Spring 2005 - Vol. 17 No. 2

From the President:

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the chapter for a great experience in serving as the chapter president. We've had an interesting and productive year, I think, and it couldn't have happened without the invaluable organizational help from members who did local arrangements. I think it all started with our chapter meeting at the conference in New York City; the ideas which flowed from that forty-five-minute meeting were wonderful, and really did set the agenda for the rest of the year. My goal was always to have programs which combined information with some kind of exposure to a new place, or group, or experience, be it historical or just interesting in any context. I've always believed that seeing new places, learning about a culture or location that one might barely have heard of, enriches us professionally, even if it isn't a "workshop". The more experiences we have, the more we have to give back.

A quick review of events after the national conference:

In early June, we met in Bristol, Rhode Island, thanks to the behind the scenes work of Betsy Peck Learned and Ellie Nacheman, and had two tours-one of the Blithewold Mansion and Arboretum, and the other of downtown Bristol, where we were guided by Kevin Jordan, an architectural historian. Who knew that there is a town where practically every building seems to have been de-constructed, and then re-constructed on a different site! It was an interesting look at the early slave trade, as well as the development of one of the early United States' busiest busy ports.

In October, we finally made it to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. This site has been on the New England Chapter's list of "must do" places for years. It is an incredible facility, and I believe left all of us feeling that we have to include more information about native peoples in our repertoire as librarians. Thank you Susanne Javorski!

And just two weeks ago, on December 3, we had a meeting exclusively devoted to ARTstor, a topic that has been high on everyone's interest list since they launched their product last spring. Massachusetts College of Art kindly hosted the chapter, and Barbara Rockenbach and Javonica Curry showed us the latest advances in the database, answered a lot of questions, and let us know that our concerns are being taken very seriously. Thank you MassArt for your help!

As the board considers things for the coming year, Kathy Ritter, incoming president, continues to work on a joint meeting with the Montreal/Ottawa/Quebec chapter, and the February possibility of a chapter jaunt to Central Park for Christo's installation is still alive. At last look, the Chinatown bus may be the way to go, as estimates for a chartered bus were prohibitive.

We'll have two new board members as soon as the election is done, and look forward to that.

I thank you all again-the opportunity to serve ARLIS, which has given me so much, has been a real honor. Happy Holidays to you all.

Anne Haas

Meeting at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, December 3, 2004

ARLIS/New England held an ARTstor workshop at Mass College of Art, currently the only ARLIS/NE member in Boston that has purchased the image database.

The group congregated in the President's Gallery at MassArt to view the library's exhibit: Unstacked: Treasures of the Godine Library. This exhibit showcased some of the Godine Library's special collections and was curated by ARLIS/NE members Rachel Beckwith, Paul Dobbs, Richard McElroy, and Rachel Resnik.

Then President Anne Haas welcomed everyone to what she said would be her last meeting as president. She made some announcements:

We need a new listserv moderator and a new web site manager. These roles could be combined or filled by two people. Anne called for someone young and energetic to take these tasks from Adeane Bregman and Don Milliken, respectively, who have put in their time and done great work for the organization.

Linda Zieper needs items for the Focus newsletter: any personal news, library renovations, new resources, etc. Please get them to Linda ASAP.

Renewal letters and ballots for new officers will be mailed out next week. Richard McElroy, a member of the nominating committee, announced that candidates for vice president/ president-elect were Rachel Beckwith and Hannah Bennett, and candidates for secretary were Cameron Caswell, Christina Jedziniak, and Barbara Mitchell. [Ms. Mitchell later withdrew-ed.] Please try to get your membership renewal and ballot in as soon as you can.

Rachel Beckwith then announced that we were ready to head to a computer classroom for our ARTstor workshop. First, Rachel Beckwith and Jon Cartledge, Mass Art's visual resources librarian, spoke briefly about their experience with ARTstor for the fall semester at MassArt. The Godine Library purchased the database this summer, and it has created a buzz on campus. Some of the faculty are already setting up course reserves using ARTstor, and the public services librarians are referring a large number of patrons to the image database at the reference desk. Rachel handed out two guides that she and Jon created to help MassArt faculty and students use the database in all of its functionality.

Then Barbara Rockenbach from ARTstor went through many of the features of ARTstor and talked about future plans for the database. ARTstor plans to have 500,000 images by 2006 (currently there are over 300,000 images) and are continually adding collections of images. Copyright is of course an issue with contemporary images, but Barbara admitted that ARTstor recognized that they would have to include more contemporary images in the database and are treading lightly, but firmly, in this new territory! Everyone got to see many of the capabilities of the database including the offline viewer and its projection capabilities. After Barbara's presentation, ARLIS/NE members were free to play around with the database on their computers and ask lots of questions of Barbara and her two ARTstor colleagues, Nancy Allen and Javonica Curry.

Submitted by Rachel Beckwith, Secretary

Meeting at Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Mashantucket, Connecticut, November 5, 2004

The ARLIS/NE chapter held a brief meeting at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum where we spent a great day on November 5. Anne Haas, chapter president, welcomed everyone. Then Susanne Javorski, treasurer, gave the treasurer's report. We have two CDs: the two-year CD currently has around $4600 in it, and the 1-year CD has $3344. We have around $2700 in our checking account for a total of almost $11,000 altogether. Merrill Smith suggested that we consider being more generous when we contribute to the ARLIS/NA conference in Houston this year.

Anne Haas said that she just had the idea of extending the use of the Seibel scholarship since it is not always spent every year. She wondered about the possibility of making the first priority for that money always to go to a library school student, but in the event that there were no applications from students, to expand it for other members to be eligible to use it for continuing education (only for a degree program). Susan Lewis asked if that would duplicate the Freitag award. Anne said that she was worried that because we no longer get a gift of the money for these two awards, that we would quickly spend down our surplus even though we have ample money in the bank now. Kathy Ritter wondered if we could fund library school students to attend the national conference. The next board can grapple with this ongoing issue!

Rachel Beckwith announced that membership renewals forms will be mailed out in the next month along with ballots for new officers (unless anyone was so eager that he or she wanted to renew their membership to ARLIS/NE today!) The memberships are good for the calendar year and any money received at this point would go toward the 2005 membership. Individual membership is still $20 and student membership is $8.

Anne Haas then reported on candidates thus far for the open board positions of secretary and president elect: Hannah Bennett, Yale Arts Library (vice president/president elect); Cameron Caswell, reference and instruction librarian, Massachusetts College of Art (secretary); Barbara Mitchell, head of public services, Loeb Library, Harvard School of Design (secretary) [Ms. Mitchell later withdrew-ed.]; Christina J. Jedziniak, serials assistant, Bennington College (secretary).

Anne asked for volunteers for a nominating committee to put the candidates' biographical paragraphs together, enlist any other candidates, and get the ballot to Rachel to be sent out. Susan Lewis and Richard McElroy volunteered, so they will work together with Anne on putting together the ballot by the end of the month. It will be sent out with membership renewals to everyone.

Finally, Linda Zieper made her usual plea for news (job changes, moves, personal, etc.) for the newsletter.

Submitted by Rachel Beckwith, Secretary

Summer Executive Board Meeting, June 25, 2004, Yarmouth, Maine

The board met at 10:30 a.m. on June 25, 2004, at Anne Haas' home in Yarmouth, Maine. Unfortunately, Rachel Beckwith had car trouble before she even left Boston, and Kathy Ritter was not feeling well, so at the last minute, only three board members could attend: Susan Lewis, past president, Susanne Javorski, treasurer, and Anne, president.

Susanne Javorski presented a treasurer's report: Two certificates of deposit with balances of $4314.34 and $4559.73 and a checking account balance of $1877.72 for a total of $10751.79

Most of the discussion focused on the planning needed for the ideas that were put forth at the chapter meeting held in April at the New York conference. It was decided that we would make a donation of $150 to the Bristol [R.I.] Historical Society, at the suggestion of Kevin Jordan, who gave us the wonderful tour in early June. We also began to firm up plans for the Mashantucket Peqout Museum and Research Center meeting which we hoped to have in October. Su-sanne said she would begin to contact the relevant people.

There was further discussion of the possiblity of the ARTstor meeting, and we decided that we definitely wanted to go ahead with this. Also, we talked briefly about the possibility of a "field trip" in February, to go see Christo's gates in Central Park. We also mentioned something Kathy Ritter hopes to make happen during her tenure as president of the chapter: a joint meeting in Montreal with the Montreal/Ottawa/Quebec chapter.

We continued our conversations over lunch, and the meeting ended around 12:30.

Respectfully submitted, Anne Haas, President.

From the Members

CAMERON CASWELL began working at Massachusetts College of Art as the part-time public services librarian in early September. The recipient of the 2001 Elmar W. Seibel Scholarship, Cameron completed her MSLIS degree at Simmons College in 2002. Following her graduation, she spent ten months living with her husband in Marburg, Germany. During this time she studied German and had her first son. At MassArt her primary responsibility is leading the library's instruction program.

ALLISON CYWIN began work at visual resources curator at UMass Dartmouth in June. She notes that she has been managing visual collections for almost twenty-five years, most recently as graphics curator at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and is just three courses away from completing her MSLIS at Simmons.

BETSY PECK LEARNED, long-time architecture librarian at Roger Williams University is now associate dean of libraries at Roger Williams. Congratulations, Betsy!

MAX MARMOR, co-editor of the long-awaited and newly-published Guide to the Literature of Art History, volume 2 (GLAH2), the successor volume to Arntzen and Rainwater's 1980 volume of the same title, proudly points out that several of the other contributors to the work are also New Englanders: MARY CLARE ALTENHOFEN, AMANDA BOWEN, and KATHE CHIPMAN.

RICHARD MCELROY has taken the position of technical services librarian for acquisitions and serials at the Morton R. Godine Library of Massachusetts College of Art. He began work on October 1 and is "pleased to be a part of this vibrant institu-tion." His new e-mail address is rmcelroy@massart.edu.

ALIX REISKIND has happy professional and personal news: She has been appointed the new visual resources librarian in the Harvard Loeb Design Library. In this position, she manages the library's existing and new image collections and the increasing use of digital images at the Design School. Alix joined the library staff in 1996, as a library assistant in the Visual Resources department and in 2001 became the assistant visual resources librarian. In May 2004 she became engaged to Cheney Brand, a student at the Berklee College of Music. They plan to marry in fall 2005.