The morning sessions kicked off with a pre-recorded keynote from Sarah Bodman from the University of the West of England. She showed us a number of the activities undertaken at the Book Arts Centre there, the collaboration between artists and libraries and even, to my delight, showed some artists' libraries I wasn't familiar with. These included Heide Neilson's Outernet Library Branch, the Bristol Art Library, and Cathey Webb's books of found poetry, extracted from library shelves, reminded me of Ash Tower's Postcards from the Bibliopolis, created from found objects from the shelves of the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide. A similar theme was using post-it notes found left behind in library books to create cushion designs.
One activity in particular, an exhibition for World Book Night, showed artists respondings to books, short stories, and libraries. This year's theme - chosen before Covid-19 hit - was Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? This turned out to be a presicent choice. WBN2020 invited artists to contribute postcards on the theme - reminiscent of the Royal Academy's postcard fundraising exhibition (and Adelaide Central School of Art's Wish You Were here annual postcard fundraiser). Coordinator Linda Parr has also issued a call for participation in a Republic of Postcards, on the theme of Perec's Postcards, inspired by Georges Perec's postcard messages in 'Two Hundred and Forty-Three Postcards in Real Colour'.
Margaret Warren from the State Library of Queensland then spoke about the SLQ's digital strategy which aims to think, act and be digital. She showed several examples of this such as the Corley Explorer - an amazing collection of photographs taken of houses in Brisbane and other parts of Queensland - which one can explore and add information to. She also talked about how they chose to abandon the ubiquitous search box in favour of other methods of exploration for their digital copies of the The Queenslander magazine. Other projects included the development of a voice-activated Anzac Stories app, which was accelerated by Covid and was used 15,000 times in the lead up to Remembrance Day this year, and a voice-activated Baby Stories and Rhymes app which, she's been told, is apparently very popular with parents when driving. Overall, the success of their strategy is that it doesn't feel like a strategy anymore but simply business as usual (whilst not ignoring the physical, rather leveraging both together).
Steven Miller from the Art Gallery of New South Wales then talked about the AGNSW's response to Covid with the Together in Art website. All departments of the gallery were involved and they deliberately chose not to recycle existing content but to create new content (loved the isolation mullet post). They also supported artists who were badly hit by Covid by commissioning new works. The staffg at AGNSW has found the Together in Art website to be transformative and the director of the AGNSW, Michael Brand, described it as a circuit-breaker.
Simon Underschultz from the National Gallery of Australia described how they set up a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Early in my experience as Wikipedia editor, I attended an edit-a-thon that was organised in Adelaide to learn about Wikipedia editing and it was disastrous - I knew more about it than the person who was supposed to showing us, so I know first-hand that they are difficult to organise. The NGA's edit-a-thon was organised in conjunction with Art+Feminism, Wikimedia Australia and the Know My Name initiative at the NGA and was scheduled for International Women's Day. Crucial to the success of the edit-a-thon was the fact Simon organised and prepped materials for volunteers to use in their editing - a great idea.
Of course, the aim was to focus on notable Australian women artists and what constitutes notability is a hotly-debated topic amongts Wikipedia editors. It is vitally important to ensure that every statement in a Wikipedia article is supported by a citation drawn from secondary and tertiary sources. To capitalise on the energy created by the edit-a-thon and not have it dissipated by the lockdown, the NGA created an NGA Wiki club - this is a terrific idea and I'll be following up with Simon to join as I write articles on South Australian contemporary artists. The results from the Wiki club are impressive:
- 27 editors
- 16 articles created
- 128 articles edited
- 1.4k edits
- 57.8k words added
- 722 references added
David Dellafiora and Susan Hartigan talked about the Field Report. The Field Report started off as a way for unemployed artists to fill in some of their time by creating and swapping artworks, notably in the form of artists' books. This has now become an annual publication. As an assembling publication, it is related to zines and to APAs - Amateur Press Associations (I called them Amateur Publishing Associations in my tweet). It is also related to mail art and postcard art.
As a follow-up to Megan Lott's paper that she presented at ARLIS/ANZ's 2018 conference, Tara Marhajan of Rutgers University Special Collections presented a paper on how they draw upon material in the archives and special collections to create materials that can be circulated and given away to students. Starting with a Rutgers University version of Monopoly held in the archives, they created a copy of the board game in a pizza box which students can borrow - and this inspired one of their professors to create an assignment getting students to make board games out of / in pizza boxes. They also make badges, zines, colouring books, and puzzles to give to students and, during lockdown, put some of this material online. It allows them to promote the archives and special collections to students and brings them into the library and archives. They create postcards as a welcome to students and encourage them to complete and address the postcards which the library will then stamp and post for them. This has proven very popular with students. As a fellow Arlisian put it, archive goals.
The morning session chair, Tim Moseley from QCA, noted, to his surprise and delight, a resonance between art librarians and book artists. Well, we are a natural fit.
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