Elaine Paul put a wonderful postcard picture of the Hotel Sherman in Chicago on a Facebook page (yes, that page). I was teasing back and forth with her about that picture and other things and mentioned the Shermaniana exhibition in the Amon Carter Museum Library when I worked there.
The library reading room had a vitrine or two in which we usually displayed some books or other objects that related to one or more of the exhibitions in the galleries. They were usually pretty high class. As the display was getting stale or the shows were changing in the galleries, Milan Hughston would engage us in a discussion of what should be next. If the discussion wasn't going much of anywhere, I'd volunteer an exhibition of Shermaniana. Milan would giggle and say something along the lines of "I don't think so."
One year (1994, I think), it was mid-late March when we were having the "next?" conversation. I offered the Shermaniana again. Milan laughed. A bit later, I chatted with some colleagues and said we could do it as an April Fool's gift for Milan. On the morning of the first, we traded out whatever had been there and put in the Shermaniana. We waited for Milan's arrival, all but giggling out loud. We were doing the normal morning ritual of coffee and New York Times. Milan got up to go over toward the reading room desk and then started veering toward the vitrine with a "what's this?"
Well, it turns out that Milan loved the Shermaniana show and led several museum staff members over to see it. I had thoughtfully included a few items from Sherman, Texas. After its week's run and the show had been dismantled, we realized that we forgot to photographically document it. Perhaps when I get thoroughly modern and have a digital camera, I will take some pictures of the stuff and recreate it in the digital world.
And that reminds me of the virtual recreation of the Otto Ege manuscripts, one of the highlights of the Banff ARLIS/NA conference for me. http://library2.usask.ca/ege/ During the panel on the Ege reconstruction, I gasped as I saw another leaf from one of "my" books. Manuscript leaves were cheap when I was in grad school; most of my leaves were in the $15 range, some a bit less, none a whole lot more. No gilding, only one face, but lots of lovely writing and some exquisite red-and-blue linear marginalia.
13 April 2008
10 April 2008
small worlds colliding softly
It's such a small world except when it's not. I recently finished reading Dr. Kimball & Mr. Jefferson about Fiske Kimball who wrote a lot on Thomas Jefferson and other early American architects, as well as serving as director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kimball is also the name behind the art library at UVa.
At a lecture last week by John Harris on the destruction of the English country house, Harris talked about Kimball and his acquisition of rooms from country homes as the houses were dismantled in the decades before and after 1900. Now, at the Morgan when I went to grab backlog books to catalog, one of the items was Triumph on Fairmount: Fiske Kimball and the Philadelphia Museum of Art by George and Mary Roberts (Lippincott, 1959) with a clipping inside. The clipping is an editorial by A.F. (probably Alfred Frankfurter from Art news, about 1955) extolling Kimball and entitled "The model of a modern museum director." It ends: "American museums need uncompromising, dictatorial, passionate lovers of art as never before." Hmm.
On the back of the leaf is a page of small reproductions of paintings with horses in them, including Parmigianino's wonderful "St. Paul" which I saw at the Kunsthistorischesmuseum in Vienna a couple years ago. And at the reference desk yesterday, Colin Eisler extolled the virtues of Bobst Library which when he started at NYU (50 years ago) was quite pitiful. I guess the connection of all that is Sharon Chickanzeff, great friend, admirer of Eisler, fellow traveler to Venice, lover of ponies, gifter of scarf before Viennese trip.
At a lecture last week by John Harris on the destruction of the English country house, Harris talked about Kimball and his acquisition of rooms from country homes as the houses were dismantled in the decades before and after 1900. Now, at the Morgan when I went to grab backlog books to catalog, one of the items was Triumph on Fairmount: Fiske Kimball and the Philadelphia Museum of Art by George and Mary Roberts (Lippincott, 1959) with a clipping inside. The clipping is an editorial by A.F. (probably Alfred Frankfurter from Art news, about 1955) extolling Kimball and entitled "The model of a modern museum director." It ends: "American museums need uncompromising, dictatorial, passionate lovers of art as never before." Hmm.
On the back of the leaf is a page of small reproductions of paintings with horses in them, including Parmigianino's wonderful "St. Paul" which I saw at the Kunsthistorischesmuseum in Vienna a couple years ago. And at the reference desk yesterday, Colin Eisler extolled the virtues of Bobst Library which when he started at NYU (50 years ago) was quite pitiful. I guess the connection of all that is Sharon Chickanzeff, great friend, admirer of Eisler, fellow traveler to Venice, lover of ponies, gifter of scarf before Viennese trip.
07 April 2008
Muhheakantuck
The artist talk at Artists Space on Saturday afternoon -- "Mirror-Travel in the Motor City: A Conversation between Edgar Arceneaux and Julian Myers" -- looked rather interesting but wasn't so great. I had hoped for some compelling talk about Detroit as an art site with memories of the day-trip Christie and I took when she lived in Ann Arbor. The talk ended up being lots of Myers and not much of Arceneaux, not even much of Detroit. On the other hand, the Google Earth projection of the route between Heizer's desert project and the corner of Rosa Parks and Clairmont was pretty wonderful and played in the background during the talk. As the talk drew to a close at about 7:43 (the clock timer), I raced out and over to the Christopher Street pier for the 8 pm viewing of "Muhheakantuck: everything has a name" by Matthew Buckingham, sponsored by Creative Time. Watching the film as we went on a loop from the pier over toward Red Hook and back was incredible. The film slots had sold out but the Creative Time folks said that one should show up and they'd try to accommodate everyone. I was about the last person on the 8 pm boat but I am so glad I went. As the film went left to right at the front of the cabin, the waterfronts (NJ and NYC) went front to back. It was mesmerizing, aided by the pleasant drone of Buckingham's narrative about the Lenape and the Europeans. At the moment, Murray Guy -- http://murrayguy.com/ -- has a Buckingham show up.
A footnote or two from the Sunday paper:
* The special magazine section was on real estate. The cover had an aerial view of an exploded house construction process. There's an ampersand on the truck in the lower left, just a plain ampersand. The power of Helvetica and advertising: I see Crate & Barrel.
* Speaking of advertising, there's been a series of small ads with an old VW and some speech-bubble along the lines of "The people want peace and justice." That's not really one of them. One day, there was a bigger ad that VW was going to bring us a new revolution. No details but it all seemed pretty groovy.
* "Americans drink more bottled water than beer. But they consume more soda than bottled water and beer combined. And nearly 70 percent of that soda contains sugar in one form or another." No, tap water's fine. Thanks.
A footnote or two from the Sunday paper:
* The special magazine section was on real estate. The cover had an aerial view of an exploded house construction process. There's an ampersand on the truck in the lower left, just a plain ampersand. The power of Helvetica and advertising: I see Crate & Barrel.
* Speaking of advertising, there's been a series of small ads with an old VW and some speech-bubble along the lines of "The people want peace and justice." That's not really one of them. One day, there was a bigger ad that VW was going to bring us a new revolution. No details but it all seemed pretty groovy.
* "Americans drink more bottled water than beer. But they consume more soda than bottled water and beer combined. And nearly 70 percent of that soda contains sugar in one form or another." No, tap water's fine. Thanks.
04 April 2008
missing transactions
52 Transactions by Kathy Slade - $20
Published by Trapp Editions/Sigurdardottir, in conjunction with Slade's year-long performance, "Fifty-Two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library." From September 7, 2006, to August 30, 2007, Slade borrowed one book per week from the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. The transaction receipts have been compiled into an artists' book, representing one year of the artist's reading. As the book's endnotes explain, 1 transaction slip is missing due to a computer malfunction, and 6 more are missing due to a civic strike, resulting in 7 blank pages. Edition of 500.
--from an Art Metropole emailing of available "Lost & Found: Art addressing absence and discovery" http://artmetropole.com/
Published by Trapp Editions/Sigurdardottir, in conjunction with Slade's year-long performance, "Fifty-Two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library." From September 7, 2006, to August 30, 2007, Slade borrowed one book per week from the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. The transaction receipts have been compiled into an artists' book, representing one year of the artist's reading. As the book's endnotes explain, 1 transaction slip is missing due to a computer malfunction, and 6 more are missing due to a civic strike, resulting in 7 blank pages. Edition of 500.
--from an Art Metropole emailing of available "Lost & Found: Art addressing absence and discovery" http://artmetropole.com/
03 April 2008
immediate gratification
In the Times a couple days ago, there was a column by David Carr on "The media equation." He started with his visit to the Times Square Virgin Megastore where the old people were looking at CDs and the younger people were at the listening posts. And only three people were in the book section "including the old guy with the long coat and beard who seems to be in every bookstore." (He saw me?) Carr talks about the ease and customization of downloading a music file and how folks said MP3 files would be rejected because they weren't very high fidelity. Well, it turned out that "good enough was good enough." And there are the same thoughts about books. Carr doesn't mention it but I drifted off to thoughts of using Power Point to put together your art history lecture. It's so easy and the pictures aren't going to be like the originals anyway so why pretend?
Carr quotes Clay Shirky quite a bit because Shirky just brought out a new book entitled Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations. Of course there's something ironic about a thinker like Shirky publishing a tangible book-length print resource. By the way, Strand had three review copies last week ... though only two by the time I left the store. My little bit of "I want it now" even though I'm reading Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson at the moment. At last night's lecture by John Harris on "The destruction of the country house," he mentioned Fiske Kimball's purchase of rooms for the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1920s, some of which were later discovered to be composite fabrications.
Shirky's Everybody = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody
29 March 2008
sat(isfi)ed
Sometimes you go gallery hopping to a couple dozen galleries and you're still a tad hungry. You may have had some good morsels but you need some vegetables to pull it all together. And then there are the days when you visit a couple galleries and, wow, you're just beautifully sated. Today has been the latter.
Mac had mentioned the "Male" show at White Columns with works from the collection of Vince Aletti. The works were interesting (some for very obvious reasons) and the display was wonderful: in clusters on the various walls, some partially in front of others, some attached to the wall, some resting on a picture rail at waist level. A couple busy panels of small photos, art and/or just plain porny, were in the wall cases near the door.
Though I liked "Male" for the predictable reasons, two of the other shows were also interesting to say nothing of the folks gathered for the book launch of Theft is vision by Bob Nickas. One of the smaller galleries had a collection of "Recent acquisitions, gifts, and works from various exhibitions 1985-2007" from the collection, etc. of Bob Nickas. The installation was complementary to the style of "Male."
The next room had about a dozen photos by Janice Guy. I know her way better as one of the owners of Murray Guy Gallery, one of my favorite art spaces and programs. The photos were done in 1979 and feature the artist looking at her naked self through the lens: revealing and concealing.
I didn't have a lot of gallery time today so I thought I'd stop by Tracy Williams and then come on back home. I get the flyers from Williams but couldn't remember what the show was. I missed the Barbara Bloom show which I'm sure was splendid. The recent catalog of The Barbara Bloom Collection is magnificent and compelling. Now at Tracy Williams is Anna Craycroft's "The Agency of the Orphan." Downstairs is a collection of movie star stills, real and imagined, with Craycroft captions. Upstairs is a gallery with two fountains with child heads spewing water and a gallery of large drawings with a short table and chairs at which you can peruse the catalog. Craycroft investigates the idea of orphan and Orphan, identity in the face of social interaction, etc.
So now I'll go home and try to finish the newsletter or at least the parts that I can do. Then in a few hours I'll go to Spaced gallery to gather with others in memory of Judith Holliday who died in February. One of the great collection developers and bibliographers, though I do recognize it was a true copacetic attachment that we both had to architecture, Ungers, Italy, Rowe, Italian, joy.
And then Carnegie Hall for the Thomas Ades edition of "Making music."
I've been thinking a lot recently about moving toward retirement, mostly because work has just been too much of a drag lately. The dysfunction in the office is rampant in so many ways. At the same time, there have been several new challenges on the professional side: SEI Advisory Group, Joint LC/PCC LRCI/RDA Task Group, SEI instructor, VR cataloging at ARTstor. I imagine I could live happily anywhere, including Alfred, the small college town in upstate New York where the 130-year old family home is. Still, it's days like today with a couple galleries under my belt to great satisfaction (plus a nice little visit to Three Lives & Company bookstore where I found a newly published for the first time early work of Tom Spanbauer, an author I really enjoy) that makes me realize one has to find your way. New York City may drop more of it in your lap or under your feet but I do think I could find my way most anywhere.
Mac had mentioned the "Male" show at White Columns with works from the collection of Vince Aletti. The works were interesting (some for very obvious reasons) and the display was wonderful: in clusters on the various walls, some partially in front of others, some attached to the wall, some resting on a picture rail at waist level. A couple busy panels of small photos, art and/or just plain porny, were in the wall cases near the door.
Though I liked "Male" for the predictable reasons, two of the other shows were also interesting to say nothing of the folks gathered for the book launch of Theft is vision by Bob Nickas. One of the smaller galleries had a collection of "Recent acquisitions, gifts, and works from various exhibitions 1985-2007" from the collection, etc. of Bob Nickas. The installation was complementary to the style of "Male."
The next room had about a dozen photos by Janice Guy. I know her way better as one of the owners of Murray Guy Gallery, one of my favorite art spaces and programs. The photos were done in 1979 and feature the artist looking at her naked self through the lens: revealing and concealing.
I didn't have a lot of gallery time today so I thought I'd stop by Tracy Williams and then come on back home. I get the flyers from Williams but couldn't remember what the show was. I missed the Barbara Bloom show which I'm sure was splendid. The recent catalog of The Barbara Bloom Collection is magnificent and compelling. Now at Tracy Williams is Anna Craycroft's "The Agency of the Orphan." Downstairs is a collection of movie star stills, real and imagined, with Craycroft captions. Upstairs is a gallery with two fountains with child heads spewing water and a gallery of large drawings with a short table and chairs at which you can peruse the catalog. Craycroft investigates the idea of orphan and Orphan, identity in the face of social interaction, etc.
So now I'll go home and try to finish the newsletter or at least the parts that I can do. Then in a few hours I'll go to Spaced gallery to gather with others in memory of Judith Holliday who died in February. One of the great collection developers and bibliographers, though I do recognize it was a true copacetic attachment that we both had to architecture, Ungers, Italy, Rowe, Italian, joy.
And then Carnegie Hall for the Thomas Ades edition of "Making music."
I've been thinking a lot recently about moving toward retirement, mostly because work has just been too much of a drag lately. The dysfunction in the office is rampant in so many ways. At the same time, there have been several new challenges on the professional side: SEI Advisory Group, Joint LC/PCC LRCI/RDA Task Group, SEI instructor, VR cataloging at ARTstor. I imagine I could live happily anywhere, including Alfred, the small college town in upstate New York where the 130-year old family home is. Still, it's days like today with a couple galleries under my belt to great satisfaction (plus a nice little visit to Three Lives & Company bookstore where I found a newly published for the first time early work of Tom Spanbauer, an author I really enjoy) that makes me realize one has to find your way. New York City may drop more of it in your lap or under your feet but I do think I could find my way most anywhere.
24 March 2008
Martha Wilson at Mitchell Algus
Quite a bit of good viewing in the galleries on Saturday but perhaps the best and most surprising was the Martha Wilson show at Mitchell Algus Gallery on West 25th Street. As usual, Mitchell has dug up some interesting art and displays it well, simply but well. The show is of her "Photo/Text Works, 1971-74." Mitchell had to remind me that she was a founder of Franklin Furnace, the great artist book and publication shop. These are so evocative of so much contemporary and later identity work. I especially liked the decorative-arts switch piece in which the plain woman is in the fancy frame and the dressed-to-the-nines woman is in the plain frame. Bits of narrative on a bunch of the pieces.
Among the other shows I visited: Matthew Buckingham, at Murray Guy (one film with text in French on Le Prince and early moving-image camera; other text and image video on Charlotte Wolff, psychologist and writer on homosexuality); Marc Swanson: the Saint at large, at Bellwether Gallery (yes, as in the disco but the connection is pretty postmodern); Marcel Dzama, at Zwirner (yes, the piano music in the video installation was live); Subodh Gupta's "1 KG war" (a kilo of gold with "war" engraved), at Jack Shainman; Robert Gober, at Matthew Marks (in the small gallery on 21st and the smaller gallery on 22nd); Meg Webster, at Paula Cooper on 23rd Street (just five or six works but powerful); Guerra de la Paz, at Daneyal Mahmood (I really like their work though this wasn't my favorite example, and it closed on Saturday).
Among the other shows I visited: Matthew Buckingham, at Murray Guy (one film with text in French on Le Prince and early moving-image camera; other text and image video on Charlotte Wolff, psychologist and writer on homosexuality); Marc Swanson: the Saint at large, at Bellwether Gallery (yes, as in the disco but the connection is pretty postmodern); Marcel Dzama, at Zwirner (yes, the piano music in the video installation was live); Subodh Gupta's "1 KG war" (a kilo of gold with "war" engraved), at Jack Shainman; Robert Gober, at Matthew Marks (in the small gallery on 21st and the smaller gallery on 22nd); Meg Webster, at Paula Cooper on 23rd Street (just five or six works but powerful); Guerra de la Paz, at Daneyal Mahmood (I really like their work though this wasn't my favorite example, and it closed on Saturday).
11 March 2008
weird, bumpy hillocks
I should be looking out the window because I'm sitting in the Phoenix airport on my way to San Diego for the VRA conference. I borrowed a staff MacBook so I can maybe keep up with email while I'm away. My Macintosh Performa at home still struggles on (I refuse to say soldier on, as the Times seems to say a lot) and I haven't fully decided whether to go lap- or desktop though the idea of laptop is certainly attractive.
So what's outside the window? The Phoenix Skyharbor Airport is quite close to downtown. You can see several downtown skyscrapers but you can also see some red hillocks that look rather than those drip sandcastles that are such fun to make when the sand is fine. For some reason, my Orbitz reservation didn't include seat assignments so I was in a middle seat. The guy next to me kept the shade up and was mostly out of the way but I certainly couldn't study the landscape as I usually would. My flight home is red-eye so that will be minimal too.
Still, those bumpy hillocks are of that wonderful red stone that doesn't show up so much in New York State. At least the dry variety doesn't. My favorite red rock venue is still Caprock Canyons which I visited totally unawares on my way between Amarillo and Fort Worth. I was there mostly alone and not worried about scorpions or rattlesnakes. The sky was bright and clear, the temperature was gentle. The canyons are at the break between the high and low plains. You're just driving along on the flats and, all of a sudden, the land drops a thousand feet or something. It's really incredible. That was just part of a wonderful trip overall: coming home from SAH in Albuquerque; stayed overnight in Canyon and visited the museum there, then Palo Duro Canyon, then did a stair pattern from county seat to county seat. Just me and my little gray-violet Isuzu pickup. It was pretty splendid.
But back to Phoenix ... as we came in toward the airport, I was reading The Middle Sea and looking over the shoulder of my neighbor out the window. Once when I looked up, there was that wonderful view of the city all stretching stretching and then these incredible mountains rising out of nowhere. Nature is so weird.
So what's outside the window? The Phoenix Skyharbor Airport is quite close to downtown. You can see several downtown skyscrapers but you can also see some red hillocks that look rather than those drip sandcastles that are such fun to make when the sand is fine. For some reason, my Orbitz reservation didn't include seat assignments so I was in a middle seat. The guy next to me kept the shade up and was mostly out of the way but I certainly couldn't study the landscape as I usually would. My flight home is red-eye so that will be minimal too.
Still, those bumpy hillocks are of that wonderful red stone that doesn't show up so much in New York State. At least the dry variety doesn't. My favorite red rock venue is still Caprock Canyons which I visited totally unawares on my way between Amarillo and Fort Worth. I was there mostly alone and not worried about scorpions or rattlesnakes. The sky was bright and clear, the temperature was gentle. The canyons are at the break between the high and low plains. You're just driving along on the flats and, all of a sudden, the land drops a thousand feet or something. It's really incredible. That was just part of a wonderful trip overall: coming home from SAH in Albuquerque; stayed overnight in Canyon and visited the museum there, then Palo Duro Canyon, then did a stair pattern from county seat to county seat. Just me and my little gray-violet Isuzu pickup. It was pretty splendid.
But back to Phoenix ... as we came in toward the airport, I was reading The Middle Sea and looking over the shoulder of my neighbor out the window. Once when I looked up, there was that wonderful view of the city all stretching stretching and then these incredible mountains rising out of nowhere. Nature is so weird.
08 March 2008
Judith Holliday
I just signed on to gmail and as I glanced at the inbox, there was a notice that Judith Holliday's birthday is coming up. Well, this year, it will be bittersweet because Judith died last month. I had known Judith since the late 1960s when I was at Cornell, doing my alternative service. It was folks like her and Chris Huemer and Pat Sullivan that helped me realize that the art historical course (BA to MA to PhD) that I was on was not my natural course.
I returned to grad school in 1971 and we (Dorothy and I) took a trip back to Ithaca to see family and friends there. Probably spring break in 1973. We got back to Cleveland and there was a party/reception for a candidate for a position in the art history department. The competition and whatnot at the party stood in such contrast to the library folks that we'd talked to in Ithaca. I can't remember if we saw Judith on that particular trip, but I do know that I went to the library school the very next day and started the application process. I started library school as I finished my art history master's.
A year later, having finished my M.A. and well along in my M.S. in L.S., I accepted a job at the University of Pittsburgh. The Frick Fine Arts Library there is in a 1960s Italianate palazzo. Almost six years later, the job of art cataloger was open at Cornell since Pat Sullivan had moved over to the Fine Arts Library to be assistant librarian under Judith. It was wonderful to be back with Judith and Pat and in Ithaca.
Judith had lived in Rome for a while and really worked with me on my Italian pronunciation. It must have been hard on her when I'd pronounce Chigi as "chee gie" (soft ch, hard g) when it should be the other way around. With her help and several trips to Italy, I can usually say an Italian word pretty well these days. Now if I could just put a sentence together.
Judith was a consummate bibliographer, particularly in architecture. The 1980s were a time of interesting ferment in architectural output and criticism. Ungers and Rowe were at Cornell. Judith and I had many conversations about architecture, and looked at lots of books together. While I've never had a job as selector, I really enjoyed telling Judith about little treasures I discovered one place or another.
One of my favorite Judith stories is, however, during an ARLIS/NA conference, 1978 I think, in New York City. There was a panel of art book publishers. During the question period, Judith asked the Abrams guy why they didn't put the dates in books. He replied something about not wanting the book to seem stale on the bookstore table or coffee table when you gave it to someone as a Christmas gift. He didn't realize how much trouble it made for librarians and folks trying to cite the item. Soon thereafter, Abrams started putting the date on the verso of the title page and they still do it, even though they've been bought and sold a couple times (at least) since then.
So here's to Judith on what would have been her 70th birthday!
I returned to grad school in 1971 and we (Dorothy and I) took a trip back to Ithaca to see family and friends there. Probably spring break in 1973. We got back to Cleveland and there was a party/reception for a candidate for a position in the art history department. The competition and whatnot at the party stood in such contrast to the library folks that we'd talked to in Ithaca. I can't remember if we saw Judith on that particular trip, but I do know that I went to the library school the very next day and started the application process. I started library school as I finished my art history master's.
A year later, having finished my M.A. and well along in my M.S. in L.S., I accepted a job at the University of Pittsburgh. The Frick Fine Arts Library there is in a 1960s Italianate palazzo. Almost six years later, the job of art cataloger was open at Cornell since Pat Sullivan had moved over to the Fine Arts Library to be assistant librarian under Judith. It was wonderful to be back with Judith and Pat and in Ithaca.
Judith had lived in Rome for a while and really worked with me on my Italian pronunciation. It must have been hard on her when I'd pronounce Chigi as "chee gie" (soft ch, hard g) when it should be the other way around. With her help and several trips to Italy, I can usually say an Italian word pretty well these days. Now if I could just put a sentence together.
Judith was a consummate bibliographer, particularly in architecture. The 1980s were a time of interesting ferment in architectural output and criticism. Ungers and Rowe were at Cornell. Judith and I had many conversations about architecture, and looked at lots of books together. While I've never had a job as selector, I really enjoyed telling Judith about little treasures I discovered one place or another.
One of my favorite Judith stories is, however, during an ARLIS/NA conference, 1978 I think, in New York City. There was a panel of art book publishers. During the question period, Judith asked the Abrams guy why they didn't put the dates in books. He replied something about not wanting the book to seem stale on the bookstore table or coffee table when you gave it to someone as a Christmas gift. He didn't realize how much trouble it made for librarians and folks trying to cite the item. Soon thereafter, Abrams started putting the date on the verso of the title page and they still do it, even though they've been bought and sold a couple times (at least) since then.
So here's to Judith on what would have been her 70th birthday!
03 March 2008
Open Source ILS
(I'm amazed that there has not been a great hallelujah raised because of this proposal. Or maybe the migration cobwebs around here are obscuring the cheers!?)
To the DLF [apologies for duplicates received on this or other lists]
The Duke University Libraries are preparing a proposal for the Mellon Foundation to convene the academic library community to design an open source Integrated Library System (ILS). We are not focused on developing an actual system at this stage, but rather blue-skying on the elements that academic libraries need in such a system and creating a blueprint. Right now, we are trying to spread the word about this project and find out if others are interested in the idea.
We feel that software companies have not designed Integrated Library Systems that meet the needs of academic libraries, and we don’t think those companies are likely to meet libraries’ needs in the future by making incremental changes to their products. Consequently, academic libraries are devoting significant time and resources to try to overcome the inadequacies of the expensive ILS products they have purchased. Frustrated with current systems, library users are abandoning the ILS and thereby giving up access to the high quality scholarly resources libraries make available.
Our project would define an ILS centered on meeting the needs of modern academic libraries and their users in a way that is open, flexible, and modifiable as needs change. The design document would provide a template to inform open source ILS development efforts, to guide future ILS implementations, and to influence current ILS vendor products. We would use the grant to fund a series of planning meetings, with broad participation in some of those meetings and a smaller, core group of schools developing the actual design requirements document.
At this stage, we're seeking feedback on our ideas and finding out who might be interested in participating, prior to our formal submission of the proposal to the Mellon Foundation in early March. We would greatly appreciate your responses to the following questions.
1) Does designing an open source ILS seem like something worth exploring for academic libraries?
2) Given the information above about the proposed project, is your institution interested in:
-- staying informed of our progress?
-- contributing time and effort to the planning process, even if only through the first or second workshops?
-- possibly being one of the core schools that participates throughout the full planning and writing process
3) If you have any initial feedback on our ideas, we would love to hear it!
**Please email us at openlib@duke.edu**
Thank you for your interest and considering this opportunity to work with us on this project. If your answer is yes to number two above, we will be contacting you to further explore participation. **Please send your reply to openlib@duke.edu**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean Ferguson
Reference Librarian, Coordinator of Virtual Reference
Duke University
Perkins Library, Box 90175
Durham, NC 27708
919.660.5928
jean.f@duke.edu
Save Time. Ask a Librarian.
To the DLF [apologies for duplicates received on this or other lists]
The Duke University Libraries are preparing a proposal for the Mellon Foundation to convene the academic library community to design an open source Integrated Library System (ILS). We are not focused on developing an actual system at this stage, but rather blue-skying on the elements that academic libraries need in such a system and creating a blueprint. Right now, we are trying to spread the word about this project and find out if others are interested in the idea.
We feel that software companies have not designed Integrated Library Systems that meet the needs of academic libraries, and we don’t think those companies are likely to meet libraries’ needs in the future by making incremental changes to their products. Consequently, academic libraries are devoting significant time and resources to try to overcome the inadequacies of the expensive ILS products they have purchased. Frustrated with current systems, library users are abandoning the ILS and thereby giving up access to the high quality scholarly resources libraries make available.
Our project would define an ILS centered on meeting the needs of modern academic libraries and their users in a way that is open, flexible, and modifiable as needs change. The design document would provide a template to inform open source ILS development efforts, to guide future ILS implementations, and to influence current ILS vendor products. We would use the grant to fund a series of planning meetings, with broad participation in some of those meetings and a smaller, core group of schools developing the actual design requirements document.
At this stage, we're seeking feedback on our ideas and finding out who might be interested in participating, prior to our formal submission of the proposal to the Mellon Foundation in early March. We would greatly appreciate your responses to the following questions.
1) Does designing an open source ILS seem like something worth exploring for academic libraries?
2) Given the information above about the proposed project, is your institution interested in:
-- staying informed of our progress?
-- contributing time and effort to the planning process, even if only through the first or second workshops?
-- possibly being one of the core schools that participates throughout the full planning and writing process
3) If you have any initial feedback on our ideas, we would love to hear it!
**Please email us at openlib@duke.edu**
Thank you for your interest and considering this opportunity to work with us on this project. If your answer is yes to number two above, we will be contacting you to further explore participation. **Please send your reply to openlib@duke.edu**
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Jean Ferguson
Reference Librarian, Coordinator of Virtual Reference
Duke University
Perkins Library, Box 90175
Durham, NC 27708
919.660.5928
jean.f@duke.edu
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