice. There is a great social context of racism, hate, and discrimination that ALA is willfully ignoring by projecting neutrality.

A large part of the meeting was spent discussing the fourth question about neutrality. While the ALA believes itself to be neutral because it sanctions the presence of hate groups in library spaces just as it does other religious and political groups, in reality, neutrality is an impossibility. As Robert Jenson explains in “The Myth of the Neutral Professional,”

…a society is moving in a certain direction—power is distributed in a certain manner, leading to certain kinds of institutions and relationships, which distribute the resources of the society in certain ways. We cannot pretend that by sitting still—by claiming to be neutral—we can avoid accountability for our roles (which will vary according to one’s place in the system). A claim to neutrality means simply that one is not taking a position on that distribution of power and its consequences, which is a passive acceptance of the existing distribution. Even this is a political choice and thus inherently non-neutral. (2006: 4)

In other words, as one participant said, when the ALA projects neutrality, it is shying away from responsibility to make a moral choice that may not be wildly popular among free speech advocates, but would protect library staff and patrons that often see the library as a safer space. The first step, according to the meeting organizers, is recognizing that some expression is oppressive to others, and that neutrality is a myth. A second step is for ALA to more precisely define “hate groups” so that a more precise and productive conversation can be had about this issue.

The meeting was concluded with the question: “What can we do immediately?”. It was suggested that less vulnerable librarians (white men and women in particular) could support their colleagues in more vulnerable positions in standing up against hate groups in the libraries, though ultimately it would be in the hands of administrators with the power to hire and fire employees to stand up against such policies. There will be a Part 2 of this meeting following the release of the new ALA amendment to discuss more concrete action steps.   

 

References

Jensen, R. (2006). The Myth of the Neutral Professional. Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education, 8(2), 1-9. Retrieved October 15, 2018 from https://www.eastern.edu/publications/emme/2006fall/jensen.pdf.

Posted on by Joanna Thompson 0

Disrupting the Art World Through Digital Access (And A Lot of Money)

An artist explaining her video projection

This past Tuesday I attended a salon for a museum non-profit called The Current. The salon, which occurs at the founder’s loft quarterly, is meant ostensibly to close the gap between artist and collector by providing a relaxed social setting (shoes off!) against a backdrop of visual and interactive artworks in the museum’s small but growing collection.

The mission of The Current is steeped aggressively in opening access to their collection. For a not-insignificant amount of money, one purchases a membership to The Current, which provides access to a USB Drive that contains the museum’s entire collection, digitized. The member can then share the collection where ever they go. In the founder’s own home, for example, the salon displayed five selected works from artists in attendance via a projector.

Perhaps most important, however, is the intangible benefit of membership to The Current, which is a vote in each discussion surrounding the direction of the museum. Members vote on which works to bring into the collection, as well as details surrounding future events and salons. On this night, the museum announced proudly that they planned to move into a permanent brick and mortar space in the neighborhood, a move that I assume was burnished by a members vote.

It was this emphasis on a sort of direct democracy (along with wine and cheese) that drew me into attending this salon.

Screenshot of the event page

In a welcome toast, the Director made sure to note all of the technologists among its members. I’d spoken with an architect for the City of New York as well as an art collector at the salon by this point. Hearing an emphasis on technologists signaled to me where the money was coming from. This makes sense. The founder of The Current, William Nathan, got his start with Buzzfeed where he coded native advertising and analytical tools for cat video editors. He then founded an interior design startup before landing on The Current, becoming its primary financial provider.

With this context, The Current feels more like a startup than a proper museum. The crowd, which leaned young, affluent, and materially-interested, reflected a strong tech background. I met a guy who’d just gotten his first job out of undergrad coding for a major bank. Another young man who’d purchased a membership that night celebrated his new status by chest-bumping his friend and taking selfies during an artist talk about the video messaging platform Chat Roulette.

There is an element in The Current‘s messaging that implies that this museum exists to disrupt the existing museum infrastructure. On the museum’s landing page in large text laid over a VR piece in the collection, the website informs visitors, “The Current is a non-profit museum with radically participatory patronage.”

The art on display reflected this instinct. There was a piece made for VR in which the user goes through wormholes, for some reason. Another projected piece featured a loop of the artist waxing lyrical on the existential crises of being too connected on social media. Yet another piece was the artist, itself—that is, the artist was a virtual avatar projected on a brick wall. The person who wrote the code to create and project the avatar was not on site. One artist that I found interesting was an Iranian woman who saved, digitally scanned, and 3D-printed cultural artifacts that were targeted for destruction by ISIS.

A 3D-printed bust

But for the most part I walked through the event wondering, why?

As an information professional with a background in tech in public libraries, I was interested to see how a museum, another cultural institution, was utilizing new technologies. In my previous position as a library assistant in the TechCentral department at the Cleveland Public Library, we had access to a number of VR machines and 3D Printers, which we would roll out to the public for open community events, not unlike the salon. As staff, we were tasked to provide context for these new machines for a public that was unfamiliar with the technologies.

After three years of working in TechCentral with these fabrication technologies, our staff still had not landed on a framework around which we would showcase the tech. We would more or less roll out the machines for the public to use, and explain how the tech worked. Beyond that there was no active learning. They were effectively toys.

The writer interacting with art

I encountered a similar attitude among the artists and collectors at the salon. Beyond establishing that, yes, this new tech is cool and interesting, I couldn’t quite find a reason for it all. The same questions remained. How can VR function in the context of art in a museum, or in the context of informing the public at a library? What is a practical reason for a public library to demonstrate VR? The most clear explanation came from the Iranian woman preserving cultural artifacts. It’s a shame she was an outlier.

In a cultural institution, I like having context for learning and for art. I lose interest when something is put on display without so much of an explanation. My experience at the salon was not unlike my time in TechCentral. There’s all this new technology, but to what end? As an information professional, I think about this—why does a cultural institution house new tech if it’s funders or patrons can’t contextualize them?

My career goal is to find a way to contextualize new tech in a way that makes sense for my patron population. If the creators can’t do that, then who can?

 

Posted on by Paolo Balboa 0

NY Art Book Fair 2018 – Event Review

I attended the MoMA PS1’s Art Book Fair on September 21st for my INFO 601-04 event review. While museums are often male and white-centric spaces, the Art Book Fair showcases voices in art and publishing who are often marginalized with one of the most important contemporary art museums as the backdrop. The Art Book Fair is hosted by Printed Matters, a non-profit publishing house who features zines, artists books, posters, and out-of-print material in their repertoire. Although Printed Matters is the headlining host, it is only one of nearly 365 exhibitors which includes small independent publishers, artists, collectives, and illustrators. The Art Book Fair is an event I look forward to every year, and is one of the only major art events that is free and open to the public. As I attended on the first official day, the entire Fair seemed to be buzzing with excitement for the weekend ahead. The tents and galleries were filled with attendees and exhibitors engaging in conversation.  

 

Brochure listing exhibitors

One of my favorite parts of this year’s event was the selection of fair-specific installations. These exhibitions included promotional displays for galleries and presentations of historical materials. In many cases, these exhibitions included space to purchase books and other promotional materials of the artists, publishers, and galleries, but mainly these were traditional gallery spaces.  

One of my favorite installations was a History of Zines!. This was an exhibition detailing the historical background of zines started with underground cultural and science-fictions publications from the 1920s and continued until present-day. The present-day zines were made specifically for the Fair. Zines have long been the format used by counter-cultural movements, including feminist activists, indigenous groups, punk movements, persons of color,  etc. Cheap and easily reproduced, zines have become the main format activists have chosen to relay their messages. I’m glad the fair decided to highlight the history behind zines as many of the exhibitors featured continue to use the zine format to showcase their work. In fact, the Art Fair’s biggest tent is dubbed the Zine Tent as many prominent art collectives and zine creators exhibit in this space.

History of Zines! exhibition area

Another installation I found very compelling was hosted by Martos Gallery which included selected works and notebooks of the artist Dan Asher. Martos Gallery photocopied Asher’s notebooks and made the pages into floor-to-ceiling wallpaper. Many visitors, myself included, spent an extended period of time pouring each page. Asher’s notebooks included diary entries, addresses of clients and friends, musings, and plans for future pieces. This was an interesting way to exhibit archival materials side-by-side with finished art pieces, giving a glimpse into the process of the artist. This was a great choice in the context of the Art Fair, where visitors can speak to the artists and collectives who create work they enjoy in-person.     

 Notebook wallpaper from Martos Gallery exhibit

Events like the Art Book Fair are important, because they allow for the “knowledge and particular needs of communities” to be illustrated and exhibited in contexts or environments traditionally barred to them (Stevens, 2008). It gives MoMA PS1 an opportunity to be actively engaged with queer, POC,  and indigenous communities, and taking the museum off its pedestal. The Art Fair is a necessary step in ushering in more inclusive and intersectional art spaces where all voices feel welcomed and represented.

Conclusions

As an information professional who is interested in creating accessible museum spaces, I believe engaging in the Art Fair is the first step towards creating a more inclusive information community.  I think it is also important to urge other information professionals (librarians, curators, archivists) to also attend this event for themselves. I will try to make a conscious effort to seek out similarly inclusive art, publishing, and information events in the future as I gain more footing in my own information profession.   

Posted on by Grace Poole 0

Innovative Practices in Academic Libraries

On Friday, September 28, 2018, I attended an event entitled Innovative Practices in Academic Libraries, hosted by the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRLNY). Presenters reported on initiatives or studies in their respective institutions intended to increase engagement of staff and students or consider little-explored research angles. Since I am considering a career in academic libraries, I was curious to hear current professionals in the field describe the impact these innovations had in their institutions.

 

Using Slack to Improve Staff Engagement – Matthew Pavlick and Lauren DeVoe, Columbia University Libraries

Pavlick and DeVoe described the benefits and challenges of implementing the instant messaging program Slack among staff in their department. In discussing their reasons doing this, they described the lack of communication among different areas of the department before the introduction of this service, which created silos of information. In introducing Slack, Pavlick and DeVoe wanted to increase staff engagement and communication, encourage creativity collaboration, and streamline processes. Slack provides the flexibility to have individual as well as group conversations, and allows for the creation of different “channels,” that is to say, labeled threads of conversation kept separate from one another. Slack conversations are also fully searchable to allow for later information retrieval. The informal nature of Slack made it so that employees didn’t have to interrupt their workflow by physically getting up to ask a question, where they might then be worried about interrupting their colleague’s own workflow.

Although Pavlick and DeVoe described a largely positive experience in implementing Slack, they did mention that accessibility challenges may arise, wherein certain staff members, especially older people, may have trouble adopting this new technology. Others may simply be resistant to it because they don’t want to be burdened further additional forms of communication. Pavlick and DeVoe chose to make implementation of Slack optional for members of their department, but they would like at some point to make it mandatory and expand its use to their entire division.

Slide from Pavlick and Devoe's presentation (via ACRLNY event archives)
Slide from Matthew Pavlick and Lauren Devoe’s presentation (via ACRLNY event archives)

 

Augmented Reality Library Orientation: Planning the “Case of the Missing Laptop” Scavenger Hunt – Samantha Kannegiser and Bill McNelis, Berkeley College

Kannegiser and McNelis related that, since Berkeley College has two campuses several blocks from each other in Manhattan, each with its own library, students are often unaware of or not taking advantage of the unique offerings of both libraries. Additionally, they mentioned the concept of library anxiety, which might keep students from exploring potentially valuable resources, and the fact that some students are first-generation college attendees and may not know about library resources in general. For these reasons, they felt that, as part of student orientation, they needed a way to showcase and explain library resources without having to take students from building to building themselves. Before the introduction of this augmented reality library orientation, library staff had been present at the general orientation, and students had to participate in a mandatory class that gave information on all of the libraries in each of the eight Berkeley campuses, but there was no dedicated orientation activity taking place inside the actual Manhattan libraries.

Kannegiser and McNelis decided on an augmented reality library orientation in the format of a scavenger hunt. They came up with a storyline about a missing laptop that the students needed to find using augmented reality clues. Each clue would take them to a different location in the libraries, where they would scan a “trigger image” using the HP Reveal augmented reality app to enable an informational video to play. The video would describe the resources at that location and provide clues for the next step of the hunt. This new form of library orientation has not yet been implemented in a widespread manner, but Kannegiser and McNelis hope that it will provide a fun alternate way to impart knowledge about each library’s resources.

Augmented Reality orientation brochure
Augmented Reality orientation brochure (scanned from copy distributed by Samantha Kannegiser and Bill Mcnelis)

 

Marginalia, Value and Meaning: a Study – Richard Mako, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

As part of his research, Mako decided to study the marginalia created in books belonging to the library at his institution. While the marginalia of famous people are often studied at great length, people don’t usually consider the meaning behind the marginalia of “regular” people. Mako decided to focus on the fiction section at his library, choosing ten books at random to analyze. He tallied instances of different types of marginalia in each book, including writing words or phrases, underlining, highlighting, encircling or boxing, and other symbols. He stated that he found a total of 2,963 instances of marginalia in these ten books, with 536 different symbols. Mako discussed the potential meaning behind these marginalia, and the possible motivations of students in making these notations, especially knowing they would have to return these library books.

While I found this presentation intriguing, I found it curious that Mako did not once mention the ethical or moral aspects of defacing library books in this way. While he discussed students’ motivations in making certain kinds of markings, he did not mention their motivations or thought processes in choosing to write in library books to such an extent as to interfere with other patrons’ reading experiences. I did bring this up during the question and answer period, but another event attendee disagreed with me, saying that she liked how Mako presented his findings in a manner divorced from ethical implications and more as one might study an art piece.

marginalia slide
Slide from Richard Mako’s presentation (scanned from copy distributed during event)

 

Conclusions

Overall, I found these presentations to be valuable contributions to the field of academic libraries. The presentations on Slack and library orientations provided ideas on how to energize and empower both staff and students in the library environment. The final presentation highlighted (no pun intended) the issue of how students use libraries and library materials. While I am not yet sure whether I will enter the academic library field after graduation, with these thought-provoking presentations in mind, I will be keeping an eye out for future ACRL events.

Posted on by Alicia Hyman 0

The Uncomfortable Archive

 

 

Every year, The Archivist Round Table (A.R.T.) produces New York Archives Week.  A week full of commemorative activities aimed to inform the general public of the diverse array of archival materials in the NYC metropolitan area.  A.R.T. hosts three signature events: the A.R.T. awards ceremony, the K-12 Archives Education Institute, and an all day symposium.  On October 19, I attended the annual symposium held at the Center for Jewish History.

This year, fellow Pratt LIS students and I spent the day uncovering truths about working with the “uncomfortable archive.” The symposium consisted of a keynote speaker and four panels. All of the speakers and panels focused on various aspects of archiving sensitive material, bringing to light the broader questions of what it means to preserve and acknowledge the existence of controversial episodes throughout history.

 

The first panel centered around curatorial choices for a exhibition surrounding the holocaust and mental health.  The first speaker was Marissa Hollywood, Associate Director at Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) at Queensboro Community College (QCC). From their website, “the Kupferberg Holocaust Center uses the lessons of the Holocaust and other mass atrocities to teach and empower citizens to become agents of positive and social change in their lives and in their community.”1  Mrs. Hollywood spoke about how the space serves as an exhibition center and a library and touched upon the importance of its accessibility to not only the students but also the community.

In 2015 the KHC hosted an exhibition centered upon the discovery of a jacket from the Dachau concentration camp. The jacket belonged to Benzion Peresecki (Ben Peres), a Lithuanian Jew, was a prisoner at Dachau for 10 months. He kept the jacket for 33 years. The exhibition told the story of his immigration to the US, his legal pursuit of reparations, and touched upon his mental health journey. Over 1500 documents, donated by Mr. Peresecki’s daughter, served as the supplemental material for the exhibition.

 

As Mrs. Hollywood described the overall staging of the exhibition and the design of the center, a quote in the “difficult heritage” reading by Sharon Macdonald popped into my head: “Should a representation remain coolly factual or use more emotive forms of staging?”2  In the end, I thought Mrs. Hollywood and the other speakers on this panel delivered an exhibit that traversed the line between factual and emotive very well. With this exhibition, they attempted to answer was how best to display this difficult heritage and to address the issue of trauma and mental health that proved critical in Mr. Peres struggle following WWII.

Olivia Tursi, a social worker, worked on the exhibition analyzing the mental health documents for the exhibition. Her presentation focused on Ben Peres’ mental health. She discussed the importance of the jacket as a source of a traumatic event but also symbolic of his survival. She also addressed how the jacket provided a sense of control of his narrative post WWII.

 

The third presenter was Dr. Cary Lane, Assistant Professor of English at QCC. Dr. Lane spoke about using student-centered approaches to engage students in difficult content. His presentation focused on the presentation of the documents and the engagement of the students with the exhibit. What I found interesting about Dr. Lane’s presentation is the focus of the diversity of the student population. As he spoke, I was reminded of a passage from the reading on archives by Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook:

“Remembering (or re-creating) the past through historical research in archival records is not simply ‘the retrieval of stored information, but the putting together of a claim about past states of affairs by means of a framework of shared cultural understanding.’”3

Dr. Lane spoke about how student involvement with the research of the jacket and the holocaust allowed them to not only understand the event, but relate its repercussions and emotions to their own lives.  QCC is a very diverse campus and while the lives of these students may not have been personally affected by the holocaust, they could identify and share the emotions associated with such a traumatic event.  I found this correlation and “shared trauma” was an interesting aspect to this exhibit.

 

Overall I found the entire event to be really fascinating. As library and information professionals, I believe that we hold a certain obligation to the community to exhibit the realities of historical situations that may otherwise be overlooked. Throughout the panels there were so many examples of archival exhibits that pushed the boundaries surrounding material that is “uncomfortable” to most audiences.  As I was listening to the panelists, I was reminded about our readings regarding the power of the archive.  Throughout the year we read examples of the power that archives wield. In all the examples of “uncomfortable archives,” I feel the presenters did a good job of highlighting the gravity of their subject matter with respect for those marginalized communities.

 

Sources:

  1. Hollywood, Marissa. “About the Center.” Kaufberg Holocaust Center. http://khc.qcc.cuny.edu (accessed October 22, 2018).
  2. Macdonald, Sharon. “Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still Difficult?” Museum International 265-268 (2016): 6-22.
  3. Schwartz, Joan M. and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Sceince 2 (2002): 1-19.
Posted on by Charlotte India Eagle 0

Metadata for All Initiative – Event Review

Metadata for All!

I attended “NYC Open Data’s Metadata for All Initiative: Project Presentation” hosted by the Metropolitan Library Council on September 25th for my event review for INFO 601-04. This event presented the Metadata for All Initiative’s results after six months of working with New York City Open Data. The Sloan Foundation  sponsored the project, which was completed in partnership with the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, METRO, Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, NYC Open Data Team, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, New York Public Library and Tiny Panther Consulting.

The initiative aimed to help make New York City’s Open Data, which includes more than 2,100 datasets, more accessible to general users through the improvement of metadata standards. Tiny Panther Consulting, a team of data librarians founded by Julia Marden, was brought on board to do a pilot study on how to make the top 100 used datasets more user-friendly. They studied this through discussions with relevant governmental departments, workshops in all five boroughs and the creation of templates for certain metadata documents.

Metadata Improvements

In order to best assess the current metadata quality, Tiny Panther created a dataset documentation checklist. (This was provided as a handout for the audience.) The checklist contained a rubric that verified the overall usability, user guide, and data dictionary. The goal was to determine if a user would be able to understand what was in the dataset, and maybe more importantly was is not in it.

The data dictionaries function like a Rosetta Stones for the dataset and are required for users to understand what is actually in each dataset – for example what all of the rows and columns mean. However currently only 90% of the datasets had a dictionary, and there wasn’t a standard template for them, so they are of varying quality.

In addition to improving the data dictionaries Tiny Panther recommended the creation of user guides tailored to each dataset. These guides would provide a context for the data, let you know when it was last modified, clarify what which data was raw or added by the city, in addition to many other factors. Tiny Panther found that many of the documents associated with datasets used inside lingo that would not be comprehensible to user who were not employed within the departments that created the dataset. The three proposed user guides were provided as handouts as well.

Audience

The most successful aspect of this event wasn’t directly about the initiative. What made this event most noteworthy was its audience. The event was not directed towards librarians and information professionals, who probably already buy into the idea of accessible metadata. About half of the audience was comprised of government workers. (This is based on a show of hands conducted early in the presentation.) These are the professionals who create and maintain the datasets, and did not necessarily have a background in information studies. It was very impactful to hear their points of view. A few members of the panel were representatives of departments Tiny Panther worked with, and discussed their impressions of the challenges around the project. The audience was given an opportunity to ask questions about the project as well.

The only way the metadata standards can be maintained across all of the datasets is if they understand why it is important. They are the ones that will be doing this extra work, on top of everything else they are responsible for. It is not as if each department has a data librarian whose sole role is to maintain their open data. Although there is probably enough work to do that it could be a full-time job! I think the presentation was accessible to them, and hopefully demonstrated the power and utility of comprehensive metadata.

Conclusion

I will be keeping tabs on NYC Open Data, checking what the metadata looks like, as well as the actual data, over the next few ‘data dumps’ to see how their metadata evolves. Open data is a very exciting tool for civic engagement, but only if users can understand what the data are actually telling them.

Posted on by Claudia Berger Image 0

Archivists Need To Be Political In The Propaganda Machine

Would Donald Trump be president if presidential libraries were more honest about the political histories they represent? That was one of the thorny questions raised by Anthony Clark during his keynote address at the annual New York Archives Week Symposium presented by the Archivists Round Table. The theme of the day was “The Uncomfortable Archive,” and Clark, author of The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity & Enshrine Their Legacies, had a lot to say about the things that make him uncomfortable with the current state of presidential libraries and museums.

Clark has ample first-hand experience with these federally maintained institutions, which, though spurred into action by Franklin D. Roosevelt, weren’t formally established until the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955. Clark worked in the U.S. House of Representatives on a House Oversight Committee that investigated the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and in 2003 began research on his book. After visiting the few presidential libraries that exist (13 as of today, with Barack Obama’s currently in controversial planning stages), he said he encountered a lot of things that made him uncomfortable. Noting that the presidential libraries account for a quarter of the federal archives budget while only holding five percent of its records, he expressed additional concern over the outside funding they receive. By ingratiating themselves to private funders, he said presidential libraries are doing “wholesale damage” to the country, serving as “propaganda machines” that raise money for those private organizations while acting as “fake history sites” that obscure or erase the truth. This is what made Clark wonder whether our country’s current administration might have been different if those charged with administering the records had played a more reliable role in presenting presidential history.

He outlined the problem of personnel who would bow to the interests of private organizations that provide funding to these libraries, which he suggested might prioritize an exhibit that shows a president in a good light over fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests, for instance. For someone in that position, it’s understandable they might worry — don’t do what the funders want, and maybe lose the funding, and the job — but Clark reminded the room that it’s more than a top-down change that’s required. Yes, he said, there should be someone who is “independently leading an independent agency.” But if the leader isn’t leading, then, he said, “they don’t deserve your industry,” and you should find a place that “respects and deserves” you, and become the kind of leader that others respect and deserve.

Clark’s passion for the topic was evident. It’s clear that his many years spent considering this so deeply have had an impact, and it seems he is understandably upset that he’s one of the few people who’ve done anything about his findings. Though I haven’t read his book yet, I can imagine that frustration comes through as clearly in his writing as in his speech. It’s a difficult position to be in. Here’s someone who spent more than a decade seeing issues first-hand and documenting a lot of problems in a system, but perhaps feels like he’s attempting to take down a goliath singlehandedly. As Sara A. Polak wrote in a review of his book in The Public Historian, “The exasperation here is problematic because it creates the sense that Clark is a strong proponent of one side in a quarrel, rather than a historian trying to provide a dispassionate perspective on a struggle between complex interests and important ideological choices.”

But maybe this is an important time to be passionate, and maybe Clark is in a unique position to do so. Or maybe, as he implied in his address, all of us as information professionals share that role, and it is more important than ever to be impassioned.

As Robert Jensen outlined in The Myth of the Neutral Professional, a reading for one of our recent classes, those who are in a position to control access to information are unable to be neutral. Whether it’s deciding which books to acquire for a library collection, or what programming is created, or what details are shared or not shared in an exhibit, political choices are part of an information professional’s job. For those working in presidential libraries and museums, allowing misleading or incorrect information to be presented to the public is a political choice. It might seem like a tricky position to be in, but it’s one that ethical guidelines remind us to be cognizant of. For instance, the Society of American Archivists’ Code of Ethics states: “Archivists should demonstrate professional integrity and avoid potential conflicts of interest. They strive to balance the sometimes-competing interests of all stakeholders.” In his address, Clark noted that the stakeholders of the presidential library system might appear to include the foundations that provide funding or even the former presidents themselves; however, he reminded us that the true stakeholders are the American people.

It’s a strong ethical question for anyone working in any information profession: Who is it that you truly serve, and are you doing all that you can to serve them? Or, as Jensen stated: “The appropriate question isn’t ‘Are you political?’ but instead should be ‘Can you defend the conclusions you reach?'” In the end, neutrality may not be possible, and for Clark, we may all be better off because of that.

Thankfully, forums such as this one exist to help information professionals consider the implications of political actions in the workplace. The Archivists Round Table is an excellent resource for bringing this community together to discuss complicated topics like this that are relevant to the profession, and they hold events throughout the year, which I look forward to attending more of.

Posted on by Mary Bakija 0