----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Barbara Reed suggested that all 21st-century artists might be nicely classified together, especially since many are mixed-media and don't fit into any category comfortably so you might as well arrange them by name. If your stacks are closed, that's probably fine. On the other hand, the artist's name is the easy access point in the catalog. If a user is looking for all the stuff on a particular artist, they might wonder why you'd classified her or him in various numbers by format or nationality, etc., leaving the user to chase around the stacks fetching the books. But if they wanted to see a bunch of recent German or American or video or print or collage work, they'd probably be pretty happy that a browse of the shelves gave them a bunch of artists, including one-person exhibition catalogs. I am of at least two minds when it comes to classing solely by artist. When we were debating this at the Amon Carter in the early 1990s, the print curator said she wanted the engravings, lithographs, etc. together rather than putting all printmakers in one sequence (to say nothing of putting the printmakers, painters, sculptors, photographers together). The photography curators however said put the photographers together (the TR schedule is quite horrible for classifying by artist and we used TR140 which is not in the art photography section of TR). I'm not sure the change of century has any strong effect on my feelings about this topic. Sherman Clarke - NYU - [log in to unmask] __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] 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 at: [log in to unmask]