ARLIS/NA 54th Annual Conference

Please note that adding a workshop to your Sched itinerary does NOT mean you have registered for the workshop. You must register via conference registration.

How do you see AI? What metaphors, images, and associations come to mind when you think about its impact on society and visual culture? For the past year, we have been exploring these questions through a series of public workshops that use collage inquiry—an arts-based research method that invites participants to construct meaning through layering and juxtaposition of images. Each workshop has featured a talk by an artist or scholar whose work critically examines AI, addressing issues such as intellectual property, social ethics, privacy, creative authorship, and surveillance. These talks have provided grounding and provocation, after which participants respond visually by creating collages from an array of provided ephemera.

In this workshop, rather than listening to a guest speaker, participants will engage directly in collage-making while learning about our project findings. In doing so, they will experience firsthand how collage inquiry can serve as a tool for reflecting on complex, rapidly evolving issues like AI—where metaphor, symbolism, and image association often reveal insights that elude purely verbal analysis.

Participants will leave with their own visual reflections on AI, strategies for incorporating collage inquiry into their teaching or outreach, and a deeper appreciation of how visual metaphor can open up new ways of understanding technological and cultural change.

Please note that adding a workshop to your Sched itinerary does NOT mean you have registered for the workshop. You must register via conference registration.

Dog Ears is an alternative reading list and zine collaboratively developed by workshop participants. Its title and triangular form reference the practice of folding over the corner of a page in a book. It signifies reading in progress; a place to return to. A dog-eared book has been well-read, well-worn, perhaps overly-loved. It is the tactile result of a book passed among friends or strangers.

Led by artist-publisher dani neira, the workshop’s participants will learn to make an accordion-folded zine, and collaboratively design an alternative reading list. Dog Ears broadly defines “alternative” as independently published materials, artists’ projects, or other non-traditional means of production and dissemination.

As a part of the project’s critical and conceptual grounding, the workshop will discuss community-based strategies in independent publishing, and the reading list as a networked structure where meaning is produced. This web of relationships will be explored through the lens of kinship, framed by queer, feminist, and BIPOC perspectives on citational justice.

*Workshop Participants: Please bring a zine, artists’ book, or otherwise “alternative” book that you feel kinship with. The participants’ books will create the collaborative reading list — which is the content of the zine! Bringing a physical copy is ideal, but if this is not possible, a title in mind works as well. New to the world of independent publishing? Don’t worry! There will be a small zine library to select from.

Key Themes for Discussion:
- Affect, materiality, and printed matter
- Zine-making as pedagogy
- Citational justice and approaches to developing reading lists and collections
- Strategies of resource and knowledge-sharing in independent publishing

Exploring Wikidata’s Potential for Managing Artist Identities at the National Gallery of Art Library
Speakers: Jung Soo Bae, Amy Watson, Emily Sawyer

The Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) has traditionally offered centralized, standardized authority control of artist names, artwork titles, and subjects in library metadata. Built on human-readable, string-based access points and controlled vocabularies, these legacy records are less adaptable to today’s interconnected information environment. Furthermore, the training and review process required to contribute to the LCNAF can pose barriers to participation and slow innovation.  

In response, libraries have begun working collaboratively to explore a shift from traditional authority control toward more flexible, URI-based entity management within a Linked Open Data (LOD) framework. The Entity Management Cooperative (EMCO) Early Adopters Program supports this transition by promoting interoperability and discoverability of authority data in LOD ecosystems, developing shared data models for entity description, and supporting community-driven experimentation.

As part of this program, the National Gallery of Art Library conducted a pilot project to assess the potential for the management of artist identities in Wikidata in comparison to LCNAF. This presentation outlines our workflows and highlights key findings, including challenges encountered and opportunities uncovered, and provides practical insights for institutions considering similar approaches. 

Enhancing Records, Expanding Access
Speakers: William Blueher, Daisy Paul

Cataloging is a shared enterprise. A bibliographic record created by one cataloger in Connexion can be added to and enriched by catalogers around the world. But if your library catalog is not synched to Connexion, many of these bibliographic enhancements – things like summary notes and tables of contents – won't ever appear in your records. We work in one such library, so we developed a process for adding these enhancements (specifically the 505 and 520 fields, though the process could be adapted to work for other fields as well) from Connexion records into our integrated library system.

Since implementing this workflow, we’ve enhanced thousands of records in our catalog, greatly increasing the accessibility and discoverability of our collection. While it is an involved process, we have broken it down into manageable steps that other libraries will be able to replicate and modify to their own needs. In addition to Connexion, we relied on open-access tools such as MarcEdit and Notepad++ to efficiently batch edit data.

We will provide a detailed report on the impact this workflow has had on our library catalog. We will examine not only the number of enhanced records but also provide a breakdown of what types of records have the highest probability of having available enhancements, allowing for a more targeted implementation of this workflow. We will also provide access to step-by-step documentation so that the audience can replicate this work at their institutions.

Just as cataloging is a shared enterprise, we believe these sorts of technical workflows ought to be as well.

Hidden in History : Curating a Featured Collection for Indigenous Architecture Library Materials
Speakers: Aubree Tillett, Tina Gross

There are few books documenting the architecture of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas from an Indigenous perspective. Last year the Design Librarian experienced difficulty locating enough materials related to Indigenous architecture to create a robust book display that had been requested to support the Minnesota American Institute of Architects (AIA) Indigenous Design Camp. A more comprehensive search of the library catalog was initiated and colleagues with subject and cataloging expertise were consulted. Through this process it became clear that most of the books with information about Indigenous architecture in the library collections are not assigned a Library of Congress Classification of NA for Architecture. Instead they were cataloged with LC classifications for E and F: History of the Americas. Academic libraries' indiscriminate adoption of LC cataloging tools and practices, such as ""collocating"" resources about Indigenous Peoples' practices in specific areas (such as architecture, astronomy, education, medicine, etc.) with resources about that Indigenous group rather than with the specific endeavor, has significant drawbacks. Within the University of Minnesota Libraries, books classified as history and social sciences are held in different libraries spanning three distinct geographic locations. Additionally, the items related to architecture in E and F are not next to each other on the shelves in the same library; the materials are first organized by Indigenous community then architecture. The separation of related items creates barriers to browsing and the serendipitous discovery of books related to Indigenous Architecture.

This session will explore one solution to overcoming these barriers, a digital featured collection created to showcase Indigenous architecture. Presenters will share their process for identifying and selecting items in the library catalog for the featured collection They will share the inclusion criteria; item review process; and their observations of items ultimately comprising the final collection. Many of the resources in the final list are archaeological, anthropological, or historical sources rather than design-focused materials due to the destruction, appropriation, and subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, knowledge, and cultural practices. The authors will address the ethical considerations of choosing to include books in the collection that document cultures and civilizations with a historical and often colonialist lens when the Indigenous perspective is not available.

DIY In the Stacks: Building a Circulating Zine Collection from Scratch to Success
Speakers: Claire Payne, Amanda Tillapaugh

In summer 2024, Amanda, the new serials acquisitions specialist at RIT Libraries, approached Claire, the art and design librarian, with an idea: could we circulate zines at the library? Claire had asked herself the same question a few times in the preceding few years, as it had become clear that zines were a popular format for student expression on campus. However, it had seemed like creating a new collection would make unwelcome or impossible demands on staff time and library resources. Amanda, as a serials specialist, had a suggestion: what if zines were treated like serials? Instead of being cataloged individually, zines could come in and out of the collection more casually, reflective of the often ephemeral nature of the publications themselves.

In this presentation, the speakers will detail how a change in cataloging approach allowed us to ideate and develop a circulating zine collection from scratch to success in a one-year time frame. By bringing together a small cross-departmental team and using existing resources creatively, the library has built a (still-growing) collection of approximately 150 zines that successfully engages our campus community. While not a no-cost project, this talk will provide a model for creating a worthwhile collection on a shoestring budget through creative collaboration.

How can librarians support and commemorate student-led protests? This timely topic will be considered in the context of recent protests and encampments, while keeping in mind lessons learned from protests dating back to the 1970s.

Vociférer par l’image : les affiches du Printemps érable
Speakers : Catherine Ratelle-Montemiglio, Catherine Bernier

En droite ligne avec la thématique du congrès ARLIS/NA 2026, soit la résistance, cette présentation aura pour objectif de présenter deux corpus d’affiches créés durant le mouvement étudiant de 2012. Surnommé le « Printemps érable », ce mouvement étudiant s’est formé d’abord pour lutter contre la hausse des droits de scolarité, pour par la suite embrasser des préoccupations sociétales plus larges. Les affiches sélectionnées pour cette présentation sont celles créées par le collectif de l’École de la Montagne rouge ainsi que par l’artiste Clément de Gaulejac. Ces corpus sont conservés par une institution patrimoniale, au sein d’une collection d’affiches regroupant plusieurs milliers de documents. Nous aborderons les enjeux d’acquisition et de conservation liés à ces documents éphémères. Nous présenterons également le corpus du point de vue du graphisme et de leur condition de création, soit dans l’urgence d’un mouvement politique. Nous souhaitons également aborder des sujets plus larges, comme la place des documents politiques et militants dans les collections institutionnelles.

Archiving Potential History: Pop-up Art Libraries and the 2024 Student Protest Encampments
Speaker: Maggie McLaughlin

This presentation uses the 2024 student protest encampments for Palestine liberation as a lens to activate the art library’s potential for resistance, social justice work, and student activism. In particular, this presentation concerns one specific encampment at a large public university and its combination art tent, zine collection, and pop-up library that sat at the center of the camp. This triangulation established the space as one of creativity, critical inquiry, and mutual aid, leading to a series of interdisciplinary teach-ins with collaborations between teaching faculty and university librarians. Rooted in this case study, this presentation considers the generative entanglement between art libraries, student activism, and information literacy. This presentation views art libraries as sites full of possibility and potential to document and archive a history of diversity and dissent. It offers activating the art library as a space of messiness and movement, bringing together the study and practice of art in ways that help students assess their own critical and ethical engagement with the contemporary information landscape, especially as relates to social justice.

Art Students’ Resistance: Studying the Past, Informing the Future
Speaker: Rachel Resnik

In 1970 students across the United States held protests to oppose the Vietnam War. On May 4th at Kent State University four students were killed and nine others were injured during one such protest. Twenty-eight National Guard troops had fired 67 rounds of bullets at the protesting students.

Already involved in the anti-war movement and enraged by the killings at Kent State, Massachusetts College of Art (MassArt) joined a national student strike. Classes were canceled and faculty and students engaged in community service projects. The most enduring project, The Graphic Workshop, operated from 1970-1992. Over its two decades in operation, the Workshop produced hundreds of silk-screened posters with styles and subjects reflecting the group’s changing priorities. The MassArt Archive holds many examples of Graphic Workshop posters; 162 examples are now available in the JStor Image Library.

The similarities between the state of affairs in 1970 and those today are striking. How can the work created in the early Seventies by the Graphic Workshop inform our interactions with students today? How can these posters inspire us to use our fear and frustration to make works of resistance that are meaningful, beautiful, and enduring?

Libraries curate and host exhibitions for a range of contexts and purposes, and exhibitions are a popular means of public scholarship and outreach. For many library workers, however, these responsibilities are often secondary to their primary duties or job functions, requiring additional labor and frequently with limited or no formal training. This panel will explore how four different librarians, representing museum, academic, and art spaces, began working on exhibition projects and learned curatorial practices. Additionally, the panel will discuss how curatorial projects fit into their standard library work and broader library goals.

Curation and exhibition design are intersecting skills that draw from a variety of disciplines to advance information literacy, visual storytelling, and pedagogical practice in physical and digital spaces. In these spaces, library workers serve in multiple roles, including student mentors, visual educators, creative designers, and program managers. By translating our expertise and talents into exhibitions, we can create transformative experiences for our communities, whether through works of art or library resources. This viewpoint, which highlights creativity, authorship, and collaboration, serves as an act of resistance against the framing of librarians as customer service drones. More than a display of objects, exhibition work provides an important avenue of expression, scholarship, and creative growth.

A Library Exhibition Program for Everyone: Coordinating Both Library- and Community-Led Exhibits
Speaker: Heather Koopmans

What does one need to lead an exhibits program that includes library-initiated exhibits as well as those developed by members of an academic community? Heather Koopmans will share how she learned on-the-job to review and select exhibits as part of a program, co-plan exhibits with faculty and library peers (bridging departments and disciplines), showcase faculty- and student-generated art in the library, and evolve the program in alignment with changing priorities.

Back to School: Library Lessons in Museum Studies
Speaker: Jacob Lackner

How do museum studies and librarianship intersect in the world of exhibitions? Jacob Lackner will discuss leading a museum and exhibitions team, curating exhibits alongside students and faculty, and the experience of learning as a student in a museum studies MA program.

The Art of Museum Library Exhibitions: Combining Diverse Skills to Foster Creative Curation
Speaker: Rebekah S. Boulton

Rebekah Boulton is a museum librarian working in a public-facing reading room, and curates exhibitions of library materials within the museum’s exhibitions program and hosts related public programming. Like many librarians, Boulton came to this work with no formal exhibitions training, and draws from her background in art history and library studies to consider all aspects of curation to be able to convey the meaning and merit of materials to audiences.

Learning on Display: Curatorial Praxis in an Academic Art Library
Speaker: Courtney Hunt

Speaking from experiences at a public R1 university, Courtney Hunt will share how she learned to curate through the staging of a semester-long exhibition containing library and special collections materials as well as art. Hunt will also speak about running an exhibitions program of student/staff work in a standalone fine arts library.

Working in a museum library combines aspects of academic, special and public librarianship. Speakers in this session will present on the unique issues facing museum libraries and librarians.

Forging a Library-Museum Partnership: Creativity, Exploration, and Resistance
Speaker: Jacob Lackner

After the Oxford College Library and the Michael C. Carlos Museum were brought together as part of organizational realignment at Emory University, library and museum staff began to build a formalized partnership for the first time. The goal of this endeavor was to bring museum collections, resources, and personnel to a new audience at a new campus. Collaboration started with small meetings and building internal teams with relevant stakeholders. This created a foundation for lending artwork, planning and constructing a dedicated exhibition space, and guest speaking during library instruction. The process has required a commitment to cooperation, resource sharing, flexibility, and patience, but has already achieved exciting results. Museum resources enabled the library to bring more diverse voices onto the Oxford College campus, including works by contemporary African and contemporary Indigenous artists, as well as displaying an exhibit of works on paper that was co-curated with an Oxford College faculty member.

As an act of resistance, this collaboration stands against the dominant view that undergraduate education should prioritize job training and narrow pathways over humanistic inquiry and digressions into the arts. Instead, this project encourages students to resist the pressure of productivity, look at something unexpected in the library, and ask questions about the relationship between art, information, and society. Additionally, the project resists the idea that museum collections must always remain in the museum, giving them new context and new viewers in a new place. Established pieces from the collection can be reinterpreted by taking up residence amidst busy students, student artwork, and book stacks.

Attendees will learn strategies and takeaways for planning library-museum collaboration and be encouraged to see how similar partnerships can advance long-term goals at their institutions. Libraries and museums can learn much from each other, and joining forces can leave both institutions better prepared for the challenges of the future.

Catalogues of the World: Building a Universal Archive
Speaker: Holly Phillips

Launched in 2001, the Contemporary Catalogs Project (CCP) is an initiative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library to actively collect and preserve contemporary art gallery exhibition catalogs from around the world. Led by library staff with support from interns and volunteers, the project entails identifying galleries, requesting catalogs, recording solicitations, and acknowledging donors. The project goals are: to preserve publications for future researchers; acquire materials while they are still readily available; represent living artists as inclusively and globally as possible; and expand collecting beyond dominant networks of publishers and distributors.

Through sustained outreach and the generosity of galleries worldwide, the library has acquired more than 25,000 publications, representing 60 countries and over 10 languages. In 2020, the project was expanded to include PDF catalogs, which Watson is requesting, archiving, and making publicly available for online viewing and download. More than 5,700 gallery catalog PDFs are now available directly through WorldCat, Watsonline (our online catalog), and downloadable as an entire collection in MARC format record sets.

This presentation will include an overview of the workflow and tracking documentation developed for the project, highlights and key takeaways, and introduce a newly launched landing page and online index.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Korea
Speaker: J. Vera Lee

This original archival research focuses on the role of the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA; formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts (HAA)) in a seminal stateside exhibition of Korean National Treasures. Robert Griffing, then-Director of HAA, became interested in sponsoring an exhibition of Korean National Treasures as a member of the UNESCO-International Commission of Museums (ICOM; 1947). When the Korean War erupted in 1951, and national treasures in peril were packed and moved from the National Museum of Korea (NMK) in Seoul to Pusan, Griffing offered HAA as a haven for Korean National Treasures to Kim Chewon, NMK Director. Griffing and Kim’s correspondence reveals a framework of influence and power linked to narrating national identity through the objects of the eventual 1957 exhibition (that originated with the National Gallery of Art). I evaluate the making of this exhibition as a precursor to current events around national representation in art museums and libraries. On a more modest scale, I have reformatted my position and labor as a museum librarian to include research and writing. Altogether, I read power and roles that undergird either exhibitions or workflows through a Critical Librarianship lens, to highlight opportunities for resistance, whether geo-political, organizational, or narrative.

How can libraries, museums, and the vendors they partner with embody resistance in the face of privatization, censorship, and inequity? This panel will explore an emerging partnership between Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), an organization dedicated to preserving and providing access to media art, and Pratt Institute Libraries, which is working to expand ethical, sustainable access to these collections. Positioning themselves as allies rather than vendors, EAI is actively developing initiatives that resist barriers to access by highlighting marginalized art histories, supporting educators in underfunded schools, and collaborating with organizations such as Art Resources Transfer to distribute publications and curricula to public libraries and prison systems.

The panel will examine how libraries, artists, and cultural organizations can collaborate to resist exploitative market dynamics, expand access to underrepresented voices, and preserve media art as a vital cultural record. Rebecca Cleman, Executive Director of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), will outline EAI’s mission and history of providing educational access to media art, with a focus on the Educational Streaming Service and recent partnerships with academic institutions. Nelson Henricks, a Montreal-based educator and artist with media art in distribution through Video Data Bank, will discuss his experience using EAI in the classroom. Matthew Garklavs, the Electronic Resources Librarian at Pratt Institute Libraries, will address his collaboration with EAI to develop a shared cataloging infrastructure and reflect on working with vendors to support sustainable, long-term access to educational resources.

While touching upon current developments in the field, this panel will position collaborations between vendors, libraries, and creators not as transactional relationships but as opportunities for solidarity and shared purpose. In contrast to conventional subscription models, EAI is piloting new pathways, such as subsidized streaming for schools and open sharing of MARC records, that align with libraries’ commitments to openness and equitable access. By including an artist’s voice, the panel will also foreground the stakes for creators whose works risk invisibility without the stewardship of organizations committed to long-term preservation and accessibility.

Anchored in Montreal, a city with a deep history of cultural resistance, this panel will resonate with the conference theme by showing how art information professionals can transform professional practice into a form of resistance, expanding access, amplifying marginalized histories, and reimagining collaborative partnerships over commerce.

Returning for its twentieth year, New Voices in the Profession provides professionals who are new to art librarianship or visual resources work the opportunity to present topics from exceptional coursework, such as a master's thesis, or topics with which they are engaged early in their professional life. New professionals are defined as either students in MLIS or Master's programs leading to a career in art librarianship or visual resources, or those within five years of Master's level study. For many, this is their first professional speaking engagement.

This panel began at the ARLIS/NA 2006 Annual Conference in Banff and has since received wide attention and praise. Topics presented reveal new ideas as well as different ways of thinking about established concepts. Speakers give the conference attendees a glimpse of academic interests and current discourses of the newest ARLIS/NA members.

The New Voices session is organized by the Professional Development Committee, ArLiSNAP, and the Student Advancement Awards Subcommittee.

Dusting Off the Artist Files: Early Career Collaborations in Art Librarianship, Cataloguing and Archives
Speaker: Kate Nugent
From 1969 to 2014, the librarians at the Bibliothèque des arts de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) collected ephemera that documented the activities of Canadian artists, galleries and exhibitions in the form of artist files. Until recently, these files—which predominantly relate to Québécois artists and local Montreal galleries—were not discoverable in the library catalogue, and were thus rarely consulted by students. To evaluate the significance of the artist files and the feasibility of integrating them into the library catalogue, a student was recruited as part of an internship in an MLIS program. Following her recommendations, the cataloguing team at UQAM decided to prioritise the artist files and began processing the collection to make it discoverable and accessible to students.
This presentation will outline my experience as an early-career cataloguing librarian processing artist files, an experience that builds on my previous archival work and my background in art history. I will discuss the challenges of the project, how I combined cataloguing and archival standards, and the experience of working with a student as an early professional. This presentation ultimately advocates for collaboration in these projects—between departments, between students and librarians—and encourages new professionals to take on these projects as a way to learn and grow.

Mexican Bracero Railroaders in the United States During World War II: An Endangered History
Speaker: Emily Mizokami, Gerd Muehsam Award 2026
More than 136,000 Mexican citizens came to the United States during World War II to work the most grueling railroad jobs through a contractual agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments. At the war's end, they were all immediately and unceremoniously sent back to Mexico. And yet, few have heard their stories. The railroaders were part of the larger bracero program which primarily employed farm workers. The railroad arm of the program lasted only two and half years, while the agricultural branch went on for 22 years. The short duration of the program, combined with the difficulty of accessing archival records documenting living and working conditions, explains the lack of a robust selection of comprehensive literature and public awareness about World War II bracero railroaders. If the bracero program is featured in scholarly journals, it is rare for the railroad braceros to be provided more than a passing mention. If one walks through the exhibit spaces in North America's premiere railroad museums, one will not see these men represented in photographs, documents, or railroad art. To raise awareness and encourage further research, this presentation provides a brief history of the railroad bracero program, a review of existing literature on the understudied topic, and thoughts as to why we still know so little about these men and their contributions.

The Role of Fellowships in Early Career Development
Speaker: De’Ivyion “Ivy” Drew
What is the role of library fellowships in early-career development? This presentation will cover the fellowship experiences of the UNC Chapel Hill Primary Source Teaching Fellowship and the Yale Kress Fellowship in Art Librarianship. MLIS students gain expertise of daily library activities through work practicums in settings that interest them; however, these practicums lack the ability to expose students to a wide variety of librarianship paths, often limited to the setting/context of the hosting institution. Both fellowships feature self-directed project deliverables and collaborative structures designed to address the gap MLIS students experience navigating the paths of librarianship.
The Primary Sources Teaching Fellowship is funded by a three-year (2022 to 2025) grant from the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program and has library alumni that have made significant contributions to public institutions, private institutions, and cultural heritage institutions. In comparison, for almost 30 years, the Kress Foundation, Yale University Libraries, and the Yale Center for British Art together have supported a fellowship for new library school graduates to engage in an immersive one-year experience in art librarianship. Kress Fellows who are selected and complete a capstone project continue their library career on an impressive trajectory, eventually becoming University Librarians, Directors of Fine Art and Architecture Libraries, and other major leadership positions.
Fellowship experience develops library confidence, expands library connections through networking, and can clarify which library roles align best, therefore significantly impacting an early-career librarian for their entire path in librarianship.

Breaking into Cataloging: Learning, Adapting, and Succeeding
Speaker: Madeline (Maddie) Hayko (she/her)
Cataloging, a field that many young professionals are interested in, yet most receive little to no training before being thrown headfirst into a professional cataloging position. Once in a new position, where does one turn for resources, support, and how does one gain confidence in cataloging? In my presentation “Breaking into Cataloging: Learning, Adapting, and Succeeding” I discuss my background in cataloging before accepting a full-time position, reflect on my first year as a cataloger, and what I learned to be initially successful. I will share resources and connections that help me gain confidence in my cataloging abilities and how I adapt while learning the standards of the trade. Lastly, I convey how a new professional can feel successful in cataloging even with little to no prior experience or guidance. This presentation is for those interested in cataloging, new catalogers, and for professionals experiencing imposter syndrome in a very technical field.

#madeinquebec

Don't have a lot of time? Join us for some "p'tite vite" (lightning talks) covering a variety of topics in art librarianship.

Errand into the Maze: Untangling Photograph Vertical File Cataloguing Practices
Speakers: Sarah Fischer, Angela Rapp

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division photograph vertical files are among the most utilized of our collections. As dance is an ephemeral art form, these photographs are often some of the only visual documentation of choreographic works. Maintaining artificial collections at institutions as vast as the New York Public Library provides its own challenges and we questioned if our vertical files were truly available for “ready reference” in our reading room. In the fall of 2024, we began to actively remediate stub catalog records for our photograph files to improve their searchability and create more access points.

We will discuss our ongoing process to update all stub records from preexisting formats to RDA standard, as well as increase authorized authority files and local subject headings listed. This work will allow patrons to gain a stronger, more comprehensive understanding of what they will receive in our reading room. In addition, these controlled access points increase the visibility of underrepresented dance artists and companies. This project could also serve as a future model for remediation of other vertical files in our collections and for similar institutions that prioritize accessibility and service.

DIY Scholarship: Zines in Academic Libraries
Speaker: Autumn Wetli-Staneluis

Zines are gaining visibility on college campuses through both teaching and creation, and in academic libraries as part of archives or circulating collections. Zines are often archived as ephemera reflecting specific times, places, and cultures, while others provide extracurricular support for students’ personal lives and, in teaching contexts, zines can serve as outlets for creative self-expression. This talk will focus on zines within a scholarly realm. It will begin by briefly defining the zine and how it often appears in academia and outline the development and purpose behind a new circulating zine collection at a large academic library. Key considerations for libraries developing similar collections will be provided. The main emphasis of this talk though, will be on how zines can function as a valuable supplement to traditional, academic scholarship. Zines contribute meaningful work that complements, yet exists outside of, traditional publishing avenues, offering unique insights and showcasing scholarship that challenges conventional publishing models. Zines can elevate marginalized voices, address controversial or complex issues, and add a personal dimension to scholarly output. They can serve as easily accessible resources, often written in plain language rather than academic jargon, that spark interest in a topic and may even inspire students to pursue their own scholarly work outside traditional publishing realms. This is particularly significant because standard scholarly publishing can exclude diverse contributions due to Eurocentric, historically imposed definitions of what constitutes “scholarly work.” The speaker will share several examples from their library’s zine collection that illustrate this role of the zine in scholarly research.

Self-Publishing as Resistance: The Role of Artist-Run Centres in Collecting Small Press Publishing
Speaker: Tess Davey

Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre with a 51-year history of exhibiting, publishing, collecting, and distributing printed works by contemporary artists. Recently our organization has placed a growing emphasis on placing small-press and self-published titles in libraries and special collections. This endeavour expands on our founding incentive as an artist run-centre and collection agency devoted to the documentation, archiving and distribution of all the images, by emphasizing the power of cultivating library partnerships to increase the circulation of publications that are sourced directly from the artists who produce them. By distributing a large number of self-published and small press works, Art Metropole has historically been a channel for marginalized groups to distribute works by and for their communities. Our ever-expanding inventory of zines, artists’ books and multiples is a testimony to the relationship between artists’ publishing and underground networks of resistance and information sharing. A core tenet of our mandate is ensuring such works enter the historical record, so establishing direct relationships with artists and librarians through our Library Services Program and inventory channels is a key emphasis of our organization.

Shake Those Assets! Using Special Events to Promote Your Hidden Collections
Speaker: Nicole O’Hara

Academic libraries’ institutional archives can be one of the most underutilized resources on campus. Tucked away in locked rooms and filled with crumbling papers and yellowing photographs, they’re ubiquitous yet largely invisible. Their hidden nature and limited accessibility make it difficult to secure the funding and staffing needed for long-term care—especially at smaller institutions.

In this lightning talk, one librarian will share how the library used their institution’s bicentennial celebration to showcase and strengthen support for our archives. The biggest challenge faced: in 200 years, the university has never had a dedicated archivist. Archival policy-making, acquisitions, arrangement and preservation have always been handled piecemeal, as time and resources allowed.

By leveraging exhibitions, social media, cross-campus collaborations, and special events, the library put these collections in the spotlight. This visibility revealed their value not only for scholarship, but also for promoting the university and situating it within the broader community. As a result, administrators, board members, donors, alumni, and community partners are now engaged with the archives—and far more likely to champion their preservation.

Attendees at this talk will learn about how they can shine light on their hidden collections to gain support for long term archival management and care.

Don't have a lot of time? Join us for some "p'tite vite" (lightning talks) covering a variety of topics in art librarianship.

Artworks as Records: Healing Archival Absences in a Disability Arts Collection through Community Partnership
Speakers: Noa Ryan, Maylyn Iglesias, Kailee Faber

The Organization was a nonprofit active in the New York City area from the late 1960s through the 2010s that provided arts workshops and studio space and resources to people with severe mental illness and/or developmental disability with a history of institutionalization. From the 1970s-2010s, the organization maintained what they referred to as an “archive” of artworks created by members in workshops hosted in mental healthcare institutions or as part of the studio program. The records are mostly artworks on paper created in a variety of mediums, from painting to drawing to collage.

In our presentation, we will provide a brief overview of the collection, grant project, and processing approach before centering our talk on the unique strengths and challenges associated with incorporating community voices in archival processing. We will discuss the research, outreach, and ethics components of working with materials from underrepresented artists in the disability arts community. We’ll also address the challenges related to tackling a large-scale grant project with limited resources. We will close by describing our future goals for building out this collection with oral histories, activating the material with programming, using the artworks as educational tools, and engaging in further community collaboration.

Mapping Post-War Artistic Networks with Semantic Technologies
Speaker: Calista Donohoe

Art librarianship often operates in spaces where information is fragmented, siloed, or restricted. In this context, resistance can take the form of experimentation to create more open, flexible, and interconnected systems of information. This lightning talk will present the Roma/New York, 1948–1964 pilot project, an experimental initiative that demonstrates how knowledge graphs can model complex art historical narratives and serve as a mode of resistance within art librarianship.

This lightning talk will reflect on the process of developing the pilot, from identifying entities in the Celant/Costantini text to modeling relationships with attention to time and place. It will also address challenges encountered in translating narrative accounts into structured data, including issues of granularity, ambiguity, and alignment with other vocabularies.

Most importantly, this presentation will reflect on the broader implications of linked data as a cultural commitment to resistance through openness, collaboration, and connection. By resisting the fragmentation and privatization of information, art librarians can use linked open data to reveal connections across collections, geographies, and histories. The Roma/New York pilot shows that even small-scale, experimental initiatives can model a future where knowledge is more connected, accessible, and resilient.

Overcoming Student Resistance through providing Reference Services through the Writing/Tutoring Center
Speaker: Martha Neth

Academic libraries need to reimagine reference services in response to shifting student needs and changing patterns of campus engagement. One promising model integrates reference support directly into the writing and tutoring center, bringing research assistance to where students already seek academic help. This approach reduces barriers to library use, embeds research skill development into existing support networks, and creates a seamless pathway between tutoring, writing support, and research guidance. Students who resist traditional reference services can be reached more directly. And conversely, students who resist tutoring services may be brought into the fold through reference work.

This lightning talk will share a case study of implementing reference services in a tutoring center environment, highlighting how cross-trained tutors can address both research and writing challenges in a single interaction. Attendees will learn strategies for staff training, workflow integration, and marketing to students. I will explain how this approach fosters collaboration between librarians and tutoring staff, creates more authentic research consultations, and increases students’ confidence in navigating information resources.

Resisting Loss in the Performing Arts: Preserving At-Risk Media
Speaker: Olivia Buck

This lightning talk examines a digital preservation initiative launched in Spring 2025 at the Juilliard School to safeguard more than thirty years of archival performance recordings originally captured on VHS. In partnership with a digitization vendor, the project preserves student and faculty performances alongside masterclasses led by internationally recognized artists. This project positions digital preservation methodologies as a means of resisting the material and structural realities that commonly threaten time-based performing arts media. Attendees will gain practical insight into how art information professionals can apply preservation and descriptive strategies to support access to fragile, ephemeral, and at-risk audiovisual materials.

Mapping Memory: The Digital Lifecycle of the Architectural Postcard
Speakers: Riley Mang, Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez

This talk presents the digitization, preservation, and exhibition of the Frank Wayde Hall Postcard Collection, a unique archive of over 13,500 postcards documenting architecture and urban life from around the world, with a particular focus on New York City. Acquired by the Architecture Library at The City College of New York in 2016, the collection captures streetscapes, buildings, and skylines that no longer exist, offering rare insights into the evolution of urban environments and the lived experiences of city residents.

The project, led by the Chief Architecture Librarian, combined archival scholarship, technical digitization, and public exhibition to make these ephemeral materials accessible to researchers, students, and the public. In collaboration, the team addressed both curatorial and technical challenges, including metadata creation, digital stewardship using JSTOR and Omeka platforms, and the translation of a complex archival collection into an engaging online exhibit.

The talk will highlight the process of turning this large-scale archival collection into a research-ready and pedagogically valuable resource, emphasizing decision-making in digital curation, collaborative project management, and platform-specific strategies. Attendees will gain practical guidance for similar initiatives, as well as an understanding of the scholarly potential of visual ephemera for architecture, urban history, and cultural studies.

By integrating conceptual research leadership with hands-on technical execution, this presentation demonstrates how digitization projects can transform historical collections into accessible, impactful resources for both academic and public audiences.