Dear Katie,

Yes, it's probably fair to say that most U.S. art museum libraries use LC classification though there are notable exceptions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago. The Met and MoMA have done a lot of reclassifying in the past couple decades.

One classification issue that comes up is that for individual artists. LC first classes for medium and then for artist. Picasso, for example, has many numbers, e.g., in painting, etching, sculpture, ceramics, visual arts in general. LC puts him in French rather than Spanish numbers. Some libraries want all the items on an individual artist under one number. The National Gallery of Art invented a scheme for all artists in all mediums at N44. The Whitney spreads the artists out by nationality but follows the first item classified. So, if the first book on Picasso was in painting, all of the later books use ND553.P5.

If you're going to rely on finding copy on OCLC or some other source, it will be easier if you can use the numbers you find on cataloging copy. This may not be what your users want and having happy users can be a good thing. Check with your curators or education folks. Of course, if you do decide that all things on individual artists should be together, you could take the approach of public libraries with their fiction and arrange the artists alphabetically.

Like Joan, I'm curious what museum you're working for. The size of the library collection will have a significant effect on what decisions about classification make sense. A smaller library can class alphabetically. A larger library will probably find the efficiency of accepting call numbers on cataloging copy to be a deciding factor. Being standard and accepting numbers on copy will also work well if you anticipate being there a relatively short time. Idiosyncrasies don't always translate well from one person/situation to another.

Good luck.

Sherman Clarke

retired art cataloger (mix of academic, museum, and art school jobs)

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Joan Benedetti <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Katie:

I would love to know which art museum you are volunteering at. Back in
1976, although I also had my library degree and experience in public and
academic libraries, I also began volunteering at a "small art museum" (the
Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles--CAFAM). I hasten to add that I
eventually was paid--after obtaining some major grants for what became the
CAFAM Research Library. Luckily for me, I was in Los Angeles, where the
Executive Director of ARLIS/NA also lived; she was in the middle of
organizing the 1977 annual ARLIS/NA conference. It was such a fortuitous
circumstance--I had also just moved to L.A. recently and going on the
ARLIS/NA tours was a great introduction to L.A.--and of course attending the
ARLIS/NA sessions and getting to know the other ARLIS Southern California
Chapter members was unbelievably good for me personally and professionally
and for the nascent CAFAM library. I also became active with the ARLIS
Museum Division.

Much later, when I retired at the end of 2002, I wrote an article on the
management of small art museum libraries. Here's a link to a pdf of it:
http://web.simmons.edu/~mahard/Benedetti%202003.pdf. And a few years later,
I edited a book, Art Museum Libraries and Librarianship (Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press and the Art Libraries Society of North America, 2007) that
includes 61 essays by 43 art museum librarians--all ARLIS/NA members; it is
illustrated, has a bibliography and index, and includes a lot of practical
information. There is a whole chapter devoted to solo librarianship. Here
is a link to a more detailed description and ordering information:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810859210/Art-Museum-Libraries-and-Librarianship
. It is distributed by Rowman & Littlefield now. It does need to be
updated, and some members of the ARLIS/NA Museum division are working on
that as we speak. However, it is still valuable as a basic resource that is
entirely on a topic (art museum librarianship) that still has no other
recent published resources outside of the ARLIS/NA website and the
listserv--which you were lucky enough to discover. I recommend that you buy
a copy for yourself and/or for your library--if you have an acquisitions
budget. A more recent book, published in 2010 is The Handbook of Art and
Design Librarianship, edited by Amanda Gluibizzi and Paul Glassman (London:
Facet Publishing); although it has general art libraries relevance, it is
aimed at academic and school libraries and does not include text
specifically on art museum libraries. It is, however, also being revised
and I believe that the revision will include material on art museum
libraries.

Here also is a link to "So You Want to Be a Museum Librarian," which is more
generic, and not only mentions ARLIS/NA, it also has a link to another
wonderful organization, the Special Libraries Association, which has many
relevant publications and a division called the Museum, Arts, and Humanities
Division:
http://letterstoayounglibrarian.blogspot.com/2012/05/so-you-want-to-be-museu
m-librarian-by.html.

The most important thing for you to do now is to spend some money on
yourself--or spend some of your library budget--and become a member of
ARLIS/NA and whatever your local chapter is--and go to as many chapter and
national meetings as you possibly can. As you have your MLS, I assume you
have a continuing interest in librarianship. ARLIS/NA--and SLA--are great
networking resources for paying jobs--in case your volunteership doesn't
work out--or you decide to apply for paid work at a more established art
museum library. Good luck!! You have many more resources and more powerful
resources today, now available from your laptop, than was available in 1976,
but I think you will find that the art librarians in your area are, as they
were then, still key to your success. Good luck!!

Joan M. Benedetti

-----Original Message-----
From: ARLIS/NA List [mailto:[log in to unmask]ORG] On Behalf Of Katie
Bliss
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 10:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARLIS-L] Art Library Classification

Hello!

I recently began volunteering at a small art museum library. They currently
have no librarian and while I have my MLIS I've never worked in an art
library before.

In the past different librarians have tried different methods of classifying
their collections with the result being that some of the collection is
arranged by Dewey, some of it by LOC and some of it by nothing at all.

I've only just started, so my first order of business on my next visit is to
try to get a better idea of what all the collection contains. But since I
don't have any experience with this specific type of library, I'm also
hoping to get a sense of what other art libraries tend to do. Just from
looking at websites for several dozen art museums around the country, it
looks like across the board their libraries use LOC. Is this actually the
case? What classification does your library use? Any general advice as I
begin working with this collection? Anything specific to art libraries I
should be aware of?

Thanks so much for any help you can offer!

Katie Bliss
[log in to unmask]

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