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Subject: Hand holding followup (this was a string on VRA-L about faculty support issues, which is not all represented here, but since Amy sent to ARLIS-L as well I wanted to respond and clarify my position).

Hi Amy,
I am speaking from my own direct experiences and have been loath to bring up this issue for fear of raising the ire of librarians such as yourself. It is certainly not that I think that librarians are in any way less dedicated to serving their patrons, nor do I think librarians are less busy than VR professionals (and of course we have the problem of semantics here, since I myself was also in a library structure with the title of librarian). I have certainly talked to others who have encountered my experiences in trying to articulate VR matters to other types of librarians. Visual Resources professionals who are physically located with art and art history departments end up serving those patrons in a much different way than librarians in library buildings--and that is just one factor. And by "deep" services, I mean, for example, actually creating their PowerPoints and going to the classroom with them to hook up their laptop to the projector, as well as all the other training efforts you mention.

We all have different job experiences and deal with different institutional cultures, and even within those factors come other factors like intermittent cutting of resources. I very much stand by my assertions as one example of a scenario that can happen/has happened and as an example of bridges that need to be built between VR professionals and other librarians in this new digital environment that is likely to bring them into collaboration. I find that librarians have things to learn from traditional VR support specialists, and vice-versa, and I would like to see healthy dialog about that, which results in growth for both groups (and someday, less of a split between the two). However, it is a little early to declare victory on that front.

Certainly the team environment described by Eileen Fry on VRA-L and enjoyed at Johns Hopkins is a good model and the positive spin to take.
As for the ARTStor scenario I described--that is a quite common reaction and I ran across it THREE times this week alone in my own work--and with Scholars Resource licensed content as well. The customers I spoke with in a central library had NO CLUE that people would be making lectures and study groups and those would need support and mediation and that faculty would actually be wanting to add their own content.
Cheers
Susan
Susan Jane Williams
Data Specialist and User Services Liaison
Saskia Ltd./ Scholars Resource, Inc. 
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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] VRA-L Digest - 12 Dec 2006 to 13 Dec 2006 (#2006-305)

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 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
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(212) 992-5826

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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 (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]