Moderator: Kaia Stavig Esau
Recorder: Anne Haas Shankland
Kaia called the meeting to order at 11:35 a.m. First on the agenda was a call for volunteers for co-moderator for the upcoming year, and for an Update column editor. Liv Valmestad, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, will be co-moderator, and Melissa Becher, American University, Washington, DC, will be column editor. Discussion of proposals for the Philadelphia Conference in 1998 followed. Barbara Prior, Cornell University, asked RISS to co-sponsor a pre-conference workshop with the Academic Division, focusing on print resources. Half of the workshop will deal with art and architecture sources, and half on general sources which reference librarians find useful for the many interdisciplinary questions that are dealt with in the art library. Initial discussion seemed to set the site for this workshop at the Philadelphia Free Library. Barbara Prior will submit the proposal and Anne Shankland will co-write and help find panelists. Comments were solicited and made by Peter Blank, Max Marmor and Sheila Klos, among others. Stephanie Sigala suggested that some of these sessions might even be turned into articles for ArtDoc, and in some cases might just be articles and not sessions at all. Members agreed that a document should be produced from this workshop that would list the print sources which will be showcased. Another session proposal which was initiated in the Academic Division meeting was that of the tenuous position of many subject specialists in an increasingly lean staff. There was interest in putting together a session on the library liaison, subject specialist, and on the maintenance of those specialists by proving their invaluable contribution. There seemed to be some sense that no one ever questions the importance of the science specialist, but that those in the arts are somehow deemed to be less critical to the research process. Laura Schwartz, UT-Austin will help Susan Craig, University of Kansas write up this proposal. Bob Kaufmann and Linda Seckelson, Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art asked if RISS would be interested in co-sponsoring with the Decorative Arts Round Table a session on access to auction catalogs and related materials and databases; how to deal with gallery owners, appraisers, access to e-journals, and the business end of art, as these queries are increasingly put to art librarians in libraries that have expensive access to these databases. There was a suggestion that an appraiser be a speaker on this panel. Stephanie Moye, National Museum of American Art will work with Bob Kaufmann and Linda Seckelson of the Decorative Arts Round Table to write up this proposal. Mary Graham spoke briefly to the section about her role as liaison to the board and as web site director, and her hope that members would feel free to contact her about any issues of interest to the membership.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:00 pm.
Anne Haas Shankland
Bowdoin College
ashankla@polar.Bowdoin.EDU