Dear Susan Jane,
as a "traditional" art librarian as well as one who has managed image 
collections and has taught in library school, I must take issue with 
your assertions, especially that ""Deep" services to a relatively small 
group might be seen as "wrong" by the lights of their training." In fact 
reference and public service librarians in particular, but all of us to 
one extent or another, do a large amount of "deep" service, not to 
mention hand-holding, with our patrons, at least those of us in 
specialized subject libraries. In the many  libraries I have worked in 
we have offered both general classes as well as one-on-one tutorials on 
any and all products (electronic and not) that we offer, not to mention 
bibliographic instruction held in academic classes themselves. To 
maintain that librarians "are trained to consider resource allocation in 
a different light--they seek to maximize, and hence to somewhat 
generalize, the training that they do to cover as many patrons as 
possible" is just not accurate. Just as an image collection reflects the 
needs of its constituency so does a print collection, albeit with 
perhaps more latitude allowed the librarian in book collecting. Finally, 
in no library that I know of have image collections such as ARTstor been 
considered "just another electronic product"; in all cases classes and 
sessions focused on ARTstor in particular have been offered and 
accepted. Follow-up, particularly with faculty, has almost always 
consisted of the "hand-holding" variety. I think that your comments do a 
dis-service to art librarians, and in fact it is statements like these 
that create much of the "stress between the central library and the VR 
professional" of which you speak.

Sincerely,
Amy Lucker

VRA-L automatic digest system wrote:
>
>   
> I think a very important potential follow-up panel (Ya listening, =
> Maureen?) might address the stress between the central library and the =
> VR professional, who may or may not be under the library administrative =
> umbrella. These support issues have been the source of friction there =
> too, because librarians/ library administrators are trained to consider =
> resource allocation in a different light--they seek to maximize, and =
> hence to somewhat generalize, the training that they do to cover as many =
> patrons as possible. "Deep" services to a relatively small group might =
> be seen as "wrong" by the lights of their training. (And they may have a =
> point, but the key word here perhaps is "transition"--digital efforts =
> will clearly fail without user support.) I think this has accounted for =
> many of the stories about ARTstor being licensed by the central library, =
> but not being used because there is no promotion of it or support being =
> provided. I run into this myself with librarians who think image content =
> is just another electronic product, but don't understand that it =
> requires additional user tools and that users actively engage and =
> transform/re-purpose the content in ways that they do not do with other =
> library products.

-- 
****************
Amy Lucker
Library Director
Institute of Fine Arts
New York University 
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10021
[log in to unmask]
(212) 992-5826

__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
        http://www.arlisna.org/join.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
        to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
       http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html
Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]