Information Access in the Humanities

1
Information Access in the Humanities

• Selected Information Access Issues for Visual
  Materials

2
Jeanette C. MillsDirector of Visual Services,
UW School of Art

• Slide Library
• Media Center

3
A researchers perspective
4
Masters thesis Anthropology

• Changing fashion the adoption of Euro-American
  clothing by Northwest Coast Indians
• Thesis for a masters degree in Anthropology
  specializing in Museology (Museum Studies)
• Completed in 1987

5
Historical photographs

• These are important visual materials for research
  but how do you access them?

6
Where to begin?

• Pacific Northwest Collection
• Part of Special Collections in UW Libraries
• Searched Native American image collection
• Microfilmed images allowed for quicker searching
  but image quality was not the best.
• The collection was indexed by tribe and subject,
  but had to search broadly to find what I wanted.

7
How librarians helped

• Told me about a few finding aids for images, e.g.
  Oregon Historical Societys Union Guide to
  Photograph Collections in the Pacific Northwest.
• Also helped by suggesting numerous textual
  materials.

8
Other ways of obtaining resources

• Visited several regional collections in Alaska,
  British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon because
  remote access was not possible.

9
Now we have the Web

• Projects like the American Indians of the Pacific
  Northwest Digital Collection make visual
  resources more accessible.(http//content.lib.was
  hington.edu/aipnw/index.html)

10
Masters thesis Art History

• Land claim art Joe David and his support of
  Meares Island Tribal Park
• Completed in 1990

11
Contemporary art

• Where does one find images of a living artists
  work?

12
Where to begin?

• Searched library catalogs and periodical indexes
  for materials that might include images. This
  included the clipping files and regional index in
  Special Collections.
• Not much was available in the Slide Library.
• Also researched historical precedents for his
  work by looking at historical photos.

13
Other tactics

• Went to some collectors, galleries, and museums
  sometimes was allowed to photograph artworks
  myself.
• Went to the artist, but he kept little or no
  record of his work.

14
Now we have the Web

• The Web provides only a little additional help
  for research on contemporary artists.
• Found just two sites with images directly related
  to this artist

www.douglasreynoldsgallery.com/david.htm
www.stoningtongallery.com/artists/david.htm
15
An image providers perspective
16
Art Slide Library

• Background and statistics

17
Staffing

• 2 full-time staff (director and curator)
• 1 to 1.5 FTE student/volunteer staff

18
The collection

• 300,000 35mm slides
• School of Art collection, not part of UW
  libraries.
• Intended as a resource for UW-related teaching
  and presentations.
• Also house a small reference book collection
  intended primarily for use by staff.

19
Organization

• Natural language, hierarchical system (no catalog
  numbers).
• Western art hierarchy is generally media,
  century, country, artist.
• Asian breakdown is by media, period/dynasty,
  artist.
• Tribal hierarchies are usually geographic regions
  followed by groups.

20
Catalog records

• Records are housed in a FilemakerPro database,
  based on the original home-grown FoxPro database
  started in 1989.
• Database contains records for less than half the
  collection.

21
Catalog records

• Working on a linked artist authority database,
  which will include information from an artist
  authority card file (our major finding aid).
• No keyword or subject indexing.
• No public access terminal at this point.

22
Users

• Primary users are School of Art faculty and
  students.
• The School of Art has 11 academic programs in
  art, art history, and design.
• Also serve faculty and students from around
  campus, although we discourage widespread use by
  undergraduates due to space and staff
  limitations.
• Not open to the public.

23
Circulation

• Faculty from outside the School of Art and all
  students may borrow slides for 24 hours.
• We re-file 80,000 to 100,000 slides each year.

24
Art Slide Library

• Reference services for staff and users

25
Staff reference

• Use reference sources regularly when cataloging.
• Primarily use the resource links found on the
  staff intranet homepage.
• Also use books in our reference collection.
• Sometimes will search the web or use other web
  resources, for example Toppenish Murals
  (http//www.wolfenet.com/murals).

26
User reference

• Before autumn quarter begins, we do at least two
  group orientations where we provide handouts
• new MFA students
• new Art History graduate students
• As needed, other users are given an orientation
  to the collection.

27
User reference the easier questions

• How to pronounce something correctly or the
  meaning of a term
• Dates for an artist
• Where to find something in the collection that
  doesnt fit standard media categories
• Attributes of a saint or some biblical text to
  understand context of a painting , e.g. new Bible
  concordance (http//www.biblestudytools.net)

28
User reference difficult questions

• Audience-specific requests a K-12 teacher who
  needs images
• Non-specific questions an author who needs an
  image appropriate for a book cover must include
  humans and animals in landscape
• User knows subject but not title or creator
  famous Vietnam War era photo of man being shot in
  the head

29
Special problems

• Title variations, e.g. English vs. original
  language, made-up titles
• Artist name variations, e.g. El Greco vs.
  Theotocopoulos and Master of Flemalle vs. Robert
  Campin
• Unique classification systems for some areas such
  as Early Christian/Byzantine art

30
Problem-solving

• Once again, rely on resources homepage and books
  in our office.
• Search the slide database.
• Sometimes must simply rely on the knowledge in
  our own heads.

31
Art Slide Library

• Resources and handouts
• http//students.washington.edu/cmikkel/541/Visual
  Arts.htm