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Dear ARLIS-Lers,
As I would have expected, I received some dynamite responses to my question
concerning resources to present in a class that might be called "Using the
library for inspiration". I also received several "please summarize for
the list!" messages, so below are the four messages that stood out.
Thank you to everyone who replied. I enjoy a feeling of solidarity among
instruction librarians, especially those in art schools.
Coco Halverson
California Institute of the Arts
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Hi Coco
We are doing much the same thing here at the University of B.C. Fine Arts
Library. We have just, for instance, organized what we are going to be
doing for our large classes in Architecture and in Community and Regional
Planning. These classes have to get the basics and we don't concentrate as
much on using the library for inspiration.
We do, however, concentrate on inspiration with our fine arts or our
theatre students.
For them, we stress using a variety of approaches, i.e. creative use of
the resources. For example, for theatre we might use the following:
l. books on costume, set design, lighting, etc. (the typical tradiitional
approach, but useful)
2. original source material (we bring in lots of examples for the students
to handle - they love this stuff),i.e.
-journals of the period (whatever their period may be)Include things
like Ackerman's repository because it has fabric swatches in it from the
19th century
-photographs
-paintings and portraits
-play reviews
3. historical surveys (they usually never thought of this approach)
- by country
- by time period (artistic styles)
- by medium (try something different, such as a book on period rooms
4. iconography (theme) (books on iconography are somewhat a new idea for
many students)
5. collections (lots of scope here)
-museums (National Portrait Gallery or theatre costumes in the Victoria
and Albert Museum - perhaps....)
-picture collections
-library collections (the idea of using other libraries such as the
Dictionary Catalog of the Dance Collection. "world's your oyster" type of
stuff.
6.indexes (print and online)You could include here the Costume Index, the
World Painting Index, the Photography Index, Art Index, BHA....)
7.internet resources (Alta Vista images, good sites such as the Costume
Page..)
Other ideas that have been successful in our "inspirational" mode have
been to show a wonderful print facsimile of the Book of Kells (original
done in the 8th century) along with an e-book. Students love
juxtapositions - old and new, that sort of thing.
We use lots of handouts. We get them moving around when possible. We
prefer hands-on with online demos. We prefer to have 2 instructors per
class and change from one to the other frequently so there is no boredom.
Well, we hope not anyway.
I hope these ideas help out somewhat. We are also open to suggestions
which may help us.
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Diana E.M. Cooper 604-822-3943
Fine Arts Reference Librarian
Fine Arts Library
University of British Columbia
1956 Main Mall [log in to unmask]
*****
Do you have a circulating video or cd collection?
These may be of particular interest to students
in the performing arts. How about contemporary
literature, especially poetry?
Just a few ideas.
Marcia Adamy
Technical Services Librarian
Life University
Marietta GA 30060
*****
Dear Coco,
I worked at the Rhode Island School of Design as a fill-in for
six months and those students really know how to stretch the
resources for "inspiration." From those students' ideas, I am
in the process of making an art resources page for the students
here at Plattsburgh State University of New York and have
included medical reference books with pics, encyclopedias of
animals (especially insects), religious beliefs and symbols of
the world, and the encyclopedia of philosophy. Students tend
to like the "gory," "icky" and "foreign" stuff. I went through
our whole reference section and looked for the books with any
type of image. Also, you an search european artists' pages for
some really interesting art on the web. The normal search
engines won't bring them up because they focus on the USA.
Poetry books, quotation books and film books also give
inspiration to the performing arts. The students here are all
forced to take a 1 credit library 101 course and we have to do
everything to inspire them because they hate to take a required
course, especially one they believe to be unnecessary.
Susan
Feinberg Library
Plattsburgh State University
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Coco and Everyone--
Have you seen the article "Student Artists in the Library: An Investigation of
How They Use General Academic Libraries for Their Creative Needs" by Polly
Frank? It's in _The Journal of Academic Librarianship_, vol. 25 no. 6
(November
1999) pages 445-455. If you haven't, it should be a good source of ideas.
Edith Crowe
San Jose State University
*****
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