Jennifer;

Dave makes some very good points.

My experience is that the majority of museum libraries do not cater much to
casual users off the street, and not much more to the buffs. Most are
designed to support the collections, for use by internal and serious outside
researchers, and their collections are thus closely related to the mandate
of the individual institution in which the library is housed.

Hence you will find a heavy emphasis on ethnology, archaeology, folk art and
Canadian history at a museum such as the Canadian Museum of Civilization and
on military history in our own library. We recently relocated out library to
the building which houses the 98% of our collection that is NOT on display,
so that serious researchers would have "one-stop shopping" - but this has
made it quite inaccessable to the casual visitor.

You mentioned your interest in historic sites. My experience is that few of
these have outstanding libraries, though there are exceptions. I have never
seen the library at Colonial Williamsburg, but, because of the size of their
operation and the requirement for a high level of research activity, I
assume it is excellent.

One quite small site that has a wonderful library is Fort Ticonderoga, on
the eastern border of New York (state). It has some truly unusual material
from the 18th and early 19th centuries and I confess to being quite awed
when their management showed me through it last summer. It is NOT intended
for use by the general public, from what I could see, but it is a unique
research tool for the serious student.

Some museums do make an honest effort to turn their libraries into
multi-faceted research centres that cater as much to the public as to their
own staffs. The very best example I have seen is the Australian Museum in
Sydney, where the library seems heavily used by a wide variety of people. It
is also unusual in that it contains a variety of artifacts, as well as the
more common library materials. When I was there a couple of years ago, they
even had a live Queensland cockroach in a terrarium - an enormous armoured
beastie which was the librarians' pet!

Other museums, such as the Glenbow in Calgary, take a different tack,
creating small learning centres containing books, magazines and other
materials in each of the individual galleries, so that visitors have
material readily at hand to answer basic questions and do some deeper
exploring.

Still other museums use computers to give the visitor access to what a
library provides - information of various kinds and in various depths. The
Minneapolis Institute of Art has done some interesting work in this area, to
provide the visitor with more information and comparative images from other
museums, in at least one of their galleries.

The distinction between libraries and exhibit-based learning centres is
becoming fuzzier and fuzzier and, for the general public, that seems to be a
very good thing.

Harry Needham
Special Advisor - Programme Development
Canadian War Museum
330 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0M8
Voice: (819) 776-8612  Fax (819) 776-8623
Email: [log in to unmask]

> ----------
> From:         Dave[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     Museum discussion list
> Sent:         Monday, July 27, 1998 4:11 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Articles on Historic Building & Site Libraries
>
> Jennifer Jukes:
>
> You have stumbled upon a part of the question: the problem of
> scholarship in museums. Museum libraries do exist, but in the role of
> "and also featuring" kind of support to the museum's collections. Often
> they are nearly inconsequential, but there are some museums where the
> library is the jewel hidden in the closet or garret--unknown to all but
> a few.
>
> Of course, within the parameters of the problem assigned to you, is a
> much deeper issue: what is the best purpose for the museum, its
> collections , it research/scholarship? To understand the needs of a
> library, one must first answer these questions. To know what is already
> known is recitation and rote--one must ask (and answer) the greater
> questions... and see the greater issues. To see the landscape as being
> what is in one's room, denies the existence of the landscape beyond
> one's room--and the reality and existence of something for which one has
> neither anticipated nor has considered as existing.
>
> If you direct your focus to the deficiencies in scholarship, the
> inexoriable shift towards community-museum interaction and programming,
> and the role of collections, libraries and active education goals, I
> think you will find what you see if already before you: within the
> limited vision of the programme, the problem assigned, and the
> professor's anticipated response from you. Step beyond those limitations
> and see those greater issues and solutions.
>
> Dave Wells
> Olympia WA
>
> > I recently signed onto this list as part of a course on art and museum
> > librarianship that I am taking at Catholic University.  One of our
> > assignments is to do a project about some general museum library
> concerns
> > and then compare it to specific case examples. I am interested in
> historic
> > buildings and sites and would like to do my project on this topic but
> > have run into an obstacle: I have found plenty of articles on the sites
> > themselves but cannot find much on their library facilities, especially
> > from a scholarly perspective.  Does anyone out there have any
> suggestions
> > of articles or places to look on this specific subject?
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Jennifer Jukes
> > [log in to unmask]
>