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]