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Yes, many many thoughts.  This is what I am in the thick of right now.  I have had 2 of the positions in my library eliminated since December and while everything is due to budget, there is a larger issue at hand, and that is why sink money into the library when it doesn't get a lot of use?  Note, this use is directly compared to the number of visitors who come through the museum.  We've always documented our visits and use, but it doesn't matter, the numbers will always be too low, and they are compared to arbitrary numbers, administration just sees it as a percentage of the number of people who walk through the museum's doors, nothing a traditional museum library as I see it could ever live up to.  We have a unique situation in that we are also connected with a local university art department and serve as their departmental library.  We likely get much more use than your average museum library (also, we have regular public hours and part of our collection circulates), and that is still no where near enough to warrant the budget that is provided to sustain the library.   My director does not wish to eliminate the library, but he does want to figure out a way to "activate" the library more and bring it into the regular museum goers path.  How we do that is what I (hopefully along with museum colleagues) need to figure out.  Programming isn't going to be enough (we have an active book club and are working on a few more things).  I don't disagree with the mindset, or the goals of my administration, it's just quite a lot to live up to, the expectation of potentially major innovation with a diminished staff and still needing (for now) to maintain our regular public services and collection.  In addition, our museum has recently gone through a major organizational restructuring, and the Library has moved from being under a Collections Branch to being under an Information/Systems branch, so a new supervisor (head of IT) and new relationships to foster.

This is just my short response, my head has been wrapped around this constantly for the last few months, I hope to talk to some museum library colleagues at ARLIS more about some of the drastic changes happening in our libraries.  I have a lot of thoughts, ideas and fears about my library's future.

-Alison

>>> Julian Woodruff <[log in to unmask]> 4/10/2013 6:37 PM >>>

Julian D. Woodruff

Librarian

Gerald Hansen Library

CROCKER ART MUSEUM

216 O Street

Sacramento, CA 95814

direct 916.808.8856

fax 916.808.7372          

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Julian

Dear Colleagues-

Following William’s message I would also like to share with the list that, for similar reasons, the Stout Library of the Indianapolis Museum of Art is now open to the public by appointment only.  We will no longer participate in ILL lending until further notice.

Sincerely,

Alba Fernández-Keys
Head of Libraries & Archives

Indianapolis Museum of Art
4000 Michigan Road
Indianapolis, IN  46208-3326
T 317-923-1331 x547  F 317-931-1978
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http://www.imamuseum.org

William A. Peniston, Ph.D.

Librarian

The Newark Museum

49 Washington Street

Newark, NJ   07102

Telephone: 973-596-6625

Fax: 973-642-0459

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