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Re: [ARLIS-L] On the Eve of the 15th Year Anniversary of GLIRT Very interesting, Miguel.

When I saw the message calling for the dissolution of the GLBT Round Table, I was reminded of a few low-energy Women & Art Round Table meetings over the years. I've served as WomART moderator more than once when no one else stepped forward to do so because I felt it was important for the group to keep going. Usually at the business meetings or in chatting with other ARLIS members, someone questions the need for such a group "in this day and age." We discussed this issue at the Houston 2005 meeting as a way to sort of warm up and get the meeting started, and, happily, several first-time attendees as well as non-first-time attendees were quite adamant that such a group was needed and that they were very interested in the issue.

This "day and age" is a time when many young women view the word "feminist" as a nasty label for, and I quote from a recent article, "ugly, strident man-haters" [see "On Campus, A New Flowering of Feminism", http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/11385041.htm from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/17/2005], and "liberal" has become a dirty word. (I won't even mention the current president of the United States and all his administration represents, that's just too scary and disgusting for me.)

I don't pretend to speak for every member of the Women & Art RT, but I'll sign myself as the current moderator.

Sara
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Sara J. MacDonald, Women & Art Round Table Moderator, 2005/2006
Public Services Librarian
The University of the Arts - University Libraries
320 S Broad St - Philadelphia PA 19102 - USA
[log in to unmask] http://library.uarts.edu/
215-717-6282 fax: 215-717-6287

Do We Still Need a GLBT Roundtable in the Art Libraries Society of North America?

On April 20, 2005, Ted C. Goodman, a revered and long-time member of the Art Libraries Society of North America and one of the founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Interests Roundtable (GLIRT) sent out an e-mail to the ARLIS members electronic mailing list calling the dissolution of the roundtable citing that because of “the current recycling of moderators,” it was time to dissolve the group. He stated that the roundtable had outlived its usefulness. The list included some of the founders and long time members of the roundtable. Coincidentally, those who supported the dissolution, except for one person, did not attend the annual meeting in Houston or voice their opinions on the issue there. Wasn’t the Houston meeting an appropriate venue to voice the proposed dissolution? Why wait until afterwards and do it via e-mail? Is this an emerging protocol?

At a time when diversity issues are at the forefront of national debates, at time when the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the American Libraries Association (ALA) have committed themselves to creating and supporting a glbt presence within their structures, comes the proposed dissolution.   At first, I thought this logic was just a ploy, as previously demonstrated by similar antics with the dissolution of the Diversity Committee in 2002, to test the waters of member interest, but on closer inspection, it was actually true. I was quite disappointed. Quite frankly, as the out-going Moderator, it would have been easy for me to not care, because I’m transitioning to a new position with art librarianship now being a part of my work, as opposed to being the sum of it. But something inside tugged at me, and I wasn’t going to let this one go, if for the future members who may one day thank us for trying to keep the roundtable intact.

The proposed dissolution of the group raises interesting issues of how ARLIS members see their rights as members in the governance of the organization. Why should the rest of us participate in organized committees where moderators and chairs are nominated and elected if ad hoc groups can freely come forward and dictate the dissolution of roundtables? Why do certain members of the organization take it upon themselves to make decisions that affect entire groups of people? It is my opinion, that over time, these behaviors reduce organizations to cliques and deter democratic process and participation and are an antithesis to organizational development and growth. This has been a grave concern and a possible reason for a decline in membership in recent years. By members preferring to look the other way at this insidious behavior, ARLIS/NA, as an organization, has historically operated differently from other library associations.

Another interesting issue, maybe paralleling the times we as glbt people now live in, is how certain members of the gay community view identity politics as no longer necessary in the context of their professional lives. Coincidentally, an early GLIRT member and previous Moderator Ray Anne Lockard had recently stepped up again to act as Vice Moderator and is set to act as Moderator in the association’s annual meeting in Banff in 2006. As if by design, Ted and his pals struck at a time when Ray Anne is on sabbatical. I don’t know if the ad hoc group consulted with her prior to sending out their message?

At my first ARLIS/NA meeting in Pittsburgh in 1999, a long time female member took me aside during coffee with the vendors and cautioned me against saying anything politically incorrect against the gay and lesbian members in the organization.   She told me gay men and lesbians were a force to be reckoned with and that I should be careful what I said (in other words, not to tick them off). Perhaps she thought that I as a Latino male would find the abundance of lgbt persons in the art librarianship profession an affront? Perhaps she thought I wasn’t accustomed to working with glbt people? Whatever the reason, she had good intentions and from then on, I was intrigued and interested in attending a GLIRT meeting and participating as a round table member, but due to my attendance at the Women and Art Roundtable (Wom-Art) meeting (where I later became the first male moderator), I could not attend because they were both scheduled at the same time.

During my second ARLIS/NA conference, in 2000 in Los Angeles, I did attend a GLIRT meeting. It was a bit unnerving to attend a mostly White male meeting. Even then, it was obvious who was calling the shots. In recent years and maybe since its inception, GLIRT has been characterized as a close knit group of select gay White males who have passed the position of Vice Moderator and Moderator amongst themselves. I was probably the first outsider to volunteer and be elected as GLIRT Vice-Moderator in St. Louis and then serve as the Moderator in Houston. In retrospect, I was not as effective as previous Moderators because I was not part of the clique, although I did not do less work.

I believe that dissolving the roundtable would equate us to shooting ourselves in the foot. If DIVERSITY is a virtue in art librarianship and in the library profession, eliminating this important roundtable, is setting us back in time. You don’t see other library organizations dissolving their GLBT committees, even in the face of extreme political and social adversity. Why should we in ARLIS/NA be any different? It doesn’t make any sense.

If the members who support the dissolution believe that the roundtable has outlived its usefulness, I recommend they put their energies elsewhere within the organization. That or they can put time and energy in recruiting new members, but why give up? The recycling of leadership is partly due because of certain inbreeding of members.   The people who lent their name in support of the dissolution are members of a recycling corps themselves—they exchange seats periodically on just about every committee and on the presidency for our organization.

Years from now, I want to look back and know that I was part of the effort that responded to try and keep GLIRT alive. It is in times like this that I am reminded of the Gary Larson cartoon where a herd of cattle (or is it a herd of sheep?) is running towards the end of a cliff and one is asking the other, “Where are we going?” and the other one states, “I don’t know, but it is sure a lot of fun.”   As an aside, it amuses me that while the world was mourning the death of a John Paul II and the cardinals were deciding on a new Pope, Ted Goodman and his cardinals were gathering consensus and deciding on the future of GLIRT.

Miguel Juarez, Art & Photography Librarian, University of Arizona Library

Moderator, Gay and Lesbian Interests Roundtable, the Art Libraries Society of North America, 2004-05.
Moderator, organizer: “Chicano Art through the Collector’s Eye,” ARLIS/NA 2005.
Outgoing Co-chair, Diversity Committee, the Art Libraries Society of North America, 2004-05
Member, Women and Art (Wom-ART Roundtable) 2005-.
Committee member, the Art Libraries Society of North America Professional Development Committee, Mentoring Sub-committee, 2004-.
List owner and moderator, Photography Librarians, 2003-.
“Adding Teeth: Forum on Diversity,” development of a web site that focused on the needs of diversity of ARLIS/NA, led to the re-constitution of the ARLIS/NA Diversity Committee from an ad hoc group to a full standing committee: http://www.library.arizona.edu/users/juarezm/addingteeth.html
Moderator, Academic Library Division, the Art Libraries Society of North America –Visual Resources Association Joint Conference, St. Louis, MO, March 2002.
Moderator, Women and Art Roundtable (Wom-Art), the Art Libraries Society of North America –Visual Resources Association Joint Conference, St. Louis, MO.   Credited for successfully changing name of roundtable from WART to Wom-Art, March 2002.
Co-organizer (with Kim Collins, Emory University) for the Art Libraries Society of North America –Visual Resources Association Joint Conference, St. Louis, MO –Visual Resources Association Plenary Session II: The Three V's: Visual Technology, Visual Culture, and Visual Literacy, March 2002.
Co-organized meeting of Photography Librarians. This was the first time in the history of the Art Libraries Society of North America that a group of librarians interested in photography convened at the annual meeting, March 2002.
Organized first meeting of multicultural art librarians. Our group sought to increase the attendance of underrepresented librarians and library school students at the annual Art Libraries Society of North America meeting, March 2002.
Presentation: “Developing an Online Teaching Portfolio to Assess Bibliographic Instruction," as part of “The Classroom Odyssey: Teaching Adventures in the Art Library & Cyberspace,” moderated by B. J. Kish Irvine, Ph.D., Fine Arts Librarian, Indiana University, the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Los Angeles, Calif., April 2001.
Poster Session: “Developing Collaborative Web Sites at the University of Arizona,” Tuesday, the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, Los Angeles, Calif., April 2001.
Vice-Moderator, the Art Libraries Society of North America, Academic Libraries Division, March 2000/2001.
Vice-Moderator, the Art Libraries Society of North America, Women & Art Roundtable, March 2000/2001.
Update Column Editor, the Art Libraries Society of North America, Academic Libraries Section, March 2000-2001.

Miguel Juarez, Assistant Librarian
(Art, Art Education, Art History & Photography)
Fine Arts Library
Center for Creative Photography Library
University of Arizona Library
Office: Music 231B
P.O. Box 210103, Tucson, AZ 85721-0103
VOICE: (520) 626-9434/FAX: (520) 626-1630
E-mail: [log in to unmask].edu <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

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__________________________________________________________________ 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 (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]