Category: Articles

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

Observation of The Rubin Museum of Art

I’ve never heard about The Rubin Museum until I had a conversation about cultural differences between Taiwan and China with my English Literature Professor Terri Bennett. After the interesting conversation with Professor Terri, I’ve decided to choose The Rubin Museum of Art to do my observation due to cultural, religious, and political related reasons. I was really excited to see how different audience behaves in such place that I defined as a “controversial museum”.

Objective

Understand how the visitors from different backgrounds (includes culture, nationalities, and even ethnicities) behave or interact with the artworks in The Rubin Museum of Art. Below are something I’d like to know from this observation:
1. Rough demographic of the visitor (age, ethnicity, gender)
2. General behavior when browsing all artworks between Asian visitors and others
3. Interaction with the installation in “The Shrine Room” on the fourth floor.

Brief intro of The Rubin Museum of Art

The Rubin Museum is a museum that aims to “stimulate learning, promotes understanding, and inspires personal connections to the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan regions (The Rubin Museum, 2018)” by displaying collections of Himalayan arts.

Brief intro of “The Shrine Room”

“The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room evokes the aesthetics and atmosphere of a traditional Tibetan sacred space and offers visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context (The Rubin Museum, 2018).” This is actually not a “room”, it’s more like an open space with a fence to prevent visitors get too close to the installation.
  

Results
These results are based on a three-hours long observation I did on Oct 26th, from 6:00 pm-9:00 pm. The Rubin had a free admission opening night for the renewed art installation called “The Shrine Room” on the fourth floor. All results might not be able to represent the general phenomena of The Rubin.

General

1. There were only a small amount of visitors are Asian (Only 3-4 Asian per visit group, each group has around 45-50 visitors). Most of the Asian visitors are female (Oftentimes there was only one man in the Asian visit group, each group has 3-4 visitors).
2.  Most visitors who are not Asian tend to take close-up photos for art objects like the statues of the deity. Asian visitors are opposite, few of them even pray to the statues of the deity.

The Shrine Room:

There were three types of visitors during that three hours:
a. Believer/disciple-they either prayed with beads or special hand
    gesture.
b. The curious ones-they just came and sat on one of the eight chairs in
    front of the art setting.
c. Selfie lover/Social media enthusiast-they took selfies with the
   “art installation”, and some of them upload to social media.
2. Believer/disciple are most likely female, across the races/ethics.
3. Staying time is 15-20 min for almost every group of people, no matter
     they came for praying/meditating, taking selfies, or just sitting.
4. Most of the visitors who took the seats in front of the installation did not
     cross their legs, and did not even slightly open their legs. My assumption
     of this posture is the audiences were aware of the installation is solemn
     from a religious aspect.

Reflection

1. Broad stating “Buddhist art” to “Himalayan art” doesn’t justify the misperception of The Rubin Museum of Art.
If you check the definition of Himalayan art online, no matter from academic resources or Wikipedia, the strong connection between Himalayan art and Buddhist art is undeniable. In this case, the way to display artworks and do storytelling need to handle with care, otherwise, the outcome might be misleading toward to a religious display in a disrespectful manner. When The Rubin claimed they did try to avoid creating a “faux Tibetan temple”, I can’t really find the supporting pieces of evidence while browsing their available collections. As a Taiwanese Buddhist (Which is highly influenced by Chinese Buddhism, it combines both Taoism and Confucianism), how the exhibits display in The Rubin bother me a lot for three major reasons:

A. No comprehensive review or introduction of all collection they display-
This brought up a cultural related issue: the misperception of the so-called “Himalayan art”, and how other types of Buddhists perceive the collections in The Rubin Museum. My Buddhism culture oftentimes sees religious art creations as a solemn representation of god’s wellness. Unlike Himalaya Buddhism, we worship the sculptures/paintings of deity, the mysterious powers are in those”solemn objects”. The daily ritual practice is to pray in front of those”solemn objects”, any disrespectful behavior would cause some serious punishment by the deity. The relationship between believers and the “solemn objects ” is pretty restricted to a top-down affiliation from a religious aspect, and this might be the major difference between Taiwanese/Chinese Buddhism and Himalayan Buddhism, but there is no emphasis on the differences in The Rubin as a comprehensive overview of it’s “Himalayan art” collection. I assume people have a similar religious background like me would misinterpret those art objects with existing understanding, and might not willing to visit at all.

B. Major collection/display generate a strong religious vibe like a temple-the major collection are paintings and sculptures, only a few other types of “Himalayan art” like masks or photographs are collected and displayed in the museum. The deity paintings or sculpture are the main objects of traditional ritual practice. If a place displays religious paintings or sculptures mostly without a proper storytelling or introduction, it would more likely to be treated as a “temple-like” space, I will share my findings with photos as supporting evidence later.
C. Lack of deep understanding of broad Buddhism culture leads to a weird contemporary “Himalayan art” outcome- there were some animated arts put Buddha and other main Buddhism figures into neon arts with some crazy cartoon-ish images. Not sure it’s because of cultural difference or other superstitious reasons, it’s pretty rare in Asia to see artist “play with” the Buddha figures. Often times people are afraid of this kind of recreation since that could consider as a disrespectful behavior and would receive a curse as a punishment. I personally feel so uncomfortable about those type of artworks, and I doubt if the museum ever considers their audience might interpret the artworks like me or not.

The Shrine Room experience is the most tricky part to me. I can’t define it as a type of recreation to provide an immersive visit experience like an “artwork”, or, it represents a type of preservation of religious art and culture. I am more tend to believe that’s a preservation, to showcase how it looks like in Himalaya’s family house, and what’s the vibe. The reason why I don’t consider The Shrine Roon as a recreation artwork, it’s because there is no obvious storytelling or blending any contemporary art factor into it.
I read that as an authentic religious display room instead of an artwork. In this case, if we see The Shrine Room as a preservation project, then I tend to agree with what Cloonan mentioned in the W(h)ither Preservation article “Preservation must be approached not only as a set of technical solutions to technical problems, but also as a more complex concept that includes social dimensions (Cloonan, 2001).” Which The Shrine Room might fail from the social aspect- it doesn’t tell a comprehensive story about the cultural, but a showroom to showcase those different objects that been used as tools in a religious ritual. This might attract the audience who just like to explore “interesting things” and don’t care about the context (for example, the visitors just took selfies and shared it to social media without knowing the culture behind this installation).

Also, the way The Rubin Museum displays The Shrine Room as an installation without the ritual, might change how the audience interprets such display as a still sacred home-deco, not a place to execute the ritual, which misses the whole context of this room. It’s already easy to change how we interpret an object over time, it would be way easier to lose the whole meaning without a proper introduction of a preservation. If “the primary goal of preservation is to prolong the existence of cultural property (Cloonan, 2001),” in order to preserve the cultural aspect, we should include the ritual or the life with the room to showcase the “culture”, not just the objects.
The whole observation was really intense for me, I can somehow to relate why there were just a few Asian visitors during the observation. The whole museum doesn’t provide a comprehensive introduction for the collections as art collections, because the museum tries to portray all those objects collections from a pure art aspect, which is impossible, since the reason why all the creation are made is to serve as a religious tool (most of the time). The Shrine Room is just not a good example as either an art installation or preservation, I’d prefer to showcase the ritual or any activity that involves those objects digitally, in order to preserve the whole “culture”, so the meaning of the preservation would really “to prolong the existence of cultural property (Cloonan, 2001).” And that’s what I think the true value of displaying all these collections.

Related Resources

  1. “About the Museum” The Rubin Museum of Art, 30 Nov. 2018,  http://rubinmuseum.org/about
  2. “The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room” The Rubin Museum of Art, 30 Nov. 2018,  http://rubinmuseum.org/events/exhibitions/the-tibetan-buddhist-shrine-room
  3. Michele Valerie Cloonan.“W(H)ITHER PRESERVATION?”  The Library Quarterly, Vol 71(2), 231-242, 2001
Posted on by pouyang 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

Visiting a Closed Museum: The High Museum’s Reinstallation

2018 Reinstallation: Refreshed. Reimagined. Revealed. from High Museum of Art Atlanta on Vimeo.

Ongoing construction in the main building.

When I visited the High Museum in Atlanta in the beginning of October, I caught it during an awkward in-between time. The museum was in the final stage of mounting a total gallery reinstallation and almost the entire space was closed. There was a single exhibit on display in an outbuilding, With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino and Tommie Smith, but the museum was otherwise closed. This might seem like an odd choice for an observation site. I’d never been to the High before, and I wouldn’t be able to visit it again once the galleries had reopened to the public.

I wouldn’t be able to make a before and after comparison, but I wanted to visit the High because the reasons and circumstances surrounding a complete gallery reinstallation tap into questions surrounding collections and archives and how the maintenance of them and the spaces that house them all end users to interface with them. In the case of museums like the High, that means its visitors, both from around the world and from the local Atlanta community.

As part of an FAQ (which has been archived since the museum’s unveiling) on the High’s website, the museum stated:

“Reinstallation is a planned part of the Museum’s long-term strategy. It’s an opportunity for us to rethink the way we present the artwork in our collection. Since 2005, we’ve added nearly 7,000 new objects to the permanent collection. Now feels like the right time to showcase these works, address wayfinding, spruce up the galleries, and make the collection presentations more cohesive and engaging for visitors.”

These ideas called to mind the the themes Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook addressed in “Archive, Record, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory”. The archive, or collection, and its keepers must be responsive and adaptive to context and change. Keepers should also acknowledge their responsibility in creating an archive that is representative and the archive’s role in the “exercise of power—power over information and power of information institutions. Also interwoven throughout is the crisis of representation—the power of records and archives as representations and the representation of power in records and archives” (Schwartz and Cook 9).

As of the 2010 census, Atlanta’s population was 54 percent black. The city is also the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. and the home of the Center for Civil and Human Rights. During my visit I was able to speak with Margaret Wilkerson, a Museum Educator and Docent Manager, who stated that part of the plan was to create more space for the High’s collection of civil rights era photography and to bring together the museum’s collections of African art, which had been previously scattered in different galleries. A review of the reinstallation in ArtsATL by Catherine Fox noted “[t]he High has made a concerted and noticeable effort to” include more art from women and people of color. A preview of the reinstallation in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noticed that in the new layout “African art might share space with self-taught artists from the American South, and self-taught artists will be placed up against contemporary artists to show the energy exchanged between the two”–another aspect of the reinstallation that Wilkerson mentioned in our conversation.

This integration of different pieces from the collection works to create “stories linking works throughout the museum” (Fox). Wilkerson admitted that a weakness of the High in the past was it’s tendency to move from blockbuster exhibition to blockbuster exhibition, rather than focusing and drawing on the strength of its own collection. Creating narratives from work pulled from across time and location would hopefully draw in visitors who would be interested in returning to the High even when something major like it’s current Yayoi Kusama exhibition isn’t in town.

Ironically, the only work I was able to see was a temporary exhibit. But the themes of With Drawn Arms demonstrate the High’s desire to bring the past into the present and “[showcase] artworks relevant to communities from Atlanta and beyond.” A collaboration between Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith and artist Glenn Kaino, With Drawn Arms brings together art and artifacts representing Smith’s act of protest during the the 1968 Olympic games. While the Star Spangled Banner played during his medal ceremony, Smith and teammate John Carlos bowed their heads and held up black gloved fists to represent Black Power and protest the mistreatment and denial of rights faced by black Americans. Colin Kaepernick’s Nike campaign had debuted just weeks before the exhibition opened and direct connections could be drawn between every element of Smith’s protest and Kaepernick’s.

The most striking work was a series of bronze casts Kaino created of Smith’s arm. The casts were hung from the ceiling and filled the room. Titled “Bridge,” Kaino describes the work on his website as “a golden path leading forward from the present but connected to the past, a spectacular reconciliation of a historic record, an individual memory, and a public symbol all renegotiated in an infrastructure of time to creates stories of the now.”

Glenn Kaino's "Bridge"
Glenn Kaino’s “Bridge”

In visiting the High, I wasn’t able to actually observe much, but a museum (or archive) is not only it’s collection. It’s also the context and conversation around the collection. The reinstallation itself is designed to allow the museum to make adjustments and respond to its users. Whether their efforts create a successful bridge remains to be seen. I personally won’t be able to go see it for awhile. But I think the very fact that the museum recognized its need to pause and re-examine its role and the significance of its works is a good sign.

Posted on by Clarissa Liu 1

Observation: Brooklyn Museum

For my observation, I spent time watching and exploring the Brooklyn Museum. I have had to do many museum observations this semester as part of the Museums and Digital Culture program. It made the most sense for me to observe a museum, and specifically this one for longer, for the purpose of this assignment, because I have seen the evolution of this institution over many years. I observed the exhibits on Sunday mid-morning October 7th, which was potentially not the best day to go, because the museum itself was relatively empty at that time.

Growing up, I frequently attended the Brooklyn Museum, and the permanent collections remained relatively stagnant throughout the early 2000s. For years, they seemingly did not evolve or make much attempt at relevancy, in my opinion, including topical themes and creating much personal interest. I do not remember seeing many of their temporary exhibits, but their permanent collection did not use the space to its fullest. Following the redesign of the front of the museum, much of the culture has changed, and there were several people near the front of the building, as a hangout location and not so much to view the cultural institution. Recently the interior content of the museum has become increasingly socially conscious and they are clearly working on finding their voice in the greater New York art scene, while changing their curation of their permanent collection so the context of the pieces has been evolving with the space. The museum itself is experimenting with what kind of audience is wants to attract and what kind art it wants to display to be relevant, different and attractive to the wider audience, and brining people in past the outdoor seats.

The pieces I remember seeing growing up are mostly still on display, but they have become almost a scavenger hunt because their locations have moved around, and they are being curated differently with new works surrounding them to change the conversation. As Cloonan writes, “Artifacts may shed light on the past, yet when these cultural remnants are placed into contemporary context something new is created,” (Cloonan 231). They have given new context to their work surrounding new themes, in this current climate to bring out new meaning to the work. As a temporary exhibit, they have “Float” is an interesting molten glass works mixed amongst the permanent collection on the American Art floor, offers a level of intrigue and surround much older work sometimes with words that correlate with the older art.

In terms of difficult heritage, they have chosen to highlight a lot of political art topics to display, and more importantly create a conversation about. Two of their temporary collections that really stand out as making a statement on difficult heritage are the “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” and “Half of the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection.” They are using art to display difficult moments in American history, which are still relevant in today’s political climate, and spark conversation. It should be noted however that these exhibits were not incredibly loud in terms of discussion, possibly because while most people were there alone or in groups of two, there was not enough people in the space to facilitate conversation amongst friends. For the most part people seemed very reflective. One example of this is The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, which over the past 10 years or so now has created a whole feminist wing surrounding this piece, and an increasing focus on feminist art across the museum, when it used to be just this piece was the focal point of feminism in the Brooklyn Museum. The room housing The Dinner Party, there was only a group of two in there at the same time as myself, and it was very quiet, no one seemed to want to make any noise when viewing the pieces, likely because the walls are dark, and there is so much to see, that the conversation seemed to mostly occur outside of the space. The two temporary exhibits, the feminist wing, the American art floor and the restaurant were the most crowded for the Sunday morning. Granted, no room I went into could be considered crowded (there was plenty of walking and viewing space surrounding the wall text and images), but the other floors had hardly any foot traffic. I also did not stumble upon any walking tour groups, and I did not see many docents and museum staff, especially once in the gallery space after the front lobby where you get tickets and such. However, compared to the other floors and rooms which have very few people, the temporary and more relevant artworks were the most visited.

It is of note as well that I was there the morning after their big first Saturday event (almost always a well-attended monthly event for the museum) and a week too early for their Syrian Refugee exhibit, which obviously is very topical, in comparing Syrian refugees from the past to the present through art, and is definitely a reason to go back to the museum when I have more time, but also possibly a reason there were not as many people on the day that I went because they were timing their visits for events and certain exhibits.

Their archiving system is very open, you can observe much of the process just by being in the exhibits. In the Egyptian Art section for example, while I did not see any archivists or curators actively working at least within the public exhibit (again likely due to the time and day I was observing and exploring) but in one room there was a  relatively large area sectioned off, which was not entirely hidden, where they were clearly redoing a portion of the exhibit, and presumably getting ready to add the pieces some of which were on the tables to the display in the coming days. Their actual archives are also currently mostly closed to the public, but they have visual storage behind glass doors you can see through. There weren’t as many docent staff at work when I went there, it seemed mostly security guard and people in charge of the front of house activity, yet with the very open collection side of the museum, it is apparent that a lot of work is being done, just not as much on the volunteer/educational side of the museum, especially during one of their presumably slower hours.

Bibliography

Cloonan, Michèle Valerie. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2, 2001, pp. 231-242.

Macdonald, Sharon. “Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still ‘Difficult’?: Why Public Acknowledgement of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities.” Museum International, pp. 265-268.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ 

Posted on by Paula Cafiero 0

After School At The Cortelyou Library

Cortelyou Library
Cortelyou Library (photo by Mary Bakija)

The first thing you see when you enter the Cortelyou Library is the information desk. A librarian sits there, and if you make eye contact, she’ll smile and say hello. Many of those who entered on the day I was there, both children and adults, knew her. “I passed!” reported one teen, and the librarian gave the thumbs-up sign, while telling another, “I haven’t seen you in a while!” Other patrons either passed the desk quietly, or stopped with specific questions. It was a cool fall day, around the time the elementary school next door and the middle school down the street had ended classes for the day, and the librarian was constantly fielding questions.

“How does she get a library card?” one guardian asked, nudging the girl at her side, before accepting a form to fill out.

“When is storytime?” another guardian asked, in a thick Russian accent. The bilingual storytime wasn’t for a little while, so the family of five headed out, saying they’d return.

“Where’s the bathroom?” asked another guardian, shepherding her child in the direction the librarian pointed.

Where To Checkout?

Directly to the left upon entering is another highly used area: the self-checkout machines. People who came in knowing which book they wanted walked right up to one to use it to search. Others checked out after browsing a bit, or after picking up their book from the holds shelf nearby. Some popped in, renewed, popped out. A class of about a dozen pre-K aged children stood in line to check out books with their teacher at one of the self-checkout kiosks. The teacher had a bag full of the kids’ library cards and helped each child check out one or two picture books, which went fairly smoothly. (Putting coats back on didn’t go quite as well. The “flipping method” requires some finesse and experience, it seems. And then Max forgot his hat.) The teacher reminded the kids: “Keep the paper slip with the book, because that tells you when you have to bring it back.”

It’s interesting to see the information desk and the self-checkout stations so close to each other. It’s common to every branch of the Brooklyn Public Library that I’ve visited, and I have seen how useful it can be. During this observation, the librarian at the info desk spent several minutes recommending a book comparable to Nathan Hale’s series to a mother and her son, at which point a few people wanted to check out books. Rather than wait, they saw the self-checkout kiosks were available, and they used those. However, people also used them when no patrons were at the info desk. It was a little sad to see people actively avoiding that human interaction; the alternative view, of course, is that they might find self checkout to be more efficient, faster, or even a more private way to access information.

Where To Sit?

A nice piece of design in this branch is that there are two separate areas with computers: one for adults, and one for children in the children’s area. Several kids coming in after school raced to the computers, working together on projects and playing games. Adults were also busy at their computers — the entire time I was at the library, every computer in the adult section was occupied, and patrons were often waiting their turn for a computer to become available. Because both computer sections are surrounded by bookshelves, as patrons young and old waited for a chance to use a computer, they also interacted with the physical collection, browsing titles and picking up books.

The most apparent constraint of this branch is its small size. Though this was a peak time for the branch, it’s representative of the weekday after-school crowd. According to the library system’s BrooklynStat service, in fiscal year 2018, the branch recorded 198,901 visits, making it the fifth most popular branch in the system. Taking into account Sundays and holidays, the library was open about 300 days during the year, so that’s an average of about 663 people that visited this branch each day. And, at least in its busy times, you can really feel that. It’s bustling and vibrant, warm and welcoming, convivial and social, and incredibly kid-friendly. By 3:30pm the day I visited, every chair was occupied, and additional children dashed around tables or sat on the floor. The noise had increased — in addition to the general chatter and energy of the crowd, three infants wailed unconsolably for 20 minutes straight — and the space was more comparable to a school cafeteria than to what most people imagine a library to be.

How To Improve

The wide, single-story building was built in 1983. The library doesn’t have stats available online that date back to that time, but we can see some change in the neighborhood by looking at census data. According to the Department of City Planning, the population of Community District 14, where the Cortleyou Library is located, was 143,859 in 1980. By 2010, the population had grown by nearly 17,000 people. The library may have filled the neighborhood needs effectively in the ’80s, but the neighborhood has grown, and perhaps it’s time for the library to grow, as well.

If I were to improve the library in just one way, to accommodate the demand and the various users, I think separate, walled sections would be helpful. During my observation, several adults entered the library, looked around for a seat, observed the hectic atmosphere, and then turned around and left, perhaps to sit in one of the several coffeeshops on Cortelyou Road instead. If the spaces for children and for adults were separated, it would impact the energy and sociability of the library — I for one wouldn’t have made a new kindergartener friend, who shared facts from the non-fiction book she’d just read about glass. But it would be nice to have a dedicated, quieter space, where adults (and children) could enjoy a bit of peace. I’d add a few comfortable chairs in there, too, as all those currently in the library are firm plastic seats at tables.

Public Service

Though not exactly the “street-level bureaucrats” described by Michael Lipsky in his paper Toward a Theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy (because the Brooklyn Public Library is not run by the government, but is a nonprofit organization that receives funds from a number of sources, which does include local, state, and federal governments), Lipsky’s descriptions felt like they’d come alive here in some ways. Librarians represent a larger organization, and certainly some people who don’t know exactly where the library’s funding comes from may not distinguish the library from a government agency. And as shown above, librarians interact with citizens extensively.

“The potential impact on citizens with whom [a street-level bureaucrat] deals is fairly extensive,” Lipsky wrote. At the library, that couldn’t be more true. I saw it in action, quite positively, throughout the afternoon, as librarians and support staff assisted patrons with all sorts of requests, tirelessly fielding repeated, similar questions without irritation.

The physical and psychological threats Lipsky outlines are also a possibility at the library. There is certainly a psychic toll on everyone working, from the librarian who was trying to settle down a man who was yelling, to the security guard who reminded a girl about some of the responsibilities she has for her younger brother, to the volunteer who shelved books near the hysterical infants. And every single one of them worked with patience. It’s exhausting to be “on” like that all the time. But for the right person, like the librarian I saw at work that day, and with the right training and support, it might be easier to see it not as exhausting, but rather as rewarding.

Posted on by Mary Bakija 0

Observing the Eastchester Public Library Children’s Room

When I walked into the Eastchester Library children’s room in November, I was immediately welcomed by none other than Olaf, the snowman from Frozen. On the day of my visit, he was dressed as a turkey as part of a gratitude-themed Thanksgiving display on the inside of the opened front door (if you’re wondering, Olaf is thankful for Anna, Elsa, and warm hugs). Curious George, Yoda, Raggedy Ann, and others joined him to dance on the walls and welcome children into a space where everything is joyful, warm, and familiar. Many of the characters have been drawn or painted by the librarians themselves, whose extraordinary talents bring the characters alive.

Room by Room

Decorations like these are what make a children’s room just that: a space for children to feel at home. In fact, the three connected rooms that make up the children’s library are more residential-looking than they are institutional. The front room, through which you enter, contained the books for all the youngest readers (up to third grade) and the reference desk, as well as a small seating area near the picture books. Unfortunately, though, directly in front of me was a fireplace that stood right in the middle of the room across from the reference desk. It blocked the librarians’ view of what was happening in the seating area, which at the time included two toddlers jumping up and down on the couch. The librarian reprimanded them, but only after she was asked to do so by a concerned parent.

Through two wide doorways lay the second room, which housed nonfiction and fiction (third through fifth grade). This room also had a computer station with three computers that were blocked from the librarians’ view by a wall. The computers were unobtrusive and had no extra games or programs for the kids other than what can be accessed through the internet and ABCMouse. A quick peek at the nonfiction books revealed less than fifteen titles on technology as well. Clearly, then, digital literacy and digital information skills weren’t part of the library’s main educational focus.

The last room was a playroom containing large wooden tables, a LEGO area, and stuffed animals galore. Restricting the toys to this one space made sense for keeping the louder playing children separate from the others who wanted to read or ask questions of the librarians in the other room. The day that I visited, a cereal box stick puppet craft was held in the playroom on the big tables. The room was overcrowded and many children had to wait for others to finish before they could start on the craft. This was frustrating for the smaller children with little patience. Perhaps moving furniture, adding tables, or capping attendance would solve this problem: it would of course be better to do the former two, so as to not let the space constrain the library’s abilities to serve the community, but this may not be possible.

Suggestions for Improvement

Overall, I felt that the library’s set-up was efficient though old-fashioned in its deprioritizing of its digital aspects. Considering the great number of toddlers and elementary schoolers who use technology today, it’s important to teach them safe habits. However, this set-up does encourage stepping away from the screen, which is beneficial for children so young. My main suggestions for improving the library’s design would then be physical first: removing the fireplace in the center of the room (the librarians told me this hasn’t been done because of budget issues) and the wall blocking the librarians’ view of the computers would make it easier for the librarians to supervise what’s going on in all the different parts of the room if they’re at the reference desk.

Speaking of the reference desk, I found myself considering the movement to abolish the reference desk entirely (Luo, 2017). The desk can be seen from the hallway outside the children’s room and therefore easy to find. In the three hours of my observation, which were mostly after-school hours on a Tuesday, fifteen people came to ask questions, including one older man who was lost and needed help finding the adult history section. While I have read about this mostly in the context of academic libraries, I noticed that some of the shyer children had trouble approaching the monolithic desk to ask for help. However, it’s possible that roving reference paired with a smaller desk (as this was the main workstation for the librarians, it would be hard to eliminate altogether) may be less intimidating.

Though not perfect, I enjoyed my trip to the Eastchester Library Children’s Room in Westchester, NY. It may not have been the most modern of places, but it was clearly well loved by its patrons and I hope to return someday.

References:

Luo, Lili (2017). Models of Reference Services. In Linda C. Smith and Melinda Wong (Eds.), Reference and Information Services: An Introduction (155-178). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Posted on by Gina Elbert 0

Lorena Gauthereau Digital Dialogue: “Elaborating a (Digital) Methodology of the Oppressed in US Latina/o Digital Humanities”

In September, CUNY Graduate College hosted a livestream event featuring a lecture from Lorena Gauthereau, CLIR-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage (Recovery) at the University of Houston, that focused on colonialism’s influence on digital humanities and archives – particularly when analyzing Latinx digital humanities in the US – and ways that this influence can be deconstructed through the use of digital tools and methods. The event was held at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) as part of their Digital Dialogues series.

Throughout her lecture, Gauthereau observed that “archives have historically functioned as a tool of colonialism” and outlined the ubiquity of colonialist practices in archival institutions. In her work at Recovery, she finds that digital technology can be a way to restructure the framework in which archives have traditionally operated to give archival and custodial control back to the people whose lived experiences are supposed to be represented in an archive. While she says the definition of “digital humanities” varies (she suggests checking out What is Digital Humanities?, a humorous site that yields a different definition every time the page is refreshed), “the use of digital tools to analyze or visualize humanities projects” or “the intersection of the humanities with computers” could both be sufficient.

Gauthereau presenting at Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH).

Through the use of decolonial and postcolonial theories, Gauthereau says that we must always approach “the digital with a critical eye” in order to restructure the frameworks of digital humanities to center the lived experiences of people who are not being represented or are being misrepresented. While decolonial methods are “approaches to coloniality (the underlying colonial structures that continue to exist even today) that try to de-link from colonial epistemologies and ontologies,” postcolonial methods “look at the big picture” of colonialism and the impact it still has today. Put another way, she says, decolonial theory stems from postcolonial theory, where postcolonial theory operates on a macro-level approach to the structures of colonialism, and decolonial theory operates on a micro level.

For any information professional, constantly considering the cultural legacy of colonialism is extremely important in our work. In order to avoid appropriation, erasure, or misrepresentation, we must be sensitive to the cultural differences and lived experiences of people whose communities have been exploited by colonialism.

As Amanda Stevens writes in A Different Way of Knowing: Tools and Strategies for Managing Indigenous Knowledge, information professionals can and should make sure that managing indigenous knowledge is useful for the community itself by serving as a resource and involving people from that community in the managing process:

Although projects to preserve indigenous knowledge must be driven by indigenous communities and serve an immediate benefit to the communities, libraries and information professionals can play an important role in assisting with the management of indigenous knowledge. In partnership with these communities, institutions such as libraries, museums and universities, can provide valuable resources and expertise for collection, organization, storage and retrieval of information. In fact, some institutions are already in possession of indigenous materials that they are repatriating or trying to make accessible to indigenous communities and others are working in cooperation with indigenous communities to establish collections (Stevens, 2008, p. 27-28).

Stevens also notes that there is no one way to help manage indigenous knowledge, as specific needs and acceptable methods vary across communities (Stevens, 2008, p. 28).

This can be applied to digital archival projects as well. Gauthereau gave examples of a few projects that show how digital platforms can be used to give power back to people and serve as places of reclamation.

“Decolonial digital projects do tell stories of pain,” she says, “but above all, they can tell stories of community, celebration, and survival.” 

When discussing Latinx digital humanities online, Gauthereau encourages people to use the hashtag #USLDH.

Works cited:

  1. Stevens, A. (2008). A Different Way of Knowing: Tools and Strategies for Managing Indigenous Knowledge. Halifax, Canada: School of Information Management, Dalhousie University.
Posted on by Drew Stanley 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