Shifting to remote work, part 2

I have been fortunate in some regards, as much of my daily work in our department was fairly easily translated into remote work, especially after I gained access to our servers. I have encountered roadblocks attempting to help staff and the public with reference requests - a substantial portion of our physical image archives have yet to be digitally cataloged or imaged, so they are inaccessible. My work assisting with the development of our department’s new order management system and museum’s new digital asset management system have continued during this time. I have created new keyword lists, a data dictionary for all museum users, and have spent a good bit of time testing functionality and reviewing existing documentation. So too has my own work improving documentation about the physical and digital archive - in the form of a completely revised section of our departmental standard operating procedures and revised protocol for metadata creation and quality control, for example.  

Our department was still hosting an intern when we transitioned to remote work, and my co-mentor and I had to adjust quickly in order to continue to support this student. While we no longer had the chance to continue archives digitization and photography studio work, we are able to shift our focus in order to continue providing learning opportunities. We met weekly and discussed ideas surrounding work in libraries, archives, and museums. These conversations were organic, and it was a welcome standing meeting on my calendar. Staff across our department also created a series of presentations on different topics: my co-mentor provided a walk-through of how to edit photographs she and the intern had worked on together, another staff member provided a deep dive into complex image editing in Photoshop, and I provided one on metadata and another on cultural heritage imaging standards and quality control. This was certainly not the ideal outcome for this internship - effectively cut short by a pandemic - but it was encouraging to know we could still connect. I hope we’ll be able to welcome our intern back someday soon, once we are no longer living in a socially-distanced world, to give this student a proper thank-you for all her hard work.

In July, new changes came in the form of layoffs and a museum-wide restructuring. My role shifted and title changed, and I became a part of the newly reimagined Research Center. I will now be a part of a centralized Archives unit, that is comprised of the Art, Architecture, and Design collection, Institutional Archives, and the Imaging Archives. Given my need to continue focusing on physical and born digital materials created by the Imaging team, I will still work closely with my old department. There are still many questions that remain about what this change will look like and how I’ll work with my colleagues. But if I’ve learned nothing else in 2020, it’s that I need to take things one day at a time.

Watching this small garden grow has been grounding

Abruptly adjusting to working remotely during a pandemic has been challenging. It has been hard balancing the realities of life outside of work with the needs and demands of our museum. If nothing else, I am glad to be learning and growing both because of and in spite of what we’re collectively facing. I feel fortunate to have retained my job (so far). I sincerely hope that our institution, our field, and our society as a whole can recover from this reality.

Shifting to remote work, part 1

On March 13, the museum where I work made the announcement that it would be closing for the next two weeks due to COVID-19. This decision came after several weeks of mounting cases of the virus in the US. Commuting by public transit, I felt increasingly nervous during this time - apparently so too did many staff, as our leadership emailed the day prior to the announcement about our concerns expressed via the museum’s all staff email account. It became much more clear how real the situation was when word came that week of the Metropolitan Museum of Art opting to shutter temporarily. It felt like a matter of time before our museum did the same.

That Friday, we arrived at work with notice from our division head that we should begin creating a contingency plan for our department, just in case, that would cover: what equipment or resources we would need access to in order to work remotely; what work would need to be put on hold; and what projects we could turn our attention to while out of the office. Since our department was without a department head, the other manager and I turned our attention to building out a plan with our team. While there was no official word yet that the museum would be closing, it seemed best to prepare as if that were the case. Staff began gathering files onto external harddrives, requesting access for museum-owned laptops in order to get VPN access, and tending to any tasks they could only do while on site. Word finally came late in the afternoon that the museum would indeed be closing for two weeks.

Given the nature of our department’s work - photographing and managing the images that document the collections, exhibitions, people, and daily events at the museum - we knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible to translate much of this to remote working. The other manager and I had developed a list of items we could accomplish, namely working on documentation for various aspects of our work and boosting professional development. These two areas had repeatedly fallen by the wayside as a steady stream of high priority projects and a shrinking department kept the entire team busy. We broke these categories down with subtasks and proceeded to prioritize each to create a general plan. 

We also started to generate some “norms” for communication and check-ins. Given the highly collaborative nature of much of our department’s work, we knew it would be a substantial adjustment needing to proactively reach out to communicate with colleagues. We opted to set a standard for daily “stand-up” meetings at the start, to allow a forum for folks to connect, and to help provide guidance on what to do or troubleshooting on technology issues. As a second part of these meetings, we also tagged on a reading and discussion group. These would be focused around an article, white paper, video, or some other media that related in some way to our work. One staff member would be the leader and facilitate the discussion, all other staff would participate in the conversation. This responsibility would rotate among all staff on the team.

The following Monday, we all began working remotely, most of us for the first time ever while employed at the museum. Our daily meetings took up an hour to two hours daily in the first couple of weeks. Folks started easing into the documentation work our department had long put off. As we got the news from our leadership that the shutdown would continue for at least the next month, we spread our meetings out and reduced the frequency of our reading and discussion groups. Our stand-up meetings took on a concrete agenda, with prompts for each staff member to respond to: what have you been working on, what are you planning on working on, and what’s been keeping you busy outside of work? The team then dove into any questions we might want to get clarity on from leadership, specific technology issues we were facing, and resources we could share with one another. We also gained some breathing room around the projects we wanted to focus on - instead of needing to get this work done in two short weeks, we had much more time to reflect, write, and revise. 

Views from my home office.

As the weeks turned into months, we have continued to iterate on how we gather as a team, how often we do this, and the time we meet. We have also embraced flexibility as it relates to working on documentation. We have moved deadlines, shifted responsibilities, and allowed other unanticipated work to take the center stage when necessary. It has been challenging to juggle all this, especially in a completely new and largely unplanned for context. But it has been encouraging to see our department come together in ways we never previously had, to see staff more comfortable with expressing their opinions and asking for adjustments. It feels like we have all grown from this experience, difficult though it has been.

Virtual MLIS graduation

I graduated with a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San Jose State University’s (SJSU) iSchool program in May 2020. I started this program back in January 2018, and this time felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. I went into my courses not knowing what to expect, but I’ve walked away having gained so much - breadth and depth of knowledge about information science, practical information for archival and digital asset management work, and new friends and mentors. Working full-time while taking two classes each semester was challenging, but I feel so fortunate to have put much of what I’ve learned to use in my job.

Celebrating digitally

Due to COVID-19, the in-person graduation ceremony for SJSU was postponed, and our ceremony was held online. Additionally, the iSchool created a website to gather information about the graduating class, award recipients, and the virtual graduation ceremony. Here’s my page on the iSchool website. Both venues - while not a 1:1 replacement for an in-person experience - provided a sense of closure and an opportunity to reflect and celebrate, which I appreciated. My family had the chance to attend the virtual ceremony, even while living hundreds of miles away, and it was great to surprise them with the news that I had received the Director’s Award for Excellence in Intellectual Inquiry.

Student speaker Sharaya Olmeda

Dr. Sandra Hirsh, the Associate Dean for Academics, College of Professional and Global Education provided the welcome address for the virtual convocation. She provided information about the history of SJSU’s iSchool as well as some features of this program being fully online, especially the ability to connect with students across the globe. Next, Dr. Ruth Huard, the Dean, College of Professional and Global Education, gave the Dean’s address. It felt affirming to hear her talk about human-centric approaches to information, and how our work can create community. Sharaya Olmeda, the recipient of the Ken Haycock Award for Exceptional Professional Promise and the student speaker, also discussed the potential for information to empower, build, and create unity among our communities. I had the chance to partner with Sharaya in a group project for our Information Retrieval Systems course in our first semester of the program - it was so wonderful to see her recognized for her hard work, and to hear her (incredibly inspiring!) perspectives on our field. She also pointed to our program being 100% online as making our cohort of roughly 600 graduating MLIS and MARA students being uniquely poised to help our communities adapt to a virtual world.

View of graduation in a time of COVID-19

The last speaker was Julius Jefferson, the graduation speaker, section head of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, and ALA President from 2020-2021. He underscored some of the ideas Dr. Huard and Sharaya discussed - that we can make a difference and information professionals and that we are prepared to thrive in a digital world. He also recognized our class for the challenges we have experienced in wrapping up our master’s degrees while facing the realities of COVID-19. I appreciated his thoughts on how information professionals are essential workers, because of the critical role of accurate, authoritative information in today’s always-changing world. This paralleled his assertion that librarianship (and information work more broadly) is a practice given the evolving nature of the work, and that ongoing professional development is key to understanding how to help our communities. As our professors have told us all along in this program - lifelong learning is important! He also touched on our global responsibilities, that human rights and information services go hand in hand, and that we need to integrate social justice in our work. Each of the speaker’s remarks and the virtual graduation ceremony as a whole was grounding for me, given our uncertain, troubled times. It felt nice to look to the future optimistically. 

I was hesitant to pursue a master’s degree for a lot of reasons, even though many friends and mentors in the field suggested this would be my best bet moving forward in my career. I am so happy I decided to take the leap, in spite of the long nights and weekends spent working on group projects, research projects, and coding assignments. I know I’ve grown so much as a result of this program, and I’m excited to see where my career path goes from here.

Hosting an intern & MoCP field trip

This winter and spring, my department is hosting a wonderful intern, and one of the other managers and I have been co-mentoring her. We’ve based our curriculum for her time with us on the life of an image - the core functionality of our department - photography creation, image editing, metadata creation, and image management. In addition to getting hands-on experience in these different aspects of our daily work, we’ve also arranged a few field trips. The first was a behind-the-scenes look at the museum’s Thorne Miniature Rooms, since our intern is working to digitize archival material from that collection (amazing drawings of some of the furniture!). 

One of the Thorne Miniature Rooms

Our second trip took us to the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) just down the road from us. My fellow co-mentor worked at MoCP while she was in college, so she clued me into the fantastic offerings they have for scheduling a visit. In addition to viewing the rotating exhibits on display, visitors can request exhibition tours and print viewings. For the print viewings, which is the option we went with for our field trip, the curators have pulled together groups of prints around different themes. We selected two of these print collections: alternative processes and techniques, and picturing Chicago. When the staff who facilitated our discussion heard that we were coming from the Art Institute of Chicago, they ended up pulling additional selections - which was so wonderful!

The majority of our department ended up tagging along on our field trip, as did an intern and fellow from the Photography department and a staff member from the Publishing department at the museum. We began our visit by spending some time in the exhibit on display, In Real Life, which was thought-provoking:

“As the powerful technology behind artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, machines have developed the capacity to not only capture images but to “see” them as well. In Real Life is an exhibition seeking to examine the real-world impact of computer vision—from the murky ethics of data collection and surveillance to the racial and gender biases that abound in facial recognition technology.

Through the lens of seven artists working with a range of digital media, In Real Life presents works that grapple with the fraught relationship between humans and technology, with an emphasis on the social and aesthetic ramifications of machine “seeing.” With a charged underpinning of human biases, these pieces, many of which were generated through algorithmic technology, present a speculative near-future wherein the socio-political consequences of AI have already begun to compromise how we visualize the world—and our humanity.”

Installation of works from In Real Life

We then gathered in the instructional space upstairs with a couple of MoCP staff and the prints. They invited us to take a closer look, and we then dove into conversations about each of the prints - the materiality and process, the concept, the history, and more. Given the range of types of photography, from straight documentary to highly conceptual, there was a lot of great discussion around each of the works. It felt like being back in art school in some ways, and I really enjoyed our time spent together viewing and talking about the prints.

We wrapped up our trip with a tour of some of their collection storage space, a lucky bonus since we were coming from another museum! The staff were gracious enough to tour us around and talk about some of the other prints that are in the museum’s collection. Our intern let us know that she enjoyed this part of the field trip in particular, and as someone who nerds out about collection storage space, my heart grew after hearing this.

Some of my favorite spaces in libraries, archives, and museums are where all of the materials are stored

I can’t believe this was my first trip to MoCP, after living in Chicago for 10 years. It certainly won’t be my last visit, though! A huge thanks to all the staff there, and to my co-mentor, for making this visit possible.

College Art Association 2020 conference

The College Art Association (CAA) held its annual conference in Chicago this year, and I was one of the fortunate staff who was able to attend from my museum. While many of the sessions were geared more towards those working in academia - especially college professors in arts and art history - I went to a number of sessions that dealt with photography, archives, and technology.

The role of photography in Los Angeles’ redevelopment

The first such session was entitled ‘Documenting Community Change,’ which addressed tension between renewal and preservation through a photographic lens. There were four panelists who presented - Documenting Urban Change as a Civil Wrong: A Case of Photographic Evidence in the Construction of the New York City Subway; Framing the Formless: Photography’s Urban Renewal in 1940s Los Angeles; A Pioneering Experiment: Documenting Urban Renewal in Hyde Park, Chicago; and The Bottom: The Interstate and Highways Defense Act & Segregation in Baton Rouge. The first presentation provided a wonderful early case study of how photography can be used in the court of law. The transcripts of the court proceedings underscored how photography may be conceived as evidence, as facts, and how subjectivity and creativity may obscure this objectivity. This feels like a challenge we still face today in how we conceive of lens-based images. The second and third presentations looked at cases where photography was an integral - and once again biased - way in which groups (a government branch or a university, in these cases) make their case for sweeping change. In both cases, photography was a tool used to “document” urban blight, and in Los Angeles, photo composites and graphic design then functioned as a stand-in to show what could replace this blight. The final presentation looked at a contemporary example of documenting shifting landscapes. This project featured community participation and demonstrated the power of lens-based media when it isn’t being used to capitalize off its subjects. I walked away from this session thinking a lot about photography, the photographic archive, and how viewers and researchers create meaning from images.

Transcript of court proceedings featuring discussion of the limitations of photography as evidence

I also attended a session organized by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) - ‘Hands-on to Eyes-on: From Material Collections to Digital Exhibitions.’ Each of the presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions have leveraged special collections in classrooms at their colleges or universities. At Minneapolis College of Art and Design, for example, there is an object library of raw materials, replicas, original historic materials, tools, and pigments that art history professors can integrate into lectures. This allows students to more fully understand artwork as objects - materiality, process, creation - in conjunction with intellectual and aesthetic aspects of artwork. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago features a related teaching collection in the form of a textiles resource center - with 400 objects and 2,000 supporting books - and fashion collection - with 1,400 garments and accessories, and supporting videos and books. While these materials are fairly accessible to students, and staff managing these collections are actively digitizing and creating robust metadata to increase access. The last presentation brought in staff and faculty from the University of Chicago to discuss how the university has leveraged its art museum, the Smart Museum of Art, to incorporate hands-on curatorial training for students. Over the course of two quarter-long classes, university students had the chance to design and install an exhibit around a topic of the group’s choice, work that included: proposing theme ideas, combing the Smart Museum of Art’s collection for pieces to include, and generating interpretive text. The students functioned as a curatorial cohort and worked directly with museum staff on all aspects of the exhibit. It was fascinating to hear about the collaboration - the ways in which the museum benefited from the students’ insights, especially as it related to how objects were categorized in their catalog, and the ways in which the students were exposed to a range of work in the field. It is exciting to think about all the potential in archive, library, and museum collections, and how these materials can be used in educational contexts.

Special fashion and textiles collections at SAIC

Two sessions I attended towards the end of the conference dove into the role of technology in digitized and digital collections. In ‘Beyond the Algorithm: Art Historians, Librarians, and Archivists in Collaboration on Digital Humanities Initiatives,’ presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions are evolving with ever-changing tools and user expectations. They discussed IIIF, machine learning, collaborative projects, and database technologies. Conversations around metadata really resonated with me, especially the challenges of classification, geodata, and how we document gaps in our knowledge. It is encouraging to think about how linked open data may help to some of this end, as ownership and contribution of knowledge can be collectivized. The last session I attended, ‘Defining Open Access,’ evaluated if and how institutions should make available online their digitized and digital collections. There were compelling arguments from a variety of perspectives, and it was helpful to get a better grasp on some of the challenges: the manpower required to do this work; copyright, privacy, and traditional knowledge concerns; inconsistent rights statements in image records; understanding that open access may result in images or data being used in ways institutions do not always like. I am an advocate for making as much information - whether it be in the form of images, text, or time-based media - available to our users, and these presentations gave me a more nuanced understanding of when this may not be possible. 

The conference also included optional field trips, and I am so happy that I decided to make the trek to the Harold Washington Library Center, the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, in order to tour their special collections. Archivist Michelle McCoy provided us with background information about the library and its special collections unit; the creator communities represented in the collections; and the prints, books, and objects she pulled to show us. I had no idea that the library had materials like sculptures, paintings, and miniature models in its holdings, and it’s so heartening to know that anyone can come in to view these materials. 

The research room for the special collections at the Harold Washington Library Center

I decided to attend the conference fairly spur of the moment, and I walked away having learned so much. I feel fortunate to live in a city which is often host to larger conferences like these, and I hope to attend more like this one in the future.

Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019

The Chicago Architecture Biennial opened once again last fall, and ran through January of this year. The title of this third edition of the biennial was “... and other such stories.” The curatorial statement on the biennial’s website has this to say about the overarching theme:

“[it] is rooted in close readings of the spatial realities of its host city. Sitting at the crossroads of the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, Chicago has been shaped by planetary forces: colonial expansion, mass migration, extraction economies, and rapid industrialization. Thus, Chicago’s urbanism is inextricable from the flows of people, goods, and capital—and the concurrent exploitation of bodies, labor, and nature—that have contributed to its making. Today, despite the promise of economic development, Chicago, like many other established and emergent global metropolises, faces challenging urban conditions that require the reimagining of forms of exchange between human activity, technology, and the natural world. By extension, owing to its physical geography, Chicago is a singular context in which to address climate and ecological concerns shared by many postindustrial societies.”

How Together space for communal gatherings, talks, and other activities.

My work and school schedule made attending challenging, so I only had the chance to spend a few hours over the course of a couple of days. I’m glad I was able to attend regardless, because it was an amazing series of works that spanned a number of different topics in the field of architecture, urban planning, design, activism, and climate change. To see so much content relating to the tangible impact the built environment has on society was really refreshing. This wasn’t just a series of exhibits about the beauty of design, rather the curators made the choice to focus on pressing issues facing all of us today.

Exhibit on the intersection between sanity and equity across the globe

There were so many works that drew me in, but a few in particular really stuck out. The first was a series of plexiglass panels that could be found throughout the Chicago Cultural Center, the host building for the biennial. The project was called Decolonizing the Chicago Cultural Center. The American Indian Center worked together with the Settler Colonial City Project to develop a series of interventions throughout the building. The writing on each of the panels call out specific aspects of design and symbolism in the Cultural Center, and the “hidden stories of colonial violence embedded in the building and its materials, commemorative plaques, and ornaments.” It was grounding to consider these histories and how they show up in our built environment, especially since so many of us - largely those with some degree of privilege - don’t know about or haven’t been negatively impacted by these events.

Decolonizing the Chicago Cultural Center panel, this one discussing tributes to the Civil War built into the building

One space I really enjoyed was the Anarchitectural Library (against the neoliberal erasure of Chicago’s common spaces). A small library was set up, organized by subject, and complete with a small reading area. The project description: 

“Anarchitectural Library addresses the Chicago Cultural Center’s history as the city’s first public library, an institution conceived in part as a space to “civilize” an unruly population of immigrants, workers, socialists, and anarchists. Whereas the original library responded to the specific struggles of the late nineteenth century by pacifying political demands, Anarchitectural Library gives voice to contemporary organizations fighting to keep alive spaces that produce and maintain urban life and collectivity. The library houses printed publications submitted by Chicago-based activists, organizers, and researchers whose work resists public housing destruction, school closures, loss of industry, environmental degradation, and mass incarceration. The public is invited to peruse and discuss its contents.”

Wrapping up library school, an exhibit centered around information exchange and connection definitely resonated with me. But diving even deeper, the focus of topics in this collection speaks to the needs of so many in our city. It was wonderful seeing folks visiting the biennial browsing the selection of books and pamphlets, and engaging in conversation.

Anarchitectural Library

Two other works looked at the housing crisis in São Paulo and how a lack of affordable housing has impacted so many in the city. The work What does an ethical landlord look like? provides some useful contextual information about both the city and country. Stated boldly on one of the panels: “There are more vacant houses than people in need of a home - 6.3 million = Brazil’s housing deficit, 7.9 million = the number of vacant homes in Brazil.” Provided too are statistics about the money São Paulo spends on rental vouchers ($37 million annually) and the average time spent commuting to and from the city (4 hours). The work looks to collective actions as a way of addressing these issues. FICA is one such group, “a crowdfunded real estate fund created and managed by a nonprofit organization comprised of architects, designers, teachers, researchers, and activists… FICA’s goal is to guarantee permanent, affordable housing in São Paulo… by buying apartments in the city center, renting them at below-market rates to those in most need, and using the rental income and donated funds to acquire further apartments.” The work presented at the biennial is a replica of a five hundred square foot apartment, the first unit purchased by the group.

Panels from What does an ethical landlord look like?

An overall view of the floorplan

In the second installation on São Paulo, titled MTSC - Housing as Citizenship Practice, a series of videos, interviews, protest banners, booklets, and infographics show how some folks are pushing back in a more direct way. This work looks at the group MTSC in particular, and how the group has organized mass occupations of vacant properties to put pressure on the government to provide affordable, public housing while also providing shelter for individuals and families who need it. MTSC has used a variety of strategies to accomplish their goals, and it was fascinating to learn about what can be accomplished when people come together.

View of some of the many amazing elements to MTSC - Housing as Citizenship Practice

There was so much information packed into this exhibit

I left the biennial full of questions and ideas, and had some great conversations with friends about topics presented. I didn’t know quite what to expect of the theme of the biennial, but I certainly didn’t expect to leave feeling so engaged. I hope that future biennials will continue along this thread of engaging in immediate challenges we face.

Works looking at ownership, occupancy, and the need for new (not capitalist-based) systems for equitable housing

Works looking at architectural erasures in various societies and cities throughout the world

Works on exclusion and which advocate for a more inclusive future

The incredible and devastating Gun Violence Memorial Project

Works about landscapes of resistance, recovery, and resilience

Works evaluating the relationship between humans and our natural environment, and which show the need for new ways of cohabitating with the world around us

DAM Systems & Institutional Collaboration

Over roughly the last year, I have been involved in discussions about implementing a new digital asset management system at our museum. My department - Imaging - has a vested interest in finding a new solution, because we are one of the power users of the existing system. I began advocating for clarity on our existing digital asset management system - what it was intended to be used for and what the development timeline was for the solution - shortly after it was launched in spring 2017. The system had potential, especially in its open-source foundations, but it has complicated workflows, frustrated users across the museum, and resulted in poor access to assets for staff. Unfortunately, due to limited staff resources, our custom in-house built system can no longer be adequately maintained or developed in order to meet basic institutional needs. As a result, we began searching for a replacement solution early in 2019.

I was selected to be a member of the evaluating team for vendor solutions based on my experience managing our department’s born digital and digitized image assets. There were two groups that looked at the options - one was focused on the technical-side of the system and the other was focused on the user experience. I was placed in this second group. We were provided with a rubric for evaluation based on specific core user needs for the software, and we watched presentations on the final selection of vendor software solutions. Together with other staff representing a wide range of departments - from Conservation to Curatorial departments to the Ryerson and Burnham Library and Archive - we sat through vendor demonstrations, rated the system based on these presentations, and discussed our overall impressions of the solutions compared with one another. It was helpful to work with such a cross-institutional team, as every member brought different experiences and ideas. The selection committee took into account the user experience and technical group ratings, as well as the cost estimate for each option, and made their decision based off this information.

After my experience in this collaborative and democratic group setting, I wanted to apply this same way of working and reaching decisions to another key component of digital asset management: metadata. I was in the midst of mapping my department’s metadata to some proposed fields for the new system. I realized that I was unclear on the meaning and scope of some of these new fields, and that other needs were likely missing. At the same time, I understood that my department’s needs were not reflective of all user metadata needs within the system. I inquired if I could form a metadata working group in order to brainstorm additional user needs, and I was permitted to move forward. I ended up leading this group, which was a new experience for me. I selected the team members from a range of departments, sent out communication, developed agendas and ran meetings, and served as coordinator about our work to other institutional stakeholders. 

We ended up meeting over the course of the fall to discuss the existing mapping work I had done to existing structure schema, user scenarios that needed to be represented in the metadata, additional fields, field scopes and definitions, and metadata field types (dropdown, free text, etc) and behaviors (searchable or not, editable or not). Once the chosen software was announced to the team, we also started determining which rough user groups (Imaging staff, Conservation staff, Curatorial staff, all staff) should be able to see and/or edit which fields. I presented our work to the administrators for the future system, and have been continuing to advise on metadata questions and issues since our working group has dissolved. This work will evolve as we move forward with implementation, but I am glad that we pursued this work with intention and focus, and that multiple perspectives were captured.

I am now part of the implementation working group for our new system. Our kickoff meeting occurred shortly before the new year, and our work will extend throughout 2020. I am representing my department and users who rely on our assets. Part of this process will involve sitting through instructional trainings on core components of the system - taxonomy, metadata, permissions - and part of it will involve shaping the user experience and structure of information within system. We will be making decisions about how metadata fields should be ordered, and which fields should also appear as faceted search options, for example. This group will also be creating documentation and training materials, and we will assist in teaching our peers how to use the system. In tandem with the administrators for the system, technical staff, and other working group members, I hope to ensure that we implement a solution that works well for all staff. 

My involvement in digital asset management at the museum has shifted and grown over the last several years. With this, my role in these collaborative working groups have varied over time - I have had the chance to both lead and advise. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been heard in my questions and concerns, and to be able to leverage the knowledge I have gained through my MLIS program.

Mentor training

My institution has begun hosting regular mentor orientation sessions for staff who are responsible for managing other staff, interns, or volunteers, or who are simply interested in learning more about the basics of mentoring. I attended one such session this winter. I have managed interns over the last several years as part of our archives digitization project, and we are hosting another intern as part of the Emerging Arts Leader (EAL) internship program at the museum. I appreciate having the opportunity to learn about mentorship in a more intentional way - so much of what I have learned has been on-the-fly, and I needed a chance to sit down and learn about some of the principles and theory behind this important work.

We began the session by introducing ourselves and sharing experiences we’d had with both good and bad supervisors or mentors over the years. It was eye-opening listening to other staff member’s stories, and the facilitators compiled a list for us to sit and consider. Though the list is by no means comprehensive, it gives a sense of qualities to actively attempt to embody and avoid. In particular, I was struck by the following positive experience descriptors: empathetic, flexible, attentive, human, approachable and accessible, modeling behavior, and taking the intern and internship seriously. I was also reflecting on my own experiences, and I found both internships and jobs that were the most rewarding also tended to be led by staff who were highly organized and who facilitated access to information. 

The facilitators then walked us through a series of slides about different roles a supervisor may take on - including manager, coordinator or coach, and mentor. A manager often focuses on structure, procedure, decisions, and results, and therefore tends to have a task focus (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The coordinator or coach focuses on performance, process, empowerment, and dialogue (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The mentor is focused on growth, facilitation, affirmation, and holistic aspects of the experience, and therefore tends to have a development focus (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). These roles range from immediate to mid-range to more future-facing work. The facilitators noted that the roles should not map exclusively to hierarchical power within a department, so for example, it should not only be curators (who often have a considerable amount of institutional power) who are future-thinking mentors. Ideally, junior staff or interns will benefit from this entire spectrum within those who are managing them. It is therefore a mentorship continuum, and I may need to step into any one of these roles, sometimes merging them, in order to make sure an intern can focus on learning. Fortunately, I am co-leading our future EAL intern, so the other Imaging staff member and I will likely flow between roles as is needed.

Next, we learned about the logistics and concrete steps being mentorships at the museum, especially as it relates to internships. First, we must consider the internship experience as a whole and ask - what do we have to offer, and what might an intern bring to our department (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019)? As a part of this process, staff are advised to develop a general internship model and create a plan (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The plan includes an internship position summary with duties and responsibilities, and it includes specific objectives and outcomes we hope the intern will grow from. There are several internship models staff have used as the museum, which include exposure and general support - shadowing and a sort of sampler platter of work; project-based - focusing on a discrete and appropriately scoped project often informed by the intern’s experience or interest; and level up - which attempts to map the experience to the staff hierarchy within a department (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). These models may be blended or new models may be developed as is appropriate. The model my co-leader and I have developed is part exposure, part based off the lifecycle of work in our department. We are making sure that our intern has the opportunity to learn about and try work along the lifespan of an image asset - from image creation to editing to metadata creation to archiving to future repurposing and use. Hopefully this will provide a meaningful and educational experience.

The facilitators then discussed the application review, interview, and selection process for interns. They stressed the importance of fairly assessing candidates, and ensuring that there is consistency across questions posed during interviews (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). We developed a standardized list of questions while interviewing for our EAL internship position, at the suggestion of the program manager, and this was incredibly helpful. They also made it clear that we need to interrogate bias, and create some sort of rubric to help guide the decision-making process (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). This helps to reign in “expectations creep,” where we may be tempted to rank higher over-qualified candidates and come to expect over-qualification from all candidates (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Our institution tends to favor highly trained and educated candidates, and it is important to ask with internships in particular, do we actually need this experience? 

The presenters then discussed onboarding, including setting goals and presenting the work plan, creating a schedule or project tracker, and ensuring that our intern is taking advantage of HR intern programming (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). From this initial introductory phase, we then learned about the bulk of the internship itself and working together with an intern. The facilitators discussed the importance of regular check-in meetings, where we can talk about accomplishments and growth, provide feedback, address questions, learn together via mentor or intern-led prompts or projects, and plan what’s next (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Throughout the internship, we must support interns in navigating our unique work culture, which includes aspects of our work like unspoken norms, abbreviations and acronyms, and even some degree of bias or discrimination (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Key in this is ensuring that an intern feels comfortable raising questions or issues with either managing staff within the department, internship program staff, or HR staff. Cross-cultural mentorship skills are an important aspect of this trust building:

• “Approach relationships with understanding, but not assumptions, of inherent power dynamics and social positions. Intellectual understanding does not equal lived experience.

• Affirm and advocate for interns and their work.

• Model vulnerability, share your own stories and struggles as appropriate.

• Amplify mentee contributions, and do not allow them to give you all the credit.

• Demonstrate humility to learn from your mentee.” (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019)

At the end of an internship, the presenters provided concrete steps for parting ways with the individual. Included in this is highlighting and bringing visibility to their work, perhaps through a presentation or brief summary of the work shared at a departmental meeting (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). It is also important to sit down with the intern and allow an opportunity for them to reflect and talk about what they learned, how they grew, and how this could translate to a future job (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Evaluation is a part of this conversation, too. A celebration helps to ensure that we are sending interns off, letting them know how much we appreciate their contributions. 

I left this session feeling much more clear about aspects of mentoring which I need to continue to focus on to grow and improve. And I also know where to go when I need further support - there will be further brown bag lunch opportunities for mentors to connect, and internship program staff have been incredibly helpful in answering questions. While I feel slightly uncomfortable with more traditional notions of power and management, I was encouraged by this session and how so much of the focus was on interpersonal relationships. Connecting emerging professionals with information and skills which might be useful to their future career is what drives my interest in mentoring interns, and this training provided me even more ways of thinking about this relationship. 

References:

Art Institute of Chicago. (2019). Mentor orientation. [Presentation slide deck].

Chicago Area Archivists: XML, EAD, ArchivesSpace

Northwestern University Library (NUL) hosted an event organized by the Chicago Area Archivists this fall. Two information professionals working in the archives and library presented on three topics: XML, EAD, and ArchivesSpace. I decided to attend the event given my increasing involvement in the sphere of metadata at work, and my interest in how other organizations adopt standards and tools.

First, the metadata specialist gave some basic foundational information about XML - extensible markup language - a plain text markup language. She provided a brief history of the language, context including related schemas (HTML, SGML), and examples of ways the data can be transformed via cascading style sheets (CSS) or extensible stylesheet language transformations (XSLT) (Miller, 2019). Next, she provided some basic structure and syntax rules, including “root” and “child” elements and limitations on characters (Miller, 2019). NUL uses XML given how flexible and powerful it can be as a way of organizing and transforming data. XML works well with a variety of structure schemas and controlled vocabularies that the institution relies on in order to publish the data on various platforms, and a well-formed XML document can be highly extensible. Oxygen is one software tool metadata librarians use at NUL to review and edit XML metadata, and the presenter provided a number of screengrab examples of this interface to show what XML looks like during her talk.

The metadata specialist then dove into EAD or encoded archival description. Once again, she provided some background information about the standard, especially as it related to the shift in making traditional paper finding aids machine-readable in order to make them more accessible (Miller, 2019). EAD is maintained by the Library of Congress and Society of American Archivists, and it is rooted in published standards for syntax and elements (Miller, 2019). The presenter discussed the core components of EAD next: the header, which describes the finding aid itself; front matter, which describes the finding aid publication information; and the archival description, which describes the collection (Miller, 2019). 

The archival description contains the core content of the finding aid, so the presenter spent the most time here. She outlined the type of information one might find here, including: the title, abstract, physical description, subject headings, biographical or historical note, collection description, scope and arrangement notes, provenance, custodial history, and access and use restrictions (Miller, 2019). The collection contents also fall under this section, and this allows for a hierarchical description of the collection - often mirroring the physical organization, broken down by box and folder level-information (Miller, 2019). Helpfully, EAD provides some structure for this way of outlining the content of a collection, allowing up to 12 layers of such “component elements” - numbered c01, c02, etc (Miller, 2019). EAD allows for an archivist or librarian to choose the degree of detail and levels of hierarchy for a finding aid, as it is not prescriptive. Finally, she discussed the use of attributes within EAD to make the components of a finding aid machine-readable. She touched on the ways in which attributes can be described through tags to provide greater specificity about the element - “label” is a label meant to be used in the display of the data, “normal” to indicate the established form of a heading like an ISO-formatted date, and “source” to indicate the source of a controlled vocabulary term (Miller, 2019).

One of the library’s archivists then provided a walk-through of NUL’s instance of ArchivesSpace, which is where the organization hosts its EAD finding aids. He discussed their workflow in ingesting documents into the system, the ways in which data can be further edited once it is in ArchivesSpace, and how it displays for the general public. The library has only been using it for a few years, but it sounds as though it is working well to make accessible finding aids for their archival collections. We had the opportunity to sit down in one of the library’s computer labs to try the system out in its test environment. This gave me a much better feel for the interface, and all of the ways in which you can manipulate and edit data. 

The day also included a tour of some of the library’s on-campus but off-site storage for archival collections. The archivist told us about the changes the library is undergoing in terms of staffing organization, and how this is impacting how special collections are conceived. Part of this will include some reorganization of the physical storage of collections, and it sounds like a daunting project they have ahead of them. I am always thankful for the chance to peer behind the scenes and see what these spaces look like at other organizations, especially since I never had the chance to visit this space when I worked at NUL years ago.

This was a wonderful opportunity to see how these elements that are often discussed in the abstract - XML, EAD - actually work in practice, and how they interface with tools like Oxygen and ArchivesSpace. I now feel like I have a much better grasp of these standards, especially in seeing examples of real finding aids. 

References:

Miller, K. (2019). Introduction to EAD and XML. [Workshop handout].

Time-based Media Symposium: Unfolding

The time-based media symposium Unfolding: Production and Process was hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago this fall. I attended last spring’s two-day presentations, and I have been working with one of the organizers - the museum’s time-based media conservation fellow - on other projects at the museum. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and my coursework relating to digital curation, I was excited for the symposium:

“From the selection of formats during production, to the continual reformatting of moving image works, to ‘reconstructions’ of works that are partially lost or obsolete, choices of assessment and care are interwoven with how artworks are seen and remembered. Artists can be critical stakeholders in conservation approaches, including repositioning their past works into new contexts or modes of display. Further, the transfer between formats as technological platforms change provides opportunities to revisit an artwork’s identity or assess the underlying attributes of an analog or digital format. Unfolding will draw from art history, conservation, artists’ own procedures, and technical fields of expertise with the aim of expanding our collective attention to the in-between moments in the lives of artworks (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019).”

There were four total panel discussions over the course of both days. All of these combined a variety of individual contexts: practicing artists, curators, collection managers and archivists, conservators, and technicians. It was interesting to reflect on the range of perspectives on these complicated works, and how necessary collaboration is. 

The first panel in particular resonated with me as it relates to the human aspects of film and video genres within the broader spectrum of time-based media. The moderator posed open-ended questions for us to consider and the panelists to address including: what works are preserved, how we create appropriate and responsible contexts for the work (cataloging, exhibiting, etc), and how we incorporate community into this practice. Speaking to these issues were Liz Johnson Artur, a multidisciplinary artist who works in still and moving images, Abina Manning, from the Video Data Bank, and Jacqueline Stewart, a professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Southside Home Movie Project. All of them spoke to the ways in which their practices intersect with archives, and the interesting dynamics between video and film as documentary and aesthetic. Representation was also an important part of the conversation - from how access is provided in an equitable way, to whether and how materials are made accessible, and what rights creators retain in handing over their materials to a repository. The role of cataloging and description plays a role in this, and so too does the much larger concept of institutionalization of film and video. In the case of the South Side Home Movie Project, Stewart faces the history of conflict as a result of her institution’s role in discriminatory policies in its predominantly black surrounding neighborhoods. Understandably, some of those she works with on potential acquisitions feel a sense of distrust about handing their family’s materials over to this institutional archives. Ultimately, it would seem that relationships are an important part of the process of building, stewarding, and making accessible (or not) this type of time-based media, and that these archives are constantly in flux - not fixed - as a result.

Stewart introducing the South Side Home Movie Project Digital Archive

The last panel on born-digital art also struck a chord, especially given the immediate and tangible examples of challenges within preservation. Jan Tichy, a multimedia artist, discussed a few of his recent conceptual, time-based pieces that were created digitally and are dependent on specific technological tools in order to be accessible and viewable. His work reflecting on the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s collection may evolve over time as their collection grows, necessitating updates and interventions to the original work. His installation on the last remaining and soon-to-be-demolished Cabrini Green building, the resulting documentation of his installation, and the resulting live-streamed footage required different strategies for archiving. Andreas Angelidakis, an “architect who doesn’t build,” talked about his work in both digital and physical environments, and how preservation comes into play with both (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). He works with online communities like Active Worlds and Second Life, which are both dependent on companies to maintain the underlying digital infrastructure. The platforms disappear when they are no longer profitable. He started making 3D prints of some of his interventions on these platforms, with the idea that these are more stable versions of his digital creations. These physical manifestations have proven to be fragile themselves, though. In another series of work, his work in creating a digital amphitheater through custom software ended up being reproduced in the real world through the creation of soft blocks. These blocks are meant to be rearranged and used in any way people see fit, referencing the interactive nature of the original software. It also means that the blocks are intended to be physically worn down and marked as people interact with them. Mark Hellar, a technology consultant who has worked with museums on conservation projects, talked about some of the specific projects he has helped to troubleshoot. The piece News by Hans Hacke underwent treatment when it was exhibited in 2018. The piece required reverse-engineering in order to make it compatible with contemporary internet technology and RSS feeds. The underlying software had to be completely rewritten due to licensing limitations, reliance on obsolescent platforms, and link rot of the previously used RSS feeds. Fortunately, his studio did permit for changes to be made to the digital system in order to make the time-based media piece function as it originally did. In another case, Susan Kare’s Mac Icons work made its way into MoMA’s collection as both physical sketchbooks and a series of 300 floppy discs. The storage media, the file systems, and the file formats themselves were obsolete, so Hellar helped to create disc images, set up an emulator to view the files, and built a custom server with the emulator so the files would be accessible via a web browser for curators. All of these works, their inherent fragility in their digital (and physical) forms, and the ongoing work required to make them renderable speaks volumes to the challenges of digital preservation of time-based media.

Basic components of a digital preservation plan, as discussed by Small Data Industries’ Fino-Radin

The last portion of the symposium was dedicated to more direct applications of digital curation through a presentation, workshop, and moderated Q&A session. Ben Fino-Radin of Small Data Industries presented on the ‘Past, Present, and Future of Digital Preservation Storage in Museums.’ This company consulted with the Art Institute to provide recommendations on better managing its time-based media collection. This session looked at general trends and best practices in cultural heritage institutions, including considerations like data backup and redundancy, fixity checks, repositories and access, and roles and governance in order to do this work. The workshop allowed participants to learn about some of these practices, namely using digital preservation tools to assess files. Jeff Martin, a consulting media conservator, talked about ways of performing visual quality assurance on born digital video and digitized film works, and Kristin MacConough, a time-based media conservation fellow, introduced specific technology tools to gather metadata about files. Participants had the opportunity to use Terminal to see file directories and create checksums, Exiftool to read information within files (file size, type of encoding), and Mediainfo to generate a variety of additional technical metadata. 

I am thankful that there are so many folks in the field who take seriously the challenges of digital preservation, and who are willing to share their knowledge with others. I learned so much during the symposium, and I am excited to learn more through coursework and in real-world applications.

References:

Art Institute of Chicago. (2019). Unfolding: Production and process in time-based media art. [Program].

Open House Chicago 2019

This fall marked another fantastic Open House Chicago weekend. It has been challenging to plan and spend all weekend visiting sites in the last few years, due to grad school. Regardless, I had the chance to visit a number of sites with friends the day I was able to set aside for adventuring. We ended up biking around Garfield Park, the West Loop, Back of the Yards, Bronzeville, and made a pitstop in Chinatown for a snack. The variety of sites - their function, aesthetic, and age - made for an interesting blend, and it felt great to take some photographs for myself! I’m looking forward to next year and exploring more of this amazing city!

Great Lakes Yard was our first stop of the day

Next, we stopped at Revolution Workshop, which is neighbors with Great Lakes Yard

Lab on Lake is a beautiful industrial building turned church, nightclub, homeless shelter, and now event space.

The Hatchery is a purpose-built hub for food businesses

UE Hall features amazing murals that tell the story of unionization

Bubbly is a light-industrial small business incubator

IIT’s Kaplan Institute was our last stop

CMEG at the Field Museum: Scaling to Fit

The Fall meeting for the Chicago Museum Exhibitors Group (CMEG) was hosted by the Field Museum, and there were three presentations on the topic of scaling to fit. From the invitation for the event:

“Museum storytellers are often faced with challenges of scale. Will a nascent idea be enough to fill an entire gallery? How do we winnow down thousands of objects to tell a coherent story in the space we have? What do we need to do when scaling an existing exhibit to a new space or situation?

Explore the SUE and Brewing Up Chicago exhibits at the Field Museum, followed by a discussion about scaling exhibits up, down, and out through three case studies.

Presenters:

• Liz Garibay (Chicago Brewseum) on Brewing Up Chicago at the Field Museum

• Olivia Castellini (Museum of Science and Industry) and Mark Ewing (Luci Creative) on MSI’s Numbers in Nature traveling exhibition

• Susan Golland (Field Museum) on the new SUE exhibit”

Presenting on MSI’s ‘Numbers in Nature’ exhibit

The Chicago Brewseum pop-up inside the Field Museum

My work at my museum is indirectly related to exhibits, but I have enjoyed all of the CMEG events that I have attended, and this one was no exception. It was fascinating hearing about how folks in this field problem solve and find solutions to challenges imposed by space, logistics, budget, and time. In particular, I really enjoyed the conversation about SUE, and how the designers were focused on retaining and improving upon the visitor experience for this iconic dinosaur. Given how far removed my work can feel from the public, it felt like a breath of fresh air to hear about intent and impact so directly tied to visitors. And, of course, it is always a treat to visit a museum after hours to explore some exhibits!

Spending some time admiring the exhibits

Chicago Area Archivists: Collaborative Exhibits

The Chicago Area Archivists group regularly organizes tours and professional development opportunities around the city and suburbs. I attended one such event at the University of Chicago, which was focused around the idea of collaborative exhibits. 

We first gathered for a presentation by a librarian at the university library on the history of exhibits in the university library. From the 1970s through 2009, the exhibition space was relegated to cases lining a hallway. The space was neither approachable nor particularly practical for exhibiting works on paper, as it featured shag carpet, and fluorescent and incandescent lighting. With the construction of the new Manuseto library, this exhibition space also forced the redesign of the exhibition area. Library staff hired consultants, talked to exhibitions staff at a local museum, and dedicated their efforts to designing a modern and preservation-appropriate space. 

Before and after the exhibit space redesign

They implemented appropriate environmental controls including an independent HVAC system for fine-tuned temperature and humidity control. They also installed programmable LED lighting and a variety of security tools - video, alarms, and locks. Additionally, they oddy tested materials that were used to build the cases, which ensured the exhibition furniture is doing no unintended harm to materials on display. These cases are movable, which allows for more nimble and independent control of the exhibits by library staff - they no longer need crew to help them move cases. The cases feature spaces beneath for silica to allow for even greater control of humidity. The library has several designs of these cases available for use, and they also gained storage space dedicated for storing cases. Other features in the newly redesigned exhibition space include a ceiling mounted projector, floor outlets and AV ports, and a poster rail. 

The exhibition space rotates through an average of four exhibits per year, which correlates with the university’s quarter system. The library has one staff dedicated to this work, and the curators rotate - they may include archivists or special library staff, general librarians, faculty, students, or outside curators and donors. There has been a surge of interest in the last few years for university class students to curate exhibits. This can be challenging in a class of 30 students, as cases get crowded. It also means that the exhibition schedule may be filled multiple years in advance, limiting how faculty can design their curriculum. Library staff are evaluating how to strike a balance, and are investigating whether web exhibits may work best for these situations.

Generally, projects begin roughly 12 - 18 months from the anticipated date of installation. The library is in the process of developing a more formal proposal process. The presenter provided a sample of the timeline for exhibits, which includes development - conceptualization, item selection, and exhibit design - and production - digitization, text production, graphic design, web exhibit production, production of collateral materials. 

For the exhibitions’ budgets, most costs are generally covered by the university. The ability to use existing cases and vitrines helps to this end, as do dedicated staff at the library. Printing graphics is usually covered under the general operating budget, and occasionally there may be fees to pay for loans. In cases where curators want to design a full-fledged publication that corresponds to the exhibit, they must find their own source of funding.

As it relates to the selection of items to be exhibited, library staff have found that curators can most easily find materials in the general collection at the university. Generally, it requires more guidance from special library and archives staff for the selection of rare materials - this may include teaching curators how to use finding aids, for example. Wherever possible, they try to source materials from the university system for exhibition. When loans need to be procured, staff try to use the opportunity to inform new acquisitions moving forward.

The digital library team works with the exhibition staff member to develop web exhibits that correlate with the physical exhibits. The design for these experiences is similar in look and feel to Omeka sites, a platform with which faculty and staff are often already familiar. In conjunction with these interactive experiences, the digital team also creates downloadable PDF files with full text. In this way, these exhibits can live on after they have been de-installed, and there is documentation of the work and research. Copyright is one important factor to consider in web exhibits, and generally, they try to err on the side of caution in not digitizing and publishing online materials that are in copyright (held by external agents). Occasionally, the team works with ARS to secure licenses to selectively publish important materials. This also informs how they photographically document the physical exhibits - generally, they document cases as a whole rather than individual objects.

The library leverages existing staff and tools for PR and outreach. Library communications helps to get the word out on campus about exhibitions. Staff try to align programs and events with both the exhibit and any other initiatives on campus. Events may include tours, conferences, classes, lectures, author or artist talks, and general receptions.

The presentation next shifted to a discussion by a staff member at the Oriental Institute (OI), a museum on-campus at the University of Chicago:

“The Oriental Institute was founded in 1919 by James Henry Breasted with the financial support of John D. Rockefeller Jr., and was originally envisaged as a research laboratory for the investigation of the early human career that would trace humankind’s progress from the most ancient days of the Middle East. The goal of the Oriental Institute is to be the world’s leading center for the study of ancient Near Eastern civilizations by combining innovation in theory, methodology, and significant empirical discovery with the highest standards of rigorous scholarship. The Oriental Institute Museum was opened to the public in 1931. (The Oriental Institute, n.d.)

She provided us with some background information about the museum, including its archival collection scope of faculty records, still and moving images, institutional records, and archaeology dig records. Much of this collection has been hidden over the years, as is common with many archival collections given backlogs, but staff recognized that processing to facilitate access is important, especially with their 100 year anniversary. Outreach via this exhibit was another helpful way of raising awareness and visibility of the museum and its holdings.

She made the case that archives are examples of and critical to cultural heritage as much as museum collections objects are. In the context of OI, such archival materials include documentation of now-destroyed ancient sites, and records that tell the story of provenance for historic objects. To make the archives more visible and relevant, they have pursued several projects. One of these includes the Cultural Heritage Experiment, where OI lends reproductions of archival materials to students at the University of Chicago. Students may pick from a selection of digitized images and records, and then have the opportunity to bring the archives into their own personal spaces. OI staff gather stories from students about their experiences, and from this, they are building an archive of the Cultural Heritage Experiment.

The museum has pursued a number of other avenues to connect its holdings - especially those in the archives - to the campus and the broader community. The OI is working to create a museum-in-a-box via 3D printed replicas of museum objects. This will allow the materials to travel to classrooms for remote learning opportunities. The museum also encourages loans, and it works with contemporary artists to activate the museum space in new ways. Finally, and perhaps most relevant to the subject of this event, the OI also works on collaborative exhibits.

The OI staff member presenting curated the exhibit currently on display at the library - Discovery, Collection, Memory: The Oriental Institute at 100. She walked us through the exhibit and discussed each of the cases - their contents and the process of developing a narrative connecting the history of the museum with its collections. Working so closely with institutional archives at my own museum, it was interesting to hear about how this material was reframed to show its value in telling this story. There was discussion of the role of museums like this one, and exhibits that celebrate their history, in contemporary conversations about cultural patrimony and repatriation. Complicating all of this is the university-wide umbrella under which all of these organizations and departments operate, and the bureaucracy and politics that follow as a result. The curator’s talk left me with a lot to reflect on, and I was thankful for the frank discussion.

Views of Discovery, Collection, Memory: The Oriental Institute at 100

Original negatives rarely go on display in exhibits, so it was exciting to see an example of how this can be done

A few museum objects were also on display, seen here behind one of the cases with archival materials

I appreciated seeing documents that reference some of the behind-the-scenes work that happens at museum - including acquisition and registrarial records, seen here

The event ended with a tour of the new building of the library, which prompted the redesign of the exhibition space. The structure is notable in that it features automated retrieval of general stack and archival materials in storage which is several stories below the reading room. Library staff demonstrated how the robots work, how this system interfaces with library workers, and how patrons can request materials. The climate-controlled, secure storage is much more efficient in how materials are organized on the shelves than open stacks which patrons may browse.

Several stories of subterranean storage

Computer terminal for one of the robots and a view of some oversized library material stored on the shelves

Reading room above the automated retrieval storage area

I appreciate the openness of professionals in the field to share this type of insight into some of the work they do, and for organizations like CAA that make these events happen. It helps me to consider practices where I work, and how we might shift to create more value for our users. 

References:
The Oriental Institute. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from https://oi.uchicago.edu/about

artEquity

The museum where I work has engaged with the artEquity team, and this group has provided diversity, equity, and inclusion recommendations based on their survey and analysis of the institution. As a part of this, their facilitators have been leading 2-day training sessions for interested staff. There have been several rounds of these sessions, given the necessary cap in attendees per session, and given the interest in these values at the museum. I was fortunate to attend one of these sessions this summer. 

A group of us gathered for both of the full-day sessions, and we were seated at tables with a group of staff from a variety of other departments. As a result, I had the chance to meet folks I had never met, or had only communicated with via email. This aspect of the sessions provided helpful perspective on just how many people work for the institution, and how many unique experiences there are in working at a large, historic museum like this one. While we all had common ground in working for the same employer, talking about inclusion demands a threshold of trust. The facilitators helped guide us through this process, albeit in an abbreviated time, so that we could (hopefully) have honest conversations at our tables and in the larger group. They established ground rules for us, so we could operate in a safe space - as much as this is possible in an institutional context where there are serious issues that we need to remedy.

The sessions were necessarily intense, as we were asked to dive deep into our identity then reflect on how that impacts day-to-day work and interactions. The entire first day helped unveil the aspects of our identity we often overlook or ignore, especially if we are a part of the dominant culture. We therefore discussed things like our gender pronouns and racial identity, and crucially, why we identify this way. The facilitators talked about social location identification within this, which include factors like: religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, gender, disability, age, citizenship, and immigration status. We were asked to consider one of these identities as a table, and then to consider how we individually identify. At the same time, we had to reckon with what identity within each of these social locations aligns with the dominant culture and therefore benefits from the status quo as it relates to access, resources, and structural power. 

Within the institutional context, we evaluated as a group the ways in which power manifests - from positional authority to power (to give or deny support) to influence (more informally). This turns on its head the idea many of us want to embrace - that issues like racism and sexism have to be addressed from the top down. Instead, we all need to recognize when and why we may actually wield more power than we might believe, and when we can leverage that to dismantle the current inequitable systems. It also forces us to face the reality that power often aligns and manifests - often unjustifiably so - along the dominant culture. While those of us in the room may not have created the dominant culture and existing paradigm, it has a negative impact on so many folks - those employed by the museum, those visiting the museum, and everyone in our community - and this is why we need to address all of it. Until we are all treated as humans - at the very least - and ideally as equals, then these discussions and this work must continue. 

Merging ideas about social location, identity, and power structures, the facilitators introduced us to various approaches individuals and organizations may take to difference. These include: exclusionary, colobrlind, multicultural, cultural competency, diversity, and social justice approaches. They noted that an organization may approach different identities in a different way, so our museum may embrace a diversity approach to gender, but a colorblind approach to race, for example. These approaches parallel the organizational stages of diversity and inclusion, which include the: exclusionary, “club,” compliance/token, affirmative action, re-defining/self-renewing, and inclusive organization. During one particularly powerful exercise, the facilitators placed large signs throughout the space with these approaches. We were then invited to move around the room to place ourselves where we felt our institution fell for various scenarios they presented. It was humbling to see where my colleagues placed themselves, and it spoke volumes about individuals’ lived experiences in the institution.

Given what a strong and deadly grip white supremacy culture has on our society, and indeed has on our museum, we spent some time reviewing qualities of it. The facilitators led us through the list of characteristics of white supremacy written by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones, which include qualities like: perfectionism, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, “I’m the only one,” progress is bigger and more, objectivity, and right to comfort. At our tables, we talked about the ways in which these characteristics show up in our daily work, and how we have internalized these behaviors. Fortunately, writings on these topics also include ways of interrupting it, which can provide an antidotes to harm. 

Communication plays a key role in equity and inclusion, so the facilitators provided us with resources on anti-bias language. These glossaries gave definitions for concepts like racism and colorism, colonialism and settler colonialism, and for ways people are identified like people of color, people with disabilities, and transgender. Importantly, the facilitators stressed that we always respect the ways in which others wish to be identified. Listening is important, especially to learn from others who they are and how they identify. It can be helpful to have a common vocabulary for discussions, and we also need to allow room for ongoing inquiry, shifting preferences over time, and complicated discourse.

Microagressions, conflict, and white fragility came up as related topics as we discussed communication. Though there has been pushback among some in our society against the idea of microagressions, it is crucial to recognize the harm they do in sending hostile, derogatory, and “othering” messages. The deeper message behind these comments betray themes like the myth of meritocracy or the assumption of criminal status. The facilitators stressed that conflict is a reality in this or any other type of work - it is a normal part of life, and that it is neither good nor bad. It can escalate, but if we are conscious of the situations, it is possible to both diffuse and address the source of conflict. White fragility factors into all of this, as it is defined by Dr. Robin DiAngelo, because it is “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.” White folks may therefore break down and act reactively if confronted with feedback on words or actions, or when people of color choose not to protect the feelings of white folks or share their stories with white folks. White fragility can lead to conflict and has the potential to derail important conversations. It is something that white folks like myself must identify, address, and work to dissolve both in ourselves and in those around us. 

When it came to putting all this into practice, the facilitators provided some foundational tenets to the work:

• Awareness - naming it

• Analysis - making meaning out of it

• Action - putting it into practice

• Accountability - to prevent cycles

• Grace - to build, not exclude, community

While not prescriptive, these principles help provide a framework for equity and inclusion work, or rather, for the work to dismantle the status quo. Through phrases as simple as “might I suggest another word you can use?” to actionable steps like developing a salary survey that addresses identities like race and gender, our work must be multi-faceted, transparent, democratic, and self-aware. We gathered both burning and big questions as a group to figure out next steps, both small and big. Hopefully, in having had some of these conversations together, we can hold each other accountable moving forward. And hopefully too, we can gather a critical mass to make meaningful change and hold the leadership to the goal of true equity. Only then will all staff, visitors, and everyone in our community experience life as they have a right to.

Archival Reference & Information Seeking Behaviors

In the last year or so, I have begun fielding research requests at work. Our archives serve as an important visual repository for and about the museum, as the “corporate memory [which is] preserved so that the parent institution can understand its history” (Pugh, 2008, p. 43). Staff ask for images, and I attempt to locate and make accessible via digital surrogates visual representations of subjects for which they are looking. These are extrinsically motivated, as research, publication, or exhibition projects often drive these requests (Pugh, 2008). 

Sometimes requests are straightforward - a known negative which depicts a specific museum collections object. If the negative or transparency can be found within the collection - either via the image number or object accession number - the material is usually easily digitized, and the file and corresponding descriptive metadata from the catalog card and/or negative sleeve can be shared with the requestor. Often, queries are much more vague and do not have specific images associated with them. Questions are open ended: “what images do you have that depict families visiting the museum in the 1950s” or “do you have any images of the museum gardens with flowers blooming?”

One such more general request came from the collection manager, conservation technician, and researcher of the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the museum. She emailed stating that looking for “all gallery and installation views” of the miniature rooms from their first installation to today. There was thus no defined right or wrong “answer,” and nearly any image could be useful. At first, I jumped in and attempted to locate as many images as I could alone. I performed a basic keyword search in our database, digitized several dozen contact sheets, and asked if I could be of further assistance. Only at this point did I start to understand how necessary ongoing conversation and an iterative approach to research is for more general requests like this one. This experience also taught me the value of following a more traditional reference process of query abstraction, query resolution, and query refinement (Pugh, 2008). 

There were some gaps in the digitized contact sheets that I’d provided, and this staff member inquired if I could search again. We ended up meeting face-to-face, and she explained more fully what these images were for (to inform future interpretation of the miniature rooms, including wall labels and the installation of the rooms), and specific types of images that would be especially helpful (visitors looking at the rooms, position of lights in and around the rooms, views above and behind the walls and ceiling where the rooms have been installed). This interaction helped provide greater context in the form of her individual needs: the research purpose, intended use, and her previous experience and preparation (Pugh, 2008). This conversation served to more fully develop the query abstraction initially posed in her first email communication.

Given the limitations of our information retrieval systems, it is challenging to formulate the general topic in the form of a textual query. However, when we pooled our knowledge, we were able to find more relevant images. I ended up teaching this staff member how to use our information systems, and we worked together to formulate new queries, use different search terms, search in different fields, and generally try different methods to find images. Our process evolved and changed organically as we gained new information, much as Pugh (2008) describes Bates’s theory of berrypicking. This staff member was able to bring to the table expertise about the topic, and I was able to leverage knowledge about our systems and organization of knowledge. Through this query resolution, I helped steer her to relevant images while she provided additional points of access.

It is unlikely that this research will ever be “finished,” given the complexity of her request and the challenges of our information systems. Our query refinement may therefore be ongoing. It was rewarding teaming up to tackle this investigation, and it has informed how I facilitate other research queries.

References:

Pugh, M. (2008). Providing reference services for archives & manuscripts. Chicago, Illinois: The Society of American Archivists. 

CMEG at Chicago Architecture Center: Evaluating exhibits

I receive emails from the Chicago Museum Exhibitors Group (CMEG), and the organization recently announced a meeting dedicated to evaluating exhibits, entitled Everyone Evaluate. I’ve never attended one of their events, and this topic in particular intrigued me, so I decided to go. Evaluation of this sort does not factor heavily in my day-to-day work, so I welcomed the opportunity to learn more from the experts. Museums are known for exhibits, but more archives and libraries are organizing similar experiences in their own spaces. So perhaps I will be a part of exhibition design and planning in the future, and will therefore need to understand the basics of evaluation!

View of one of the exhibit spaces at CAC

The newly rebranded and relocated Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) was host for the meeting. Dozens of folks from across Chicagloand attended, including those who work at cultural institutions, companies, and consulting firms. I felt out of my element in this crowd of exhibit and instruction designers, and I enjoyed sitting back and taking it all in. I recognized a few faces from the Art Institute of Chicago and DuSable Museum of African American History.

First Michael Wood, the Senior Director of Program Strategy, provided some information about CAC, its recent change of name, and its move to new facilities. After having spent half an hour or so wandering around the new exhibitions, it was interesting to hear about all the changes the organization has recently undergone. I have had the opportunity to visit their old space, attend some of their tours, and take advantage of the wonderful annual open house event they organize. The exhibitions and their space seem to provide a sense of harmony with their new identity, though Wood made it clear that changes have not been without challenges. He also introduced the topic of evaluation and told us about the agenda and format for the meeting.

Katherine Gean of Katherine Gean consulting was first to present on the topic. She provided a high-level view of what evaluation looks like in the context of cultural heritage exhibits. She first stressed the importance of figuring out research questions: what do I need to know, what do I want to learn, and how to I want to study it? Gathering information and data becomes much more straightforward when there are clear parameters about the goals of the investigation. Gean then explained the difference between quantitative (numeric counts, generalizable) and qualitative (descriptive exploration, not as generalizable) data gathering, and how sometimes combining the two through a mixed methods approach works the best. In fact, she said that often the pursuit of answering one question via one method (quantitative or qualitative) often results in more questions arising, and different methods needing to be employed in order to answer those questions. The process is therefore often iterative. She also provided some examples of types of methods within each category:

• Quantitative: surveys, timing and tracking

• Qualitative: interviews, focus groups, follow-alongs, observation, cognitive interviews

Evaluating awe at the MSI

Jana Greenslit, who works at the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) was next to speak. She described their efforts to measure awe using in situ evaluation. Evaluation was embedded within the exhibit and overall museum experience, so they did not rely on post-visit surveys or interviews. Observation of visitors within gallery experiences were challenging given the nature of the research question. Measuring awe as a passive observer is challenging, since feelings aren’t always visible or apparent. Instead, Greenslit opted for a combination of experience sampling and eye tracking to help gather information to determine how awe-inspiring the museum experience is. The museum used cheap cell phones that they lent to select visitors, or had visitors opt in with their own cell phones for the experience sampling data gathering. One staff member was then tasked with texting these devices to ask visitors to rate their experience on a numerical scale as they were experiencing it. Greenslit also decided to use eye tracking glasses to help determine what visitors were looking at, what they spent the most time with, and what they were saying as they moved through spaces. Essentially, this technology allowed for observation in both qualitative and quantitative ways (through analyzing the footage and encoding it) without a museum staff representative needing to be present. It sounds as though they have reached some conclusions in regards to their original query, and hopefully the findings will be published on their website soon.

Timing and tracking map for one exhibition area at the MCA

Rosie May, who works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) presented last. May started by recommending reading the article ‘The Museum is Watching You’ in the Wall Street Journal, as it provides a helpful overview of evaluation and its value in museums. She then talked about how she began working at MCA in interpretation, and how evaluation played in important role in better understanding their visitors and their needs. Some of the initial questions she posed included:

• What are visitors’ behaviors in the gallery spaces?

• What interpretation tools (introductory text, videos, wall labels) do visitors use?

• How to visitors construct meaning, how do they learn?

• What is the value of the exhibit experience for visitors?

May opted to employ two methods to gather quantitative and qualitative data to help answer these questions. First, staff were employed to interview visitors after they experienced the galleries. A standard evaluation form was used to note the answers, and the interviews were recorded as well. A team of in-gallery observers were also used in order to measure timing and tracking in front of interpretation tools and the collections objects on display. May was able to see how visitors behaved in the space - how they moved where they spent their time. From this mixed methods approach, the museum learned that visitors struggle to navigate through exhibits, and that they want to know how long they should expect to be in an exhibit. Visitors expect wall labels to be next to every object on display, and they appreciate when these labels are concise and provide tools to help them look at an interpret objects. The data also revealed that visitors want active learning activities, since art museum exhibits tend to be fairly passive experiences. From all this information, the exhibitions team made concrete changes to improve visitors’ experiences in exhibits:

• Since visitors spent on average less than a minute in front of labels, interpretive text have been edited such that it can be read in this amount of time.

• Since standard tombstone information on the top of labels (donor information, identifying accession number) was found to be confusing, some of this information has been moved to the bottom of the label.

• Locating labels next to their corresponding objects has been prioritized in exhibition installation.

• Clearer wayfinding signage was produced and installed throughout exhibition spaces.

• More exhibits are featuring rooms in which visitors can actively respond to ideas presented.

Everyone attending this event then had the chance to put some of this practice and methodologies to use. Wood provided us with a prompt from his institution in the hopes that the group could come up with concrete research questions and methods to help CAC. In short, there has been a shift since they have moved locations and rebranded, and many visitors seem confused about what they can do there, and what they should expect. We broke into teams to discuss and explore. My group ended up coming up with the following questions: what is CAC and what do people think CAC is; what do visitors want and are they interested in the exhibit experience? Interestingly, folks identified the first two questions as aligning more closely with market research than audience research. Both sets of questions are important for the organization to answer in order to clarify their services and better provide for their visitors. For the identity component, it was decided that organizing focus groups for staff, visitors, and non-visitors would be helpful in order to gather some qualitative data about mission and services. This market segmentation can provide additional insights. The group decided that eye tracking may also provide useful data, especially given the seeming visitor confusion inside the spaces. Finally, tracking and tallying specific visitor questions could help reveal perceptions or misunderstandings among visitors. The group decided that the identity questions should be a top priority for CAC, but that they could use concept testing in the future to help out with the visitor experience questions. The goal of pursuing these questions and gathering data through these different methods would be to find ways of changing for the better. This could result in improved messaging in advertising, clearer signage on the exterior of the building explaining CAC to visitors, and better communication across all services provided by the organization.

This event was an amazing learning opportunity for me. I walked in with some basic understanding of how evaluation works, and left feeling much more confident about the process and specific methodologies. And crucially, I more fully understand what the aims of evaluation are (answering specific research questions) and overall goals should be (improving the experience and services offered). Cultural heritage exhibitions are important experiences that help connect the public with information and ideas through the display of objects, visuals, interpretive text, and hands-on activities. It’s exciting to think about the ways in which these experiences can be improved through strategic and iterative evaluation. And it’s also worth considering all the ways in which this type of evaluation extends beyond exhibits in information organizations.

Time-Based Media Workshop: Installation and Exhibition

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) hosted a symposium on time-based media in April, and I had the chance to attend the all-day event. There were quite a few other attendees from the museum, and folks traveled from across the country to attend as well. Backgrounds varied from curators to collection managers and conservators to exhibitions and audio-video crew. I think this range added considerably to the discussions, as different individuals were able to provide unique perspectives on the issues at hand.

The morning session was dedicated to digital projection and media players. An introductory session looked at the various ways to consider video display, especially as it relates to artists’ intent and available technology at the time time-based artworks were made. Nam June Paik’s works that are reliant on CRT monitors is a good example, as are early LCD pieces from the 1980s. The ways in which a piece may be altered by viewing it on newer display technologies can dramatically alter both the aesthetics and meaning. Next, there were two demos on display technology. The first looked at projectors, types of projector technology, helpful settings, and the impact of screen material on display. The second showed the Bright Sign player tool and its variants. The last session of the morning provided a birds-eye view of time-based media presentation. The presenter provided practical advice: always perform site surveys to understand the space, vet equipment prior to exhibitions, document choices and cable routing.

The afternoon focused on audio issues in gallery settings. There was a session that introduced audio generally. The presenter helped to outline objectives to consider in relation to the exhibition of audio: building a system, understanding space and equipment limitations, acoustics, the nature of the audio (mono, stereo, synched), and the sustainability of the system. Next, two representatives from AIC talked about a temporary exhibition that was installed at the museum at the time - Gregg Bordowitz: I wanna be well. Historical background was provided in order to understand unique factors in displaying his work, especially as it related to his relationship with institutions like museums. Given the fact that the artist is living, museum staff were able to collaborate with him in order to find compromises, meet his artistic goals, and meet the museum’s goals. There was therefore no right or wrong way to approach the display of his time-based work, rather they worked as a team to find appropriate presentation solutions. As it related to sound more specifically, Bordowitz stressed the need for good sound, distinct experiences between the pieces, and comfortable seating for extended viewing. Prior installations used tools like headphones to enable listening, which would not be feasible in a high-traffic exhibition like this one. Instead, exhibition crew worked to create distinct listening and viewing zones in the galleries, utilizing a range of acoustic and diffusion materials to control the sound. They also worked with Bordowitz to de-noise and normalize his audio to improve the visitor experience. The exhibition was a true collaboration, which necessitated the expertise of a range of individuals in the institution, as well as involvement from the artist himself.

The symposium also included some background information about the time-based media initiative at AIC and the Midwest Media Art Consortium. In 2012, the museum started an initiative to address time-based media challenges and opportunities, and work has been ongoing since then. Effectively, this group formed because there were needs that were not being addressed by existing policies and protocols. A variety of staff have been involved over the years, which is helpful since a multitude of perspectives is needed. The museum is fortunate to have a time-based media conservation fellow since 2017, who has been gathering information about these type of collections materials within the institution. She has worked to understand existing workflows around accessioning, storing, and exhibiting a range of formats, including both analog and digital pieces. She was instrumental in organizing the symposium, and she hosts regular meetings with staff to discuss various topics that relate to time-based media. Part of this work has also extended beyond AIC to include neighboring institutions through the Midwest Media Art Consortium. There is much that still needs to be addressed and resolved, but it is encouraging to see so many folks coming together to talk about these issues. And AIC has made notable strides due in large part to the fellow’s work.

I am not be directly involved in the direct life-cycle of these collections (and loan) pieces at the museum. I am glad I attended the symposium, because our department is often tasked with documenting these installations via still photography. It was incredibly useful understanding the impact of even what may seem like the smallest detail in the display of these works, and I hope we can translate better some of these ideas through our documentation. I am also interested in the role of technologies in museum collections, especially as it relates to both physical and digital preservation. Without efforts to document and preserve core components of time-based media, much will be lost to time.

LACMA Tour

My last day in LA was spent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). I arrived before the museum opened for the day, which worked out quite nicely. The campus is beautiful and it was such a treat to spend time soaking up the sun after enduring another brutal Chicago winter. The modernist architecture of the buildings definitely appealed to me, and I spent some time wandering between the separate structures reflecting on how these exterior walkways were very much of a southern climate. I love these simple differences in how institutions are similar and different from one another - this would never work in the midwest! It was also notable how much “empty” space there were around the buildings, and how much space there was as a result for visitors to simply relax. While it took me a few minutes to orient myself on this campus, I felt like I had space to breathe and gather my thoughts. This seemed like space for people, civic space. I did not anticipate spending so much time thinking about building and space planning in the context of museums during my visit to LACMA!

I ended up spending the majority of my time in the exhibition 3D: Double Vision, once the museum opened. From the website for the exhibition:

“The quest for perfect 3D representation drives innovation, stimulates creative expression, and sparks wonder in generation after generation. 3D: Double Vision is the first American exhibition to survey a full range of artworks, dating from 1838 to the present, that produce the illusion of three dimensions. These artworks function by activating binocular vision—the process by which our brains synthesize the information received by our two eyes into a single, volumetric image.

The history of 3D begins in the 1830s with the invention of the stereoscope. Initially considered a scientific device, the stereoscope soon entered popular culture, as Victorian audiences became fascinated with stereo photographs depicting faraway lands, colossal monuments, current events, and comic scenes. 3D motion picture technology followed in the 20th century, along with consumer products such as View Masters and Stereo Realist cameras. Lenticular printing and holography generate dimensional effects without the aid of glasses. In the digital present, artists have access to all these technologies for generating virtual images.

Drawn from the realms of art, science, mass culture, and entertainment, the artworks in 3D: Double Vision will dazzle the eyes and provoke the imagination. Ultimately, to experience 3D is to engage with questions about the nature of perception, the allure of illusionism, and our relationship with the technologies that create such images” (LACMA, 2019).

I knew I would not have a chance to see the entire show, so I gave myself permission to simply enjoy it rather than trying to absorb every detail. It was great! I meandered my way through the 1800s and early 1900s - the exhibit was roughly organized chronologically and by format - and ended with the use of 3D technologies in popular cinema.

Wall of stereographs!

Digital slideshow viewer with digitized stereographs

I then met up with the Digital Assets Specialist at LACMA, who I met after her presentation at the VRA conference. She showed me a few highlights from around the campus and we discussed all things in the realm of museums and our respective cities. Further confirmation that there are so many wonderful folks in this profession! This visit was the perfect way of capping off an information-packed trip out west.

References:
LACMA. (2019). 3D: double vision. Retrieved from https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/3d-double-vision

VRA Conference 2019

I attended the Visual Resource Association conference for the first time, and this year it was hosted in Los Angeles. I only became aware of the organization in the last year or so prior, which is odd given how closely the focus and goals fit with topics I am interested in professionally! I am glad to now be more connected to this group, and to have had the chance to meet so many folks through their annual meeting.

My first day was spent attending an intensive course in using the application OpenRefine. This is a free, open-source “tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data” (OpenRefine, n.d.). Two members of VRA who had practical experience using the application in their own respective professional settings, led the group in the basics. Using sample spreadsheets they provided, we loaded data, got an overview of the interface, performed basic sorting and filtering functions, and learned how to use functions to automate data cleanup. Most of the actions we took were fairly simple, but it is clear how useful even these basic commands could be. I wanted to take the class to better understand how we might approach our data cleanup project at work, where we face the merger of data from multiple different sources (homegrown databases, spreadsheets) into a new digital asset management system. The workshop helped me to think about how we could leverage tools like this one to work smartly, and how we will need to think creatively in order to cluster data to facilitate automation. In some cases, this may mean we need to perform several actions in order to transform information fully. Though this prospect still seems a little daunting, it was exciting to dig in and try my hand at some of this work.

The next days followed with more traditional conference sessions. The first I attended focused on the digital asset management environment at LACMA and the institution’s use of ResourceSpace. The museum’s Digital Assets Specialist discussed where DAMs is located within the organizational structure of the institution, and how that informs their goals. The Collections Information & Digital Assets (CIDA) team takes a user-centered approach to their work, and they are often acting as bridges between the museum’s IT department, external support services for their DAMs system, and staff. She talked about how this work is akin to translation, communicating between different groups in order to make sure all needs and dependencies are met. A big part of this work is also user education and training, to ensure expectations are realistic. With roughly 300 staff using the system, and over 350,000 assets managed within ResourceSpace, she also stressed the importance of management and governance, and integration with other existing systems (collections management database). As my museum pursues a new DAMs system, this presentation gave me a lot to think about - not just in terms of the solution we pick, but how we think about assets as information and how we can better serve staff.

DAMs management overview at LACMA.

Next up were a series of lighting talks on various projects and programs VRA professionals have recently undertaken. All of these presentations were interesting and showed the broad scope of work folks are involved in in this field. An MLIS candidate spoke about the ‘Information Worlds of Art Museum Staff,’ which appealed to me given my recent coursework in information communities. She set about her research project asking whether art museums’ staff information needs were being met by their current information resources, and what information worlds art museum staff contain. Through surveys sent to participating institutions, she learned that: museum websites are the most common information sources for all participants (intranet, public website) and all staff reported problems using this resource; and that online surrogates for the art object or primary text source were most commonly used as opposed to original resources. This has important implications for institutions like my own, and these findings could be leveraged to create better information resources for communities like these.

Another interesting lightning presentation was given by the Hirshhorn Collection Documentation and Research Manager. She discussed the role of photography in documenting artwork, especially with installation and contemporary artwork. While her institution has staff photographers who create this type of documentation, she posed the question “should visitor created photography documentation be collected and archived?” These type of images reveal how visitors interact with, experience, and perhaps even understand works of art. They can also document how a piece changes over time. While the Hirshhorn does not currently have any policies or protocol in place for the active collecting or archiving of visitor documentation, the museum does apply value to interaction on social media, and they are investigating the topic further. It is interesting to think about the possibilities of allowing more documenters - aside from institution-approved photographers - to contribute to the record of artwork.

The Image Resources Curator at UC Santa Barbara gave the final lightning presentation. She talked about how the UCSB Visual Resource Center underwent a physical transformation as they transitioned away from traditional slide library functionality after a renovation. They adopted a modular design to the new space to meet the needs of their community - professors and students. This included the installation of configurable furniture, a projector, multifunctional walls, multiple new workstations, and a large monitor. They also created space to view and temporarily store special collections, archival, museum collections to be used for instruction at the VRC. The physical space thus became much more closely aligned with the mission of serving the evolving needs of the community.

Kyoto Gardens at the conference venue, a lovely spot to take a break between sessions.

The next session I attended was focused on tools for analyzing art, texts, and films. The panel session looked at the development of various technologies from a VRA perspective: the development of a database that used content-based query for films, a comparison of existing OCR tools, and the application of deep learning to analyze the significance of image library slides. While much was presented as a work-in-progress, these technologies hold the potential to unlock information held within a range of resources. There is potential for VRA professionals to be able to more effectively describe and make accessible their collections, to provide new means for discovery, and to empower users to better analyze collections. It is likely that these tools will only improve with time - as is already evident in the advances in OCR.

I picked the next session largely because I was unclear of the definition of the core topics: digital scholarship and digital humanities. I was relieved when the presenters discussed this collective uncertainty we have about these subjects. They talked about how these disciplines bridge technologies, scholarship, and the humanities to bring VRA collections to life through interpretation. These types of projects range from complex and collaborative, like the digitization and presentation of the American Academy photographic archives in Italy, to more discrete and independent, like the interactive website ‘How to Make a Fake.’ The creation of robust metadata and notations, faceted searching options, use of IIIF, and mapping functionality help transform digitized resources to educate users and tell stories. The last presenter touched on some of the challenges within this domain, especially as it relates to the technical expertise needed to develop and sustain these projects over time. One example that helped illustrate this point was the use of a commercial real estate walk-through application, which was employed in a digital humanities paper to show the recreation of a historic interior in 360 degrees. This experience may need to be migrated to a new tool, should this service ever become defunct, and navigating licensing and copyright limits while attempting to effectively archive and preserve the paper can be difficult. VRA professionals cannot expect themselves to have the answers to all these potential roadblocks, but rather must leverage existing contacts with expertise, and help to bring together potential collaborators. As I have found time and time again in library school - it isn’t necessarily about what you know, it’s about knowing how to find the information you need - which includes our information networks.

The session, ‘Framing Places and Identities: Biographies of Photographic Archives and Their Environments,’ provided multiple perspectives on the complex histories and provenance many visual resource collections. In one case - a collection of photographs of the Salerno ivories at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence - the original physical images, digital surrogates, and new born digital images underwent transformations over time. The newest images were merged with the existing collection, and the collection as a whole was transformed as it became available online and was published widely. A different collection, Foto Arte Minore, has continued to grow over the decades. The intent of the photographer whose work comprises the core of the collection was carried out by the predecessors in his company, and more recently by commissions for similar work by the collecting institution. The relationship between repository and creator has thus become more fluid and active. A third presenter discussed how his institution had to piece together the body of work created by one important local photographer after it was dispersed by his family. This involved scouring sites like Craigslist and Ebay, proactively reaching out to the community, and maintaining lines of communication with potential donors over time. Though not all of the photographs were recovered, the portion of the collection that was reunited helped to tell the everyday story of the Japanese and Japanese-American community in 20th century California. The process also brought surviving subjects of the photographs, researchers, and the repository closer.

Next, a VRA professional from a neighboring art museum here in Chicago talked about ethical image use, or “sure, we can, but should we?” She made the case that as time has gone on, it has become easier to determine copyright but less clear if there are ethical implications for licensing images. Several case studies and their issues were presented: the use of an artist’s portrait rather than their work, overlaying text on artwork in marketing material, using artwork that aligned questionably with new product for the museum gift shop. In all situations, though copyright would permit use, there was the potential for conflict over the choice and context of the use of the images. The presenter stressed the importance of communicating with and educating requestors in these cases, to determine if a compromise or alternative solution could be found. Since she is often dealing with living artists, she also discussed how she often reached out to them to clarify these issues. In response to the question she posed of ‘who should be responsible for making ethical image decisions within an institution?’ she concluded by saying that everyone needs to feel ownership. Hopefully this type of awareness and consciousness is growing in libraries, archives, and museums that license images of and from their collections.

Custom-designed digitization station at the Getty.

The final presentation of the conference took one digitization project from start to final products: ‘Ed Ruscha’s Streets of LA: A Lesson in Digitizing, Organizing and Presenting Visual Information at the Getty.’ The team involved in the project first talked about the origins of the work, namely the access issues due to the format of the materials and the conservation concerns. They worked with a vendor to develop a custom solution to digitize the collection to minimize preservation issues and allow for ventilation, while also ensuring quality capture. For metadata, the team relied on accompanying written notebooks, notations on original housing material, OCR’ed street and business signs, and Google Cloud Vision API to create item-level descriptive data. They were also able to leverage existing GIS location data when they were able to determine street addresses. For both Google Cloud Vision API auto tagging and imported GIS location data, the team had to spend some additional time to perform quality control and assess how accurate and helpful this generated data was in this context. Finally, the team employed IIIF and designed two separate online portals for the anticipated users of the collections: scholarly researchers and the general public interested in the subject of the images (streets of Los Angeles over time). It was helpful to understand all of the work that went into the project like this one, especially as it relates to both expertise and staffing.

Example of auto-tagging suggestions for one of the images digitized as part of Getty’s project.

In between all these sessions, I had the opportunity to connect with other VRA professionals and new friends. We debriefed on what we learned, shared about our work, and commiserated over common challenges. Even though I am new to this community and felt uncertain about my role and fit, I felt welcomed. I will value the personal interactions and connections just as much (if not more!) than all the knowledge I gained through the formal presentations.

References:
OpenRefine. (n.d.). Welcome! Retrieved fromhttp://openrefine.org/

California Museum of Photography Tour

I visited Los Angeles for the first time this spring, which provided me with an opportunity to visit one of my SJSU professors and the museum where she works - the California Museum of Photography. I took her class the previous fall, and it was focused on managing photographic collections. This visit helped further contextualize everything we discussed, and it provided me an opportunity to see some of the materials she discussed in person!

Exterior of the museum with a view of the room-sized pinhole camera!

We toured the collections storage areas first. It always feels like such a privilege being granted access to these spaces, and this visit was no exception. There are four total spaces - vaults - and we looked at two of these. The first housed prints, cameras, and other photography equipment. Prints were either stored in custom drawers (stereographs), or they were matted and housed in boxes (oversized prints). They were fortunate to receive grant funding several years prior in order to do some of this preventive conservation rehousing work. We also talked about collections care issues in this space. They have a sizable collection of 35mm, medium format, and large format cameras, most of which are made of a variety of types of materials. The 35mm cameras in particular may include various types of plastic, metal, and glass. Determining the optimal way of storing - bagging, boxing, no covering - and combating a less-than-optimal filtration system within the HVAC system poses an ongoing challenge. There is also an interesting room divider in the collection, which necessitates special storage and care. The screen has mounted mammoth albumen prints, which are light sensitive. The object must therefore be draped with light-blocking material, as even when the overhead lights are off, emergency lights stay on at all times.

The first vault

Part of the 35mm camera collection

The second storage space primarily houses negatives, though there is some additional photography equipment. The stereographic negative collection - both cut and uncut - comprises a large portion of this room. Some of these negatives are glass, and some are film, and they are organized by the code Keystone View company (one notable publisher) assigned them. What is notable about this space is the use of special seismic cabinets for glass plate negatives and fragile mechanical equipment. These units are designed such that they sit on metal plates, which in turn sit on metal bearings. The bearings allow the cabinets to move with vibrations, which helps protect the material inside.

Seismic storage units for fragile material

Stereographic negative and prints

We also spent some time in the library and viewing room, which is open to the public by appointment. They are currently working on cataloging all of the bound volumes, but it is challenging given current staffing levels and the demands of the UC (which the museum is part of) cataloging requirements. There is one collection manager, a registrar, and two curators who work with the collection. They do host student workers and interns and draw heavily on the undergraduate and graduate student body at UC. We talked about the value of this additional help, which can be tempered by the additional workload it creates for staff. Occasionally, the library space is also used to temporarily store large collections items, for which staff need to make additional space in their vaults and/or create custom housing enclosures. When I was visiting, I had the chance to see two such oversized cameras up-close: a custom machine-gun camera and a 24”x24” view camera.

Exploded view of a camera using actual components from a stereographic device

The last several hours of my trip were dedicated to seeing the exhibitions at the museum. I visited when the galleries were closed to the public, and it was so pleasant to explore and enjoy the photographs alone. I first stopped at In the Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs And Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 To The Present. From the website for the exhibition: “the show presents the title’s territory on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin as an experimental tabula rasa playground for photographers, where nothing was at stake, so everything was possible” (UCR Arts, 2019). Some of the inspiration for the exhibition was drawn from “the work of New Topographics photographers Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and Joe Deal, who are well represented among the show’s 194 works” (UCR Arts, 2019). The photographs on display covered a wide range of themes - including social landscapes, environmental impacts, and photography as performance - while all still being centered in this specific geographic area. The curation was thoughtful and images thought-provoking.

In the Sunshine of Neglect

In the Sunshine of Neglect

The second exhibit I visited, entitled Collected, covered the theme of museum collections through the lens of this particular institution. From the website for the exhibition, the show: “examines the first photograph collectors, people in the 19th century who assembled images of loved ones or photographs of interest, and also features several modern collectors whose gifts helped to shape the California Museum of Photography’s collection… the museum’s collection has been made possible through donations from collectors, both the descendants of early photographic collectors and those who collect photographs and cameras today… these gifts have helped the museum expand the breadth and depth of its holdings, and have contributed to the museum’s success” (UCR Arts, 2018). The relationship between museums and donors is something I have been thinking about more frequently, especially as there is an increasing need for transparency and accountability in these partnerships. The exhibit featured a wonderful sampling of photographic technology and genres of images, and it felt at times like I was physically stepping into some of my course lectures.

Collected

Collected

I feel so fortunate to have, once again, toured the facilities of and talked with another professional whom I greatly respect. Museum collections managers and archivists are chronically overworked, so I truly appreciate the time every one of these individuals has set aside to meet with me in the last several years. This visit was a wonderful way to start the trip, and it helped provide some much-needed background information about the region itself.

References:

UCR Arts. (2018). Collected. Retrieved from https://artsblock.ucr.edu/Exhibition/permanent-collection-gallery
UCR Arts. (2019). In the sunshine of neglect. Retrieved from https://artsblock.ucr.edu/Exhibition/in-the-sunshine-of-neglect