Volume 3 No. 6

CHRISTINE LOVE-RODGERS

Summer time is here again, and many of you in the coming months will be heading off to faraway places for a well-deserved holiday. Did you ever consider that there might be opportunities available to travel for work? Yes, it may be true that many employers are too cash-strapped and too sceptical of the benefits to send you on an international conference, study visit or job exchange - but help is at hand from travel grants and awards. I took the opportunity to apply for travel grants provided by the Art Libraries Society/UK & Ireland [1] in support of attendance at the 28th Art Libraries Society/North America [2] Conference in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. in March 2000.

My objectives in attending the conference were
*To broaden my knowledge of the art documentation world and to keep up to date with professional issues, such as international art cataloguing issues
*To learn new skills, particularly related to web authoring, cataloguing and using art information sources.
*To meet new colleagues in the profession and build a network of international contacts.
*To see Pittsburgh and its museums, libraries and galleries.

Accommodation
The conference was held at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, which overlooked Point State Park and the junction of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. The hotel bill made the trip quite expensive, but I managed to reduce the cost by sharing my room with a librarian from the Rhode Island School of Design Library. Also, there were so many sponsored receptions which included food, that my meal costs were not high - although I would say that vegetarian food is not part of the American culture!

Networking
Sharing my room with an American librarian meant that I was introduced to her colleagues and friends at the conference, so I met quite a few people from New England straight away. It was excellent to have this start to networking, as the conference was very large (c. 600 delegates). I also made several contacts in one of my tour groups, which went out for dinner together, and there were a number of social events including a Welcome Party and a Black Tie dinner sponsored by Ars Libri. I travelled to the conference with Debby Shorley (ARLIS/UK & Ireland Chair, CILIP National Councillor) and Sonia French (ARLIS/UK & Ireland Administrator). It was nice to have someone familiar to catch up with, and we went out for dinner together at some memorable venues.

Mentoring
To aid networking for new delegates, the conference runs a mentoring programme whereby an experienced ARLIS/NA member is matched to a new delegate to help them settle in. My Conference mentor was Lee Sorenson, an ex-Webmaster for ARLIS/NA, who took me out to breakfast before the Webmasters discussion session. He made some helpful suggestions for the ARLIS/UK website and was also able to introduce me to the current ARLIS/NA webmaster. I think that the idea of having mentors for new conference delegates is an excellent one, particularly if the mentor makes a real effort to meet and support the new delegate, as mine did. I was also able to meet up with Christine Milne (currently Editor of Art Index), who has been my 'mentee' for Route B Chartership by e-mail for the last few months.


Conference sessions
Conference sessions I attended included an introduction to art related databases and journal indexes, a historical overview of different systems of visual indexing over the last 30 years, an overview of the development of Library of Congress Subject Headings for fine and decorative arts [3], and pointers on cataloguing art for the Web. The session on LCSH art subject headings was led by Julia Wisniewski, who took us through the process of submitting a new subject heading to the Subject Authority Co-operative Program -- SACO, and encouraged art librarians to share their subject expertise by proposing new headings. She recommended that we tell users and reader services librarians about new subject headings created to demonstrate what cataloguers are doing for them. Julia also suggested that contributing subject headings to co-operative cataloguing programs was very rewarding and likely to increase cataloguer job satisfaction, so that if cataloguers can't be given a pay rise, they should be given more opportunities to research subject access(!).
I also attended a Webmasters Discussion Group session, which discussed issues familiar to us in the UK such as the need for training to cope with new technology and software, the problems of managing geographically distributed sites and copyright. My conference mentor, Lee Sorenson, led a conference session on implementing web site search tools and how sites can be made more visible to search engines by effective use of metadata.

Pittsburgh highlights
I soon learned that nearly every building in Pittsburgh has the name of Mellon, Carnegie or Frick, three self-made men who began their careers in Pittsburgh and rose to become international figures in the 19th and early 20th century. Carnegie was a self educated man who lectured on self-improvement, and this was the motivation behind his philanthropic involvement in library building - he built 2509 public libraries in the U.S.A and Europe. During his 30-40 years of library building, library designs gradually moved from closed access libraries with male librarians to open access plans with female librarians, a shift in the view of librarians as a guardians of knowledge to a user-orientated profession. I particularly liked a design of library issue desk which had a built in radiator for the librarian sitting at it to warm her feet! I also went on a tour of Carnegie Mellon University, looking at some of its architectural features, and art works on campus. Other highlights of Pittsburgh art and architecture were a ride on the funicular railway which runs up and down the river gorge carved out by the two rivers and the Membership Luncheon talk on Frank Lloyd Wright. This was a fascinating description of the ongoing processes of research and the role of the release of archival papers in changing critical views of a practitioner. For instance, recently released Frank Lloyd Wright letters reveal anti-Semitic tensions between the architect of Fallingwater and his Jewish patron, Edgar Kaufmann.

Conference attendance tips
· When booking, be aware that at an international conference the first day or two may be taken up with business meetings which you will not want to go to - so don't book to stay for these days
· Watch out for cultural differences, even when people are speaking the same language. I was caught out more than once by the different U.S. dating convention e.g. 1 February 2000 is written 2/1/00 not 1/2/00.
· Do go through the programme before you attend and make a plan of the sessions you want to go to
· Don't book up your time solidly - you will need time out and also time to meet up socially with delegates you have met
· If a mentoring scheme for first time delegates is offered, use it
· Do go with a friend or colleague and use each other as points of contact for breakfast or coffee
· Don't stay with your friend all the time – you will not meet new people otherwise
· Take business cards with you to swap with other delegates
· Keep the directory of conference delegates with you and tick the people you have met. You will never remember everyone and they might be useful to you in the future!
· Make notes in sessions - handouts may not be available
· Make sure you take a camera with you for at least one day - and use it!

Last impressions
I very much enjoyed the experience of the conference, and I felt that my objectives for attending were met. It was a fantastic opportunity to not only travel to a new country, but to get to know people there in a way that would not happen if you visited on holiday. Pittsburgh is not an obvious tourist destination (it has been compared to Sheffield), but I felt that architecturally and culturally it had much to offer (although if I went again in March I'd take a warm scarf and hat!).

Next time, it could be you!
I am extremely grateful to Chris Mees (sponsor of the Design and Applied Arts Index Travel Award), the ARLIS/UK & Ireland Travel and Study Fund [4] and my employer, the National Art Library, for supporting me to attend the conference, without which I could not have considered attendance. ARLIS/UK & Ireland is only one of several professional bodies to provide opportunities for conference attendance abroad. For instance, the Alison Northover Bursary of the University, College and Research Group [5] offers a £400 award annually, whereas the English Speaking Union / Library Association Travelling Librarian Award offers £1000 in support of 2 weeks of library visits in the area of your choice in the USA [6]. I would like to encourage you all to apply for these awards – and tell us about your travel experiences in Impact if you are successful!

References

[1] See the ARLIS/UK & Ireland website at http://arlis.nal.vam.ac.uk/
[2] See the Art Libraries Society/North America website at http://www.arlisna.org/
[3] Papers from this session are available at: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/9783/arlisna/codeless.html
[4] For more information on ARLIS/UK & Ireland Travel Awards, see http://arlis.nal.vam.ac.uk/trav/trav.html
[5] Further details at http://www.ucrg.org.uk/awards.html
[6] Further details can be found in the Library Association Record 102 (4),p.196.

Christine Love-Rodgers
National Art Library
Victoria & Albert Museum

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