by Hee Jung Lee on 2021-12-04T09:25:00-05:00 | 0 Comments
LIBRARY NEWSLETTER
Special Edition
Issue 6 ‖ October/November, 2021
Dear Readers,
In October, the William Morris Hunt Memorial library officially announced its return to the Museum's main campus building. The new home for the library will be located on the first floor of the Museum near Sharf Information Center, in front of Nina Saunders Suite. The space is now in construction.
About a quarter of the collection will move with us and be housed on the third floor of the Museum along with the book conservation space. The rest of the collection will be sent to off-site storage for ready access for the staff and the users.
Meanwhile, most of our major functions, such as book requests, research hours, acquisitions and cataloging will be temporarily out of service until the library settles in the new location. We expect the renovation to complete by February 1st, 2022.
With this announcement, we are doubling down on our relocation efforts, continuing our ongoing inventory projects in order to best prepare the collection for sending to our off-site storage and to facilitate access to the collection via our new distribution process.
This is an exciting time of transition for our community and we hope to share more updates as they come. We wish you and your family a safe Thanksgiving holiday!
Sincerely,
Hee Jung Lee,
Head Librarian and Library Staff
WEEDING PROGRESS
Starting from September, the collection analysis efforts have shifted from weeding to inventorying and records improvement in order to facilitate discovery of resources in the off-site storage environment. Barcoding and updating holdings information for catalogs are the examples of such endeavors.
So far, the collection currently housed on the 2nd floor was completely surveyed and barcoded. Over 9,000 items were given new barcodes and holdings information was updated in the library catalog for better access to these materials. These tasks involve a hands-on approach of examining each item. During this process, we are able to assess the condition of each item in a granular level to properly rehouse or conserve items, when necessary.
LIBRARY NEWS
DIVERSIFYING THE LIBRARY COLLECTION
The ongoing collection analysis has enabled us to interact with our collection in an intensely granular level, which offered an opportunity to review the collection both physically and topically. The focus of this topical review is to identify the gap in the collection to serve as an informed ground work for future acquisitions and collection cultivation.
Diversification has been a buzzword in LIS literature both in the areas of employment practices and collection management. American Library Association defines “a diverse collection should contain content by and about a wide array of people and cultures to authentically reflect a variety of ideas, information, stories, and experiences.” While diversification initiatives are critical step to institutional equity, it is also closely related to decolonization. As an ongoing process and institutional commitment, decolonization addresses and adjusts the perspectives and practices that led to the need to diversification initiatives.
In the case of the William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, the foundation of decolonization is to engage with the Museum’s historical and current role in colonization and decolonizatin and hold ourselves accountable in these activities. We might ask: How have our collections benefitted from systems of oppression? How do they continue to benefit from them? Why do we consider authorities and on which subjects? What types of knowledge creation are favored? What is our acquisition history? How might our collection policies contribute to the dominance of mainstream materials? Which communities have been underrepresented and even harmed by our policies and how?
Like decolonization, the process of accountability is also institutional commitment. To avoid what Jess Crilly, former Associate Director of Content and Discovery in the Library Services Department of the University of Arts London, refers to as the risk of decolonization “becoming a buzzword […] without in reality achieving changes”, we cannot view accountability as a process with an end date, nor a prerequisite to tangible actions. Instead, the process of accountability should accompany and inform the decolonization measures.
What do those measures look like? There are many strategies as there are communities we serve and frameworks we use. One of the action steps might be to implement inclusive vocabularies in the cataloging practices. Another might be to define what diversity means to our collections and design diversity audits for each library and/or collection. The results of such audits can inform pro-active collecting practices.
As a first step, the library recently collaborated with the newly appointed Assistant Curator of Native American Art, Marina Tyquiengco to review the collection and set the goal for resources retention, and acquisitions directions to support her research. This exciting collaborative collection development project will not only fill the gap in the library collection but also to showcase how the library can support the users to benefit the object collection and reach out to broader audiences.
[Text written by Caleb Simone, edited by Hee Jung Lee]
REFERENCES
Crilly, Jess. (2019) "Decolonizing the Library: A Theoretical Exploration", Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 4(1), p.6-19. (*Cited Quote from page 6)
DeLooze-Klein, Emma. (n.d.) "The Importance of Diversity Audits in Library Collections", Pennsylvania Library Association Bulletin.
Ciszek, Matthew P., and Courtney L. Young. (2010). "Diversity Collection Assessment in Large Academic Libraries", Collection Building, 29(4), 154-161.
White, Hollie. (2018). Decolonizing the Way Libraries Organize. [White paper]. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/2221/1/207-white-en.pdf
New Staff
In October, we welcomed an additional staff member to help our ongoing collection assessment and integration projects. John "Jack" Oldham is currently enrolled in Simmons College's School of Library and Information Science, where he is a double major in History and Archives management. His keen interest in history research, combined with coursework and internship in archives management will be an invaluable addition to our already efficient and vibrant team.
SERVICE UPDATE
As the move date approaches, the library will no longer offer research hours.
While the collection is being prepared for sorting, book requests will not be accepted. Additionally, as our staff will be severely limited to focus on the scheduled move, we will temporarily pause our acquisitions and cataloging services until the library reopens.
Please press the "Service Changes" button below for further details.
We look forward to resuming our regular service when we reopen in our new location in the Museum.
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