Artists' Publications at MoMA Library @hamermanpracticum16-blog - Tumblr Blog

Journal : April 28

I am entering the final stretch of my fellowship, and working hard to get as many items as I can cataloged before the end of my tenure. Because David is away this week, he has sent me several boxes of new artists’ books to catalog. Some of these were shortlisted the Anamorphosis Prize, which awards outstanding photobooks with cash prizes and inclusion in MoMA Library’s collection. For these books, I added a note in the 500 field that indicated that they were shortlisted for the prize. Many of the remaining books that I cataloged were purchased at the 2015 NY Art Book Fair; as these were still new and printed in small runs, many were not yet cataloged by other libraries.

I also got the chance today to interview Danny Fermon about artists’ book cataloging. Danny’s thoughtful responses and many years of experience helped clarify many of the questions I had for my final project. We discussed the controlled vocabularies used for cataloging at MoMA, and the way that the FRBR ( “Work, Expression, Manifestation, Item”) model applies to the experimental medium of artists’ books. Additionally, I brought up the new ARLIS artists’ book thesaurus, which Danny explained had not yet been reviewed for adoption by MoMA. One of the interesting points of discussion was the artists’ book call number system, which was created for the full library collection before MoMA switched to Library of Congress. Because it still makes sense for artists’ books to be shelved alphabetically by author, this system was retained for this section of the collection. Danny and I also discussed how understaffing in many areas creates backlogs and affects the library’s ability to make materials available to the public. It was a great talk that gave me a new perspective on my work at the library.

Journal : April 21

I spent the first half of the day cataloging a box of priority artists’ books sent to me from David in Queens. The work went pretty smoothly. We also received all of the books shortlisted for the Anamorphosis photobook prize, which I will catalog next week with a note indicating that they were prize winners.

The afternoon was the most exciting part of the day: David and I arranged a studio visit to Small Editions, an artists’ book publisher based in Red Hook. We met with Corina, the founder, who showed us a range of Small Editions publications and told us about the project’s history and vision. What makes Small Editions unique is that they release fine-press, limited edition projects by contemporary artists alongside more affordable zines and artists’ books. Small Editions works closely with artists who might identify as painters, sculptors or new media artists to realize a project in book form. They produce 6-8 artists’ books a year, as well as a variety of commissions for art and design clients to fund the publishing collaborations. Corina’s thoughtful approach, strong personal connections with collaborating artists, and vibrant aesthetic sense made each work exciting.

These kind of studio visits are a big part of David’s collection development strategy. It’s less the way an academic library would work with a distributor than the way a museum curator would work with an artist, getting to know them personally and keeping track of their development over the years. This kind of approach is really refreshing, because it diminishes the perception of libraries as stuffy or rarefied spaces and allows librarians to become active participants in the life cycle of artists’ networks.

Journal : April 14th

Today was another productive day of artists’ book cataloging. I was able to to get through two boxes of books, including some materials from Boabooks, a small press that produces innovative “artists’ notebooks” with illustrative content and tear-out pages. I identified a good amount of materials that would need original cataloging, a project that will certainly still need attention after my fellowship is complete.

We also received the proof back of our article from the editor of Art Libraries Journal. David and I read through and suggested a few minor edits to the piece: an image placement, a misplaced footnote, etc. I submitted our suggestions back to Erica, the editor, by the end of the day. The journal also asked us to fill out a “copyright assessment form.” I was excited to learn that we have the option of publishing with a creative commons license. I think that the intended audience for our article about experimental artists’ publishing would not only be librarians, but also many in the arts community who may not have institutional access.

Journal : April 7

Today was mostly devoted to artists’ book cataloging again, and I ran into some challenges with my original cataloging. As it turned out, I had accidentally exported a few records in OCLC that were in-progress and supposed to remain in my “save file,” which is where OCLC lets individual catalogers store drafts of records. When the records were exported, they were able to be viewed by other libraries before they were fully completed -- another library noticed an incomplete record and brought it to our attention. Luckily, the problem only affected a small number of items, so I was able to work with Danny to fix them and change my workflow slightly so it wouldn’t happen again. This was definitely a challenge, but ultimately it taught me a good deal about some of the professional issues that arise with cataloging. I was ultimately able to copy-catalog a large number of artists’ books for the day.

This week was also the occasion of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, a major annual event through which the museum acquires special collections materials. I was able to attend the preview reception of the fair in the evening. A wide variety of things are on showcase at the fair, from early printing and botanical illustrations to literary first editions and modern and contemporary art books. There were several dealers whose offerings were very relevant to MoMA’s focus, such as Brian Cassidy, Harper’s, and Chez Les Librairies Associés. The event was also a great chance to chat and learn from other librarians and rare book enthusiasts. I hope to go back next year!

Journal: March 31

Today was a pretty exciting day! Late last year, the library received a donation of Guerrilla Girls posters and ephemera, and I was asked to assess the donation and work on a plan to make it accessible to researchers. I don’t have a great deal of experience with ephemera collections, so I worked with Danny and Sandy to figure out the best process. Milan forwarded me an inventory that was included with the donation, so the first step was to cross-check that against the contents of the boxes and update it as needed. It turned out that there were a large number of posters, stickers, invitations, and other items in the donation that weren’t listed, so I added those to the inventory. The materials related not just to the original Guerrilla Girls, but also to two related campaigns - Guerrilla Girls on Tour and Guerrilla Girls BroadBand. Much of the visual material was incredible, with striking statistics about womens’ issues in the arts and in society at large. I photographed a few posters and a sort of ‘protest banner’ and added them to the MoMA Tumblr -- see an example below!

After the Inventory was done, Danny and I discussed the next steps. Rehousing the materials would be next -- the smaller items would be moved to acid-free folders and document boxes, but we would have to figure out a way to store the posters flat without separating them from the rest of the collection - perhaps a large, flat document box could be used, with unbuffered acid free paper to separate the items. We would not catalog the items individually, but rather create a collection-level record in Millennium that would link to a PDF finding aid. Looking forward to working more with this collection over the remainder of the fellowship.

During my lunch break, a friend and I went to see the “Electro-Library” exhibition in the MoMA Library exhibition space. The exhibition is named after a manifesto by El Lissitzky and focuses on the typographic experimentation of the central and eastern European avant-gardes. Some of the magazines were canonical, but there were many lesser known publications from the Czech Republic, Poland and elsewhere.

I also worked on some original cataloging toward the end of the workday. I was feeling much more confident with the structure of the MARC record and the kinds of descriptive information and access points that we’d like to include in an artists’ book record.

Journal : March 24

It’s my first day back at MoMA Manhattan in a while, since I was away for the conference and the week of Spring Break. David has pulled another box of priority artists’ books for me to catalog. There were copy catalog records for many of the items. I ended up having a lot of questions for Danny, the senior cataloger, since it’s been a few weeks since I have done any cataloging. For instance, I learned some new things that I can set up in my OCLC “constant data” so that I have to make fewer changes once I import the records to Millennium ILS. I also got to have more fun with subject headings -- one of the best parts of artists’ book cataloging, as the subject matter of these books can often be downright bizarre! One of the best headings I used today was “Ham -- Pictorial works.”

I also went to the MoMA Bookstore with David to pick up a large number of new publications for the library. This is one of the main ways that we acquire books, especially exhibition catalogs and other ‘mainstream’ art publications. Other avenues of collecting would be donations from curatorial staff -- we received one of those today as well. David expressed that these donations can be a great source of materials from highly specialized collectors, but that it can also require a lot of staff time to go through the books and check for duplicates.

Journal: ARLIS/NA VRA Conference, March 8-12

This week I was lucky to be able to attend the ARLIS/VRA joint conference in Seattle as a recipient of the Celine Palatsky Award. This is my first professional conference so I’m really excited about it! I tried to select sessions to go to that were relevant to my work with artists’ books and collection development at MoMA. There was a great session on digital publications in the arts -- it was amazing to see how the informational and visual potential of the digital was being employed to enrich our understanding of cultural heritage. Also, most digital museum publications are open access! I also attended a great workshop on Wikipedia edit-a-thons and other models for incorporating Wikipedia into library workflows. There was lots of great content that I’ll write up in more detail in a blog post for the ARLIS/NY Chapter.

ARLIS was also an amazing chance to get to know other art information professionals from around the world and to reconnect with NYC colleagues. There were a good number of Pratt grads and students there, as well as some other NYARC folks and Ivy Blackman, my former supervisor from the Whitney Museum Library! I also enjoyed the sights, smells and tastes of Seattle and the events at the Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Public Library. I’m really looking forward to staying in touch with the colleagues I met at the conference, and I’ll hope to incorporate some of the ideas I was exposed to into my own professional work.

Journal: March 3

Today was our last day to work on the Art Libraries Journal before the deadline. We had gotten the text into a satisfying place, but still had to finish the bibliography and get high-resolution images and in some case permission to reproduce them. I took these tasks on since David is working on an exhibition that opens next week. Particularly, we needed to get a color version of an artists’ book diagram by Clive Phillpot, the former MoMA Library Director and an artists’ book scholar (see below). I asked Jenny Tobias if the library had this document in its collections, and we didn’t, so she offered to email Clive directly and ask for it!

He responded quickly with two high-resolution color diagrams, and we discussed the article a bit. Clive gave us permission to reproduce it, but he originally said he wanted it to be listed as “no copyright”. We suggested using a Creative Commons license, but he wasn’t so sure about that, so we settled on the caption “Image Courtesy of Clive Phillpot.” It was great to be able to chat with an art librarian who has been very influential to my approach and interests in the field.

I was able to get some artists’ book cataloging done today for a few hours, though the article was my focus again. I sent our final draft to the editors at the end of the day for approval. We’re really looking forward to seeing it in print. I’m also looking forward to the ARLIS conference next week!

#clive phillpot

Journal: February 28

Today I spent most of the day working from home on the article for Art Libraries Journal. We received a quick response from Paul Soulellis - he responded in great detail to our email interview, and even asked if he could publish it on his website! I spent much of the day incorporating quotes from the interview and Soulellis’ writings into the article, as well as adding some detail to the write-ups of specific publications. At the end of the day I passed the draft on to David so that he could build on some sections of the article.

Journal : February 25th

Earlier this week, I received an email from David Senior asking if I would like to collaborate with him on an article for Art Libraries Journal, a publication of ARLIS UK. The article would be a survey of artists’ publications that use digital culture as a source material for printed books, and how this genre expands upon earlier definitions of the artist’s book. This is a subject that I am very interested in, and that David and I have discussed throughout the course of the internship, so I was understandably excited to get to work on the article!

I spent the first few hours of the day doing research on some artists working in this genre that David had suggested: David Horvitz, Dexter Sinister, and Paul Soulellis among them. David had written a short draft, and it was my job to expand upon the themes. We sat down later in the day to discuss our ideas. I had long been interested in Soulellis’ project, Library of the Printed Web, an archive of “web-to-print” artists’ books, and his associated publication, Printed Web. I suggested that Soulellis’ writing about those projects would provide useful terminology around which we could structure the article and describe some of the tactics and implication of “web to print” email. David suggested that we interview Soulellis for the article!

We also discussed how to connect the topic to current issues in libraries. While the main focus was on building collections, we also thought that web archivists could get involved in preserving the web-based aspects of these projects. I am very excited to be working on this!

Journal : February 18

Today I focused entirely on artists’ book cataloging. It was a very productive day. By the time the afternoon rolled around, I was able to devote myself entirely to original cataloging. As I mentioned before, original cataloging for artists’ books can be a little complicated, as many of them don’t contain standard, “bookish” characteristics in the regular places, or require lots of physical description. To make things go more quickly, I selected a lot of zines published by Nieves Books and Innen Zines to catalog, because they had more straightforward formatting. Most of them were photography and drawing-based, but I had a lot of fun applying subject headings, as the subjects varied really widely! At the end of the day, I printed all of my records out and gave them to Danny to proofread.

Another interesting opportunity came up today: I spoke with Jenny Tobias about helping with the Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, which will take place on March 5th. Since it was founded three years ago, Art + Feminism has aimed to tackle the under-representation of women on Wikipedia, both as editors and as subjects of articles. I’ll be on “team library,” which basically means assisting attendees with getting started and finding reliable research resources, ideally open access ones. I am fairly new to Wikipedia, but I’m excited to learn more and challenge ingrained inequality and sexism at the same time! From what I know, a lot of articles are written at this event, but the main purpose isn’t getting volunteers to create content. It’s more about outreach and information literacy, about sharing practical, technical knowledge to change systems that have previously excluded us.

Journal : February 11

This week I got the opportunity to work more on artists’ book cataloging. As with the previous week, David sent a box of artists’ books from MoMA Queens for me to work through. In addition, I copy cataloged several new artists’ books that the library had just received, either through library staff selection or curator request.

In the afternoon, I made a trip uptown to Ursus Books, a dealer of rare and fine press books, to pick up a three-volume Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné. When I returned, I met with catalogers Danny Fermon and Sandy Sumano to go over Serials cataloging, with the example of Printed Web, an artists’ publication that I enjoy. Cataloging a serial entails including a few more fields in the MARC record, as well as creating Holdings records for each issue that the library has. It was a little complicated, and we laughed a lot, but I’m hoping to get the hang of it!

Journal : February 4

This week, I had a couple of downtown “field trips” to make for MoMA Library, to pick up recent donations from Tom Sachs’ artist studio and Artists’ Space gallery. I was already going to Artists’ Space on Wednesday night for a talk by critic Douglas Crimp, so I arrived at the event early to pick up the books from Richard, the gallery’s curator. We received two copies of a publication released in conjunction with Cameron Rowland’s current Artists Space exhibition, 91020000, which deals with labor and economy in the U.S. prison-industrial complex. The book is a pretty odd one: it’s an appropriated, unaltered reprint of the 2015 catalog of the National Corrections Industries Association. While the text does include some pretty unsavory information, it doesn’t contain any identification of Rowland as the artist of this “readymade” book. Should be an interesting one to catalog!

My next visit, to Tom Sachs’ studio, was a follow-up visit from last semester. We acquired a large collection of Sachs’ zines and artists’ books, and today I headed back to the studio to pick up a boxed set that they were holding for MoMA Library. The first floor of Sachs’ studio is outfitted as Tom Sachs Bodega. It’s open to the public and looks pretty much like your standard corner store, except that alongside candy and cigarettes you can by zines and other affordable artworks. Slip behind the plexiglas wall and you’ll find a team of studio assistants hard at work! The Bodega has artist-led events most weekends, and I’m hoping to head back to check those out.

Back at the library, I received another large stack of artists’ books to catalog. I’m feeling a little under the weather today, so work has been slow, but in all I cataloged just over 30 items, about six of which were original records. I’m definitely starting to feel more confident as a cataloger! The materials I worked with today were pretty wide-ranging, from 1960s concrete poetry to recent non-narrative comics and print-on-demand photobooks.

#moma library #moma #artists' books #pratt institute #practicum

Journal - January 28

Today was almost strictly a cataloging day for me. David sent me a bankers’ box full of new-ish artists’ book materials from the backlog in MoMA. Many were zines and photobooks acquired at the Art Book Fair in recent years. The work went pretty quickly, as almost all of the items had Copy Catalog records in OCLC. I was able to create records for all of the materials in the box, and I was satisfied to make so many new and interesting works accessible to researchers! Another intereresting -- though not entirely pleasant -- task that I took on today was shipping an unsolicited artist’s book back to an artist. The book was well crafted and limited edition, but was not within the Library’s core scope and came with a very high price tag. I don’t much like writing rejection letters, but it was useful to reflect upon the fact that a library doesn’t have the budget or the shelf space to collect everything.

#Moma #moma library #cataloging #artists' books #pratt institute #practicum

Journal: January 21

Today is my first day back for the Spring Semester at MoMA Library. In my first semester at MoMA, I was introduced to a variety of aspects of collection development and cataloging at the library. MoMA’s collection has a strong focus on the history of artist’s publishing since 1900, tracing the lineage from the avant-garde magazines of the pre-WWI years to the “democratic multiples” of the 1960s and 1970s to today’s experiments in artists’ books and publishing. Because many artists’ books are not distributed through mainstream channels, MoMA’s Bibliographer, David Senior, works very closely with individual artists and small publishers throughout the acquisitions process. It was very enjoyable to participate in this process during the first semester of the fellowship, conducting studio visits, meeting with artists one-on-one at the Library, and surveying the field at art book fairs. I was able to help out in the Classroom at the New York Art Book Fair, as well as attend Editions/Artists’ Books and Comic Arts Brooklyn to meet with vendors and get a sense of the offerings there. In my weekly work at MoMA, I also corresponded with rare book dealers, galleries, artists, and publishers about acquiring works for the collection.

My main project at MoMA, however, has been cataloging the Library’s Artist Book Frontlog. The Frontlog includes a wide variety of artists’ books acquired over the last ten years that do not have complete records in Arcade (the NYARC libraries’ OPAC). The Frontlog comprised one bay of shelving in the Manhattan stacks, and within the first semester, I was able to copy catalog all of the materials with records in OCLC and identify all of those that needed original cataloging. One of the most interesting -- and challenging -- things about working with this collection is that many artists’ books lack, or actively subvert, the major identifying features that make up a MARC record. This has resulted in many lively, often humorous, conversations with Danny Fermon, MoMA’s Senior Cataloger.

Today, I met with Danny for a learning session on original cataloging, which will comprise much of my work this semester. We went over how to work within the structures of MARC and RDA, how do deal with the “fixed fields” of the records, and how to assign subject headings. MoMA always assigns an AAT Artists’ Book heading (in the 655 field), though we also use other Library of Congress Subject Headings where appropriate. Judicious selection of these headings can be important: if the artist is not well-known, searching by subject heading might be the only way a researcher finds an item! I think that I will really enjoy the creative, informational, and ethical challenges of artist’s book cataloging in the upcoming semester.

#moma library #moma #artists' books #library #pratt institute #practicum #cataloging

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