Artis Wick. Photo by Gail Novak.

The thirty-fourth annual ARLIS/SE regional meeting was held jointly by the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Ringling College of Art and Design, November 5–8, 2008, in Sarasota, Florida. The conference hotel was the Hilton Garden Inn located conveniently just north of the college and museum. Twenty-eight participants attended the conference, coming from as far away as Portland, Oregon, and Toronto, Ontario.

The program began on Wednesday evening with a lecture, reception, and book signing by Dave Isay, a producer from National Public Radio. Isay is the founder of StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. His program included several segments from the recently published Listening Is an Act of Love. Additionally, one of the first participants of StoryCorps was in the audience and spoke of his impression of the experience and what motivated him to be a part of the program. The ten ARLIS/SE participants who attended the program at the Ringling Museum's Historic Asolo Theater received a copy of the book and chatted with Mr. Isay after the program.

ARLIS/SE members get a tour of the Cà d'Zan. Photo by Liz Gentry.

Thursday's program at the Ringling Museum of Art began with a light breakfast on the terrace of the Cà d'Zan mansion. The weather was wonderful with clear skies and a gentle breeze off Sarasota Bay. Ron McCarty, the Keeper of Cà d'Zan, gave a wonderful behind-the-scenes tour of the winter home of John and Mable Ringling, including the game room, the south wing, and a spectacular view of the barrier islands from the home's tower.

As the program continued in the new library of the Ringling Museum, the attendees registered and toured the new library's facilities with head librarian Linda McKee and assistant librarian Artis Wick. After a quick break, Myriam Springuel, from Springuel Consulting in Sarasota, spoke briefly about responding to change in institutions and training for success. The afternoon session included a talk by Tim Dorsey, author of several locally based mystery/detective novels. After discussing his novels and characters, Mr. Dorsey took several questions from the group, including a request to include an art librarian as a character in one of his forthcoming novels. After a book signing, the group was offered a tour of the conservator's laboratory and the registrar's area. Michelle Scalera, museum conservator, and Deborah Walk, the circus curator and archivist, presented to the group different aspects of both positions along with the challenges and diversity of their functions within the institution. The group was also given an idea of the problems involved restoring the Wisconsin, the newest acquisition of the museum. Once John Ringling's personal railroad car, the Wisconsin has been undergoing meticulous restoration and conservation, bringing it to the original condition when John Ringling used it as his primary mode of transportation. Françoise Hack, the registrar of the museum, spoke to the group about the various responsibilities of her position and presented the importance of accurate record keeping in her position. With the end of the day's sessions completed, the group left with plans to meet for dinner.

Author Tim Dorsey. Photo by Gail Novak.

On Friday, the 7th, the group reconvened at the Ringling College of Art and Design in the Verman Kimbrough Memorial Library. Kathleen List, the director of the library, began the morning program with a presentation by Elizabeth Russell, a columnist for Art Calendar magazine. She spoke about intellectual property rights and brought to our attention how important it is to recognize and protect intellectual property rights within our libraries and to appoint a liaison who will be alert for infringement violations. During lunch, Ringling College president Larry Thompson spoke to the group about how far the college has come in such a short time and about the challenges facing the college today. The afternoon program consisted of a walking tour of the college and a presentation by George Pratt, a painter and illustrator of many book covers for several different book publishers. Mr. Pratt is an instructor at the Ringling College's eight-week summer program and a successful artist with works in several private collections. His program, titled "Illustration: From Idea to Research to Finished Work," included many of his works.

After a short break, the chapter meeting was held in one of the meeting rooms of the Ringling College Library. Elizabeth Schaub, from the University of Texas at Austin, gave us an update from ARLIS/NA, and Sarah Carter, from Ringling College, reported the progress of the ARLIS/SE chapter's formation of a travel award for a library school student. Gail Novak, from the New College Library, Sarasota, presented the winners of the twenty-fourth LoPresti Publication Awards. Because of the excellent caliber of the twenty-three submissions this year, it was a difficult choice, but the committee chose Vaudechamp in New Orleans, by W. K. Rudolph, published by the Historic New Orleans Collection. Honorable Mention went to Susan Power's Art of the Cherokee: Prehistory to the Present, published by the University of Georgia Press. The Exhibition Catalog Award went to the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art for Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection. The honorable mention for the exhibition catalog category went to Montgomery (Alabama) Museum of Fine Arts for Sonja Blomdahl: Incalmo/Glass. Congratulations to all of the institutions and publishers. After the business meeting, many from the group made plans to meet later that evening to attend the Friday Art Walk in downtown Sarasota.

The raffle drawing for the LoPresti publications. Photo by Gail Novak.

Saturday's program at the Ringling Museum Library began with a presentation by Marcella Estevez, a local professional book and paper conservator. She spoke about proper handling of books and discussed several methods of restoring rare and antique books. The museum's director, Dr. John Wetenhall, stopped in briefly to chat with the group, stressing how important it is to meet frequently with professional colleagues. After a short break, a tour of the museum's special Egyptian exhibition, To Live Forever: Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, was conducted by Maureen Thomas-Zaremba, the museum's assistant curator of adult programming. At the end of the program, many of the attendees continued on to the rest of the museum's exhibitions.

Tsu Yin Lue and D. Courtenay McLeland, with Cà d'Zan (House of John) in background. Photo by Gail Novak.

The program offered was varied and interesting, plus the weather was perfect! Many of the attendees agreed that, although we keep in touch throughout the year, nothing can replace face-to-face communication in any organization. Special thanks to the hosts Linda McKee, Artis Wick, Kathleen List, and Sarah Carter and all the others who contributed the many hours and support before, during, and after the conference, in particular: webmaster Natalia Lonchyna, treasurer Allen Novak, Gail Novak, and SE chapter president Yvonne Boyer. Thanks to you all in helping to make this an interesting and meaningful conference.

Linda McKee and Kim Collins. Photo by Liz Gentry.

From Sarah Carter, Verman Kimbrough Memorial Library, Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida:

Kimbrough Library has been running a Peer Research Consultant program at the Ringling College of Art and Design for two semesters. The program consists of three trained student consultants who are available on a drop-in basis to help their peers with research skills. The program is aimed at ensuring that students receive research assistance in the library when professional librarians are not available. Student Research Consultants are also able to contribute to library operations by creating research guides, book reviews, and marketing literature when not busy with consultations. Further adjustments and program expansion will continue as assessment data accrues.

Ringling faculty member Peter Rampson brought students to the library to install folded book projects this fall. Students were given an assignment to fold and/or cut a used book to create pattern and repetition within each structure. The results were both attractive and eco-friendly; by using recycled books as a medium, students were able to save materials from the waste stream. Kathleen List and Sarah Carter were able to provide constructive feedback to each first-year student on his or her construction. The library was also able to honor two students by accessioning their works into the permanent Artist's Books collection.

Book sculpture created for Peter Rampson's CORE 131 class at Ringling College of Art + Design, Sarasota, Fla., Fall 2008. From Kimbrough Library's Photostream (Flickr).

Community member James Downing, 78 years old, recently donated a sculpture to the Kimbrough Library after being inspired by the CORE 131 books on display. Downing and his wife Shirley toured the campus on a visit recently, and James, a retired sign designer and painter, decided to fold a seasonal Christmas tree complete with lights!

James Downing's book sculpture. From Kimbrough Library's Photostream (Flickr).

Tim DeForest, circulation manager at Ringling College of Art and Design's Kimbrough Library, has a second book published: Radio by the Book: Adaptations of Literature and Fiction on the Airwaves, published in August by McFarland and Co. Publishers. More information on Radio by the Book is available at http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3972-0. DeForest's first book is Storytelling in the Pulps, Comics, and Radio: How Technology Changed Popular Fiction in America (McFarland, 2004).

From Thomas Caswell, University of Florida, Gainesville:

Thomas Caswell, University of Florida, was granted tenure and promoted to associate university librarian, effective July 1, 2008. Tom recently submitted the headnote and more than three hundred annotations for the "Art and Architecture" section of the American Library Association's online Guide to Reference (http://www.guidetoreference.com). He is currently working on a University of Florida Libraries' mini-grant to digitize more than ten thousand documents contained in the Historic St. Augustine Block and Lot Files. The prototype for this collection can be found at http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?s=hsa1.

From James A. Findlay, Broward County Main Library, Bienes Museum of the Modern Book, The Dianne & Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library, Fort Lauderdale, Florida:

The Bienes Museum has two new publications: Stories of Florida Prepared for Use in Public Schools: A Selection of Original Writings from 1935 1943, compiled by the Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Florida; edited by Gerry Bohning and James A. Findlay. Fort Lauderdale: Bienes Museum of the Modern Book, 2008.

WPA Children's Books by the Pennsylvania Writers' Project, the New York City New Reading Materials Program, and the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, compiled and edited by James A. Findlay. Fort Lauderdale: Bienes Museum of the Modern Book, 2008.

Ann Kardos, Reference Librarian, Jen Library, Savannah College of Art and Design: For years, I tried to figure out how to combine my artistic background with my love of research. That's when someone told me I could be a librarian! I had been working at a documentary film company and volunteering at both the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Boulder Public Library at the same time. It was a great feeling to know that I could do everything I liked at just one place. I graduated from Syracuse University with a dual BA in television/radio/film and religion and a minor in art history. Then I worked for a couple of years in the documentary film and media research industries out in Boulder, Colorado. For graduate school, I wanted to go back east to Boston. I attended Simmons College, where I not only could focus on art library courses, but also had many opportunities to develop myself professionally. I worked at the Boston Athenaeum, a two-hundred-year-old library and art gallery, and volunteered at a new architectural resource library that specialized in universal design materials. I joined ARLIS/NE and attended several of their semiannual meetings. It was great to network with the fantastic librarians in the northeast region. I also met fellow architecture librarians at the Association of Architecture School Librarians conference in Philadelphia in 2007. I graduated from Simmons in May of 2008. I'm glad to continue my career with the great people I met at the annual meeting in Sarasota. I look forward to getting to know the ARLIS/SE chapter and getting more involved as I find my "place" in the South.

In the fall of 2008, ARLIS/NL-Netherlands welcomed members of ARLIS/NA to join them for their annual meeting in Amsterdam. This was the first international ARLIS Study Tour in the Netherlands. Sixteen librarians from the United States participated in the study tour. The host city of Amsterdam was especially significant as it was designated the World Book Capital for 2008 by UNESCO.

Amsterdam. Photos by Yvonne Boyer.

The Jordaan Canal, Amsterdam.

On our first day we visited Special Collections at the University of Amsterdam. The library was founded in 1578. Its collection focuses on book history, cartography, and Jewish culture. The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana collection is devoted to Hebraica and Judaica, ranking among the largest collections in Europe. We viewed an interesting exhibition of atlases and maps of the seventeenth century, the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic.

The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana.

We later visited the harbor area, which is undergoing some impressive renovations, and toured expensive waterfront townhomes. Our guide, Michiel Nijhoff, the head of library and collection registration at Stedelijk Museum, explained the history of the harbor area, the dikes, the swamps, and the importance of the region for the history of the Netherlands.

On day two, we traveled by train to the city of Eindhoven, to the Van Abbemuseum art museum. We toured an exhibition titled Stars and Stripes Forever. .The exhibition demonstrates a collaboration of the museum library archive and the museum art collection. Archival material was used in the museum exhibition space. This exhibition features work by American artists collected during the 1960s by the museum, with the correspondence that took place during that acquisition period. Some of the artists included are Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Andy Warhol.

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Living Archive: Stars and Stripes Forever exhibition, Van Abbemuseum.

Later, we visited the nearby medieval city of Utrecht and Utrecht University, founded in 1636. It is a research university, strong in the sciences, with many international students. Its Special Collections houses one of the greatest masterpieces of Western art, the Utrecht Psalter. The new library building opened in the spring of 2005 at a cost of forty-five million euros. The library has about four million volumes. The building was intriguing; a bit sci-fi, Borg-like, with plant hothouses amongst the reading spaces. The Dutch architect Wiel Arets decided on a black color for the interior of the library so that attention is drawn to the books. The screen print windows and concrete black relief walls of the library have the same reed pattern. Reeds have been important in the Dutch landscape, as so much of Holland is built on marshland.

Utrecht University Library.

Utrecht University Library, detail.

Traveling south to The Hague, we visited the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Netherlands Institute for Art History). The collections of the RKD relate to Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, with an emphasis on Dutch art documentation. The RKD is an important repository for art historical research including photographs, iconography, portraits, and sales catalogs. Portraits of counts and countesses of Holland are presented on the ceiling of the reading room, based on original engravings by Cornelis Visscher. A graphic designer then enlarged these seventeenth-century portraits for a unique library ceiling design.

Reading room at the Netherlands Institute for Art History.

We traveled a short distance to the city of Rotterdam to visit the Netherlands Architecture Institute. It houses one of the largest architecture collections in the world, including drawings and architectural scale models from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The NAI has the archives of many prominent architects including P. J. H. Cuypers, who built the Rijksmuseum in the nineteenth century.

Returning to Amsterdam the next day, we equipped ourselves for a hard-hat tour of the Rijksmuseum. The historic building is under restoration until 2012. The Rijksmuseum is famous for its collection of seventeenth-century Golden Age Dutch art, most notably Rembrandt's The Night Watch (The Shooting Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch),1642. The masterpieces of Dutch art can be viewed in the Philips Wing, an adjacent modern building. We also toured the restoration laboratories building of the Rijksmuseum.

Hard hat tour at the Rijksmuseum.

Tools in the restoration laboratories of the Rijksmuseum.

We then walked to the Stedelijk Museum, the modern art museum of Amsterdam. Its large collection of modern art includes the works of Mondrian, de Kooning, Appel, Calder, Oldenburg, Warhol, and Malevich. The museum is undergoing a massive restoration and a new addition to the 1895 building. The nickname given by the public to the addition is "The Bathtub," due to its white, basin-like form. Our group also took a hard-hat tour of the Stedelijk Museum. We greeted the divers, as they were preparing the water-filled foundations for the new building, a common practice in the Netherlands. When this new entrance is complete, it will be an amazing venue on the Museumplein, the general area for the museums in the city.

Construction site for the addition to the Stedelijk Museum.

One of the highlights of the study tour was the visit to the Van Gogh Museum Archive. The museum librarian presented us Van Gogh letters with drawings within the writing. The drawings in the letters are sometimes studies for the paintings, with interesting discussion by Van Gogh. The museum will publish a five-volume illustrated set of the Complete Vincent Van Gogh Letters and also complete an online Van Gogh Letters Project in 2009.

The last day we visited the Openbare Bibliotheek, the new central Amsterdam Public Library, which opened in 2007. The library welcomes seven thousand visitors a day, with a capacity for two thousand bike racks. The building dramatically demonstrates the new image and ambition of the city. It overlooks the harbor, with the highest public terrace in Amsterdam. The public spaces are open, interesting, with a piano in the lobby that patrons are invited to play.

Openbare Bibliotheek.

Public computers, Openbare Bibliotheek.

Media area, Openbare Bibliotheek.

Public space, Openbare Bibliotheek.

View from the terrace of the Openbare Bibliotheek.

We then assembled for an afternoon symposium, back at the Van Gogh Museum auditorium. The program focused on digital projects in Europe and the United States. The week ended with an evening cruise through the picturesque Amsterdam canals with our new Dutch colleagues.

Bike and foot bridge, Amsterdam Harbor.

Flowers at the Bloemenmarkt, the world's only floating flower market.

Wooden tulip blossoms.

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