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Dear George,

There are three essays in the recently published Art Museum Libraries and Librarianship that deal with collecting ephemera. The chapter is titled: "The Invisible Made Visible: Collecting Ephemera in the Art Museum Library" and the essays by Margaret Crocker Ford, Barbara Rominski, and Sharon Wasserman are very informative. There was also a panel devoted to ephemeral collections at the 2006 National Museum Publishing Seminar in which I participated. I don't think these papers are published but I would be happy to share mine with you. There seems to be quite a bit more on the subject coming from the UK - perhaps the John Johnson collection and the Ephemera Society make the topic germane for British librarians.  Finally, the Artist Files Working Group of ARLIS/NA is working on an ambitious project that would provide guidance and resources for making one form of collected ephemera available to users. The 2005 and 2006 meeting minutes for this group are available at: http://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/2005/proceedings/dg_artistfiles.pdf   and

http://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/2006/proceedings/wg_artistfiles.pdf   

Best wishes,

Kraig

Kraig Binkowski
Head Librarian
Reference Library and Photograph Archive
Yale Center for British Art
1080 Chapel Street
P.O. Box 208280
New Haven, CT 06520-8280

Phone: 203.432.2846
Fax: 203.432.7180
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.yale.edu/ycba

At 11:41 PM 9/9/2007, you wrote:
Hello:  I am an MLIS student at the University of Oklahoma who is exploring
possible thesis topics.

I have recently become interested in ephemera and grey/gray literature in
fine arts libraries.  I have searched both the ARLIS archives as well as
Dissertation Abstracts and haven't found a lot of discussion on this topic.
 There is some literature in the journals, however. 

I did find a posting by one Ruth Wallach asking in 2004 if anyone was
interested in hosting a panel on grey literature.  Does anyone know if such
a panel was ever conducted?

Additionally I would be curious to know if this is a topic that affects many
of you.  Do you find that your institutions house ephemera and/or grey
literature of various kinds?  Is this a non-topic because art libraries
already have systematic ways of dealing with these two classes of
information and no further inquiry is needed? Or do you feel, rather, that
there is a lot of ephemera and/or grey literature in fine arts libraries
that has not been effectively managed?

I have intentionally held off offering any definitions of either "ephemera"
or "grey literature" because I'd rather see what kind of responses are
prompted by my questions without any such definitions at this time.

Thank you!

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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]