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Midwestern Art Cataloging Discussion Group
6th Meeting
Hosted by
the MacLean Visual Resources Center, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago
June 6, 2003

Attendees:
Sara Carter, prospective art-librarian/student
Kathy Evans, Purdue University
Nathaniel Feis, Art Institute of Chicago
Leigh Gates, Art Institute of Chicago
Shu Yong Jiang, Art Institute of Chicago
Ben Kessler, University of Chicago
Alma Koppedraijer, Art Institute of Chicago
Cheryl Mainard, Art Institute of Chicago
Lauren Noel, Columbia College
Armando Pequeno, Art Institute of Chicago
Maria Sheehan, Harrington Institute
April Trentham, Art Institute of Chicago

After an interesting and informative presentation by Doro Boehme, Special Collections Librarian, Sylvia Choi, Catalog Librarian, and Fred Hillbruner, Head of Technical Services concerning the Joan Flasch Artists' Book collection books at the John M. Flaxman Library, the School of the Art Institute and special cataloging issues raised by artists' books, we proceeded to our regular meeting.

The sixth meeting of the Midwestern Art Cataloging Discussion Group convened on Friday, June 6, 2003 at the MacLean Visual Resources Center, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago with welcomes and introductions by those in attendance.

We started off by continuing on the topic of artists' books. Most of those collections represented at the meeting do not have significant artist book collections, though these sorts of items are added occasionally. Columbia College has a loose definition of artists' books. When such items are cataloged, the subject heading "Artists' books" is assigned, but no access is added for the sorts of materials and processes which were utilized to create the book in question. But, this sort of detailed access, which is useful when dealing with a collection having as broad a scope as the Joan Flasch collection, may not be relevant for a library that only has a few artists' books.

It was mentioned that there is no published guide dealing with the cataloging of artists' books, nor is there any sort of workshop or class on the same topic of which anyone present is aware. There are, however, classes in cataloging realia and these practices combined with those of regular bibliographic cataloging, might help in cataloging artists' books. It was suggested that a class in cataloging artists' books might be the sort of thing that the MACDG could sponsor at some future date.

On the topic of library projects -- particularly summer projects - it was noted that summer is a time when a library can accomplish many of the larger projects that can not be taken care of at other times of the year when the library is busier. Many libraries use this time for inventory or similar projects. The Ryerson Library's circulation department is moving to the Innovative Interfaces, Inc.'s Millennium module in the near future. Also, Ryerson Library is continuing long term projects such as re-classing older titles. The MacLean Visual Resources Center is working on image presentation and reviewing cataloging. They are attempting to meet challenges presented by attempting to adapt their pre-existing cataloging into the models created by vendors. This is especially difficult in visual collections. The Art Department at Purdue University has begun documenting lectures and other events at the University on video and adding these videos to the collection. This raises many issues beyond cataloging, such as preservation of these materials for the future since these are the original recordings. Since this is a new area for them, they are still establishing their preactices.