ARLIS/NA 38th Annual Conference – Call for Papers

Revolution and Innovation: At the Hub of Discovery

The ARLIS/NA 38th Annual Conference in Boston, MA (April 23-26, 2010) will explore revolution and innovation within art librarianship and visual resources librarianship as new technologies, economic changes and other factors transform our profession. Rapid change creates opportunities to embrace new ways of exploring the issues librarians face daily. How have you responded to the changes in the information landscape? What innovative methods have you developed to resolve the problems that have arisen from all these new developments? How have collaborations amongst colleagues, peers, institutions and more changed how you work?

Individuals are invited to submit proposals for papers that provoke critical exchange and debate as well as practical advice and solutions in relation to the broad thematic areas referred to below. Submissions are encouraged that support opportunities for interaction between participants and enable the conference to engage in a truly interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and viewpoints.

Individuals wishing to contribute paper abstract proposals for the ARLIS/NA 38th Annual Conference must submit a 250 word abstract for review by the Conference Program Committee. All abstracts must be submitted electronically using the online form available below.

The abstract submission deadline is July 24, 2009. Abstracts received after the submission deadline will automatically be placed on the waiting list

Please see below for complete abstract guidelines. Incomplete abstracts will not be reviewed.

Thematic Areas

The following themes have been identified as the main interests of conference attendees from the conference evaluation and planning surveys. The themes are purposefully broad. The questions have been written to prompt and suggest possible platforms for discussion and debate. The Program Committee welcomes responses that extend and develop these themes in areas that will engage attendees in sharing different perspectives and provoke speculation about the future direction and development of art librarianship in the twenty first century.

Future of Art and Visual Resources Librarianship

o As academic institutions look to cut their budgets, will art/architecture/visual resources libraries become merged with main libraries? Is this an opportunity?
o Digital libraries and repositories will begin taking advantage of full text searchability. Where do catalogers fit into this new view of access?
o Considering today’s tight budgets, how much metadata is enough when working with less support?
o How do you increase your visibility on campus? What novel ways do you advocate for your library’s services?
o How have you developed grant proposals for projects in your library? What were the challenges and what surprised you?
o How do you satisfy customers in an increasingly 24/7 instant access world? What do you do differently?
o Going beyond statistics, how do you know that you are providing patrons with the services and resources that they want? What are some inventive and successful measures that your library has taken to determine patron satisfaction?
o Do corporate or business customer service practices such as “secret shoppers” have a place in libraries? Have any libraries used any of these methods successfully?

Collection Development

o In light of the current economic climate, what strategies have you developed to provide quality resources for your community?
o How do we provide access to information and ideas that are being created in technologies that have not been traditionally supported by libraries? How do we preserve that knowledge?
o Is this an opportunity for collaborative collection development? Why or why not will collaborative collection development take root?
o How do libraries balance fulfilling the patron’s desire for digital content with the realities of the heavily print nature of art, architecture and design publishing?

Emerging Technologies

o How have you successfully created solutions using emerging technologies such as open source programs, mobile technologies, mashups and more?
o Taking advantage of new technologies, what unique projects have you successfully collaborated on with your colleagues (library, IT, etc.)?

Reference and Instruction

o With reduced staffing, who should be answering questions at the reference desk?
o What are some strategies being employed by libraries to provide reference and instruction to distance students/faculty?
o How have libraries developed instruction that integrates into the studio culture?
o How are information and visual literacy programs being successfully integrated into curricula?

Visual Resources

o The value of visual resources libraries is being questioned in some institutions. What are the strategies that can be employed to educate institutions and administrators about the value of such collections? How do you promote these collections to faculty and students who prefer Flickr databases and web searching?
o Are there new paradigms for the building of and access to visual collections that we should be moving towards?

Please submit your abstract by following this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yzQS2txK78auP5kfgmiIjQ_3d_3d.

Abstract guidelines can be found in the online submission form.

If you have any questions, please contact the Program Co-Chairs: Jennifer Friedman, MIT (jrfried@mit.edu) and Ann Whiteside, MIT (awhites@mit.edu).