Learning from art libraries

Joye Volke and Jennifer Coombes (a librarian and an archivist) talked about Creating visibility : archives, ephemera and oral history at the National Gallery of Australia.

They are a participant in the Dictionary of Australian artists online. They are also contributors to Prints and print making Australia Asia and Pacific.

Joye and Jennifer talked of the difficulty of providing access to detailed personal archives containing letters, papers, photographs, sketches…There is a challenge to create more visibility for these collections and a start is a more detailed catalogue entry. As well the NGA has started cataloguing their ephemera onto Libraries Australia as well there is a pdf listing of collections which NGA holds ephemera.

They have made some oral histories available online and have been contacting people and their descendants for permission and will add more over time.

Ellen Thompson and Kelly McKeon talked about M is for meeting places which is about how the Art Library Society of Australia and New Zealand (which has about 120 members and a mix of specials and academic) to meet online. They wanted to harness the power of the crowd of the members using the idea of an online clubhouse – using web 2.0 tools. The ARLIS web site allows multiple levels of user access and it built in drupal. They plan for the site to be in perpetual beta.