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The community building opportunities of collective report writing in a pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2022

Abi Sweeney  and
Margot McIlwain Nishimura
Abi Sweeney
Affiliation:
Librarian - Serials and Reserves Godine Library Massachusetts College of Art + Design 621 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 USA Email: [email protected]
Margot McIlwain Nishimura
Affiliation:
Dean of Libraries Fleet Library Rhode Island School of Design 2 College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Art and Design School Libraries (ADSL) Division of ARLIS/NA was tasked with preparing a report on the state of ADSLs across North America. The report team offered preliminary results at the ADSL Division Annual Meeting in May 2021. At the ARLIS/UK & Ireland conference in July 2021, they described Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) activities in ADSLs and some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sector. Feedback from both events was incorporated into the report, which is now complete and available on the “Publications” page of the ARLIS/NA website. This article, in addition to summarizing some of the findings, discusses the collaborative process of writing and editing the report and the importance of this process as a model for advancing other essential work in this field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 40 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of ARLIS

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References

1. The work on the report proceeded as a team effort from start to finish. The team included the authors of this article and Emily Coxe (Rhode Island School of Design), Emily Decker-Bess, (Savannah College of Art & Design), Annemarie Haar (California College of the Arts), Grace Kim (Touro University Nevada), and Alex O'Keefe (School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

2. Correspondence about membership with ARLIS/NA Deputy Executive Director, March 23, 2021.

3. https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:44792/datastreams/CONTENT/content

4. In the survey, we posed a limited number of questions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on art and design school libraries, largely because ARLIS/NA was conducting at the same time a more thorough research on this topic via the Task Force on Art Libraries’ Response to COVID-19; we recommend readers look for the report from this task force on the ARLIS/NA website.

We asked about closures at the time the survey was distributed in January 2021: Seventeen of thirty libraries were then open to patrons, but with restrictions in place that shortened their hours or required appointments for access. Ten were closed to patrons but had employees on site, and two reported being completely closed with no library workers on site whatsoever. The majority were offering some form of pickup service for library materials.

5. We recognize that others may use different terms when referring to the work of dismantling systemic racism on our campuses and in our communities; we found that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was used predominantly in the schools we surveyed.

6. American Library Association, Office for Research and Statistics. “Comparison of ALA Members to National Count of Librarians by Age Category,” 2014. https://www.ala.org/tools/sites/ala.org.tools/files/content/initiatives/membershipsurveys/CountLibrariansbyAge9-2014.pdf.

7. The latest edition of the Handbook for Art and Design Librarianship covers issues common to art libraries of many kinds, but only eight of 38 contributors were employed by art and design school libraries at the time of publication. Dyki, Judy and Glassman, Paul, ed. The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship. Second edition (London: Facet Publishing, 2017), XIII-XVGoogle Scholar.

8. The AICAD negotiated pricing for its membership, for example, remains steady at a five percent discount for seven or so popular resources (e.g., Art Full Text, Avery Index, Science Full Text).