Please join us for the first session of lightning talks at the ARLIS/NA New York virtual mini-conference on Wednesday, October 13th, 12:00-2:00pm. The theme for this day will be digital projects. Please RSVP in order to receive Zoom links for the event. This is a free event and open to the public.
12:00 - 12:10 Introductions
12:10 - 12:20 Sarah Bigler, Photoarchivist, Frick Art Reference Library, The Frick Collection
The Photoarchive is the founding collection of the Frick Art Reference Library, comprising reproductions of more than one million works of art. The COVID pandemic has forced us to think creatively about the future of the Photoarchive as a digital resource. Over the past eighteen months we pivoted to focusing on virtual outreach, implementing new strategies for engaging with and attracting researchers to the Library’s digital collections repository. We hosted a series of webinars that will live as evergreen instructional content on our new website, launched a blog series, and created a recurring feature on Instagram stories. These programs all showcase the Photoarchive as a visual tool for art historical storytelling, hoping to draw interest from academic community and the general public. These new initiatives have been incredibly successful in increasing the Photoarchive’s audience both outside and inside the institution. This type of outreach will continue to be one of our focuses going forward as we shift to becoming an entirely digital collection.
12:20 - 12:30 Louisa Wood Ruby, Head of Research, Frick Art Reference Library, The Frick Collection
I will be presenting on PHAROS, The International Consortium of Photo Archives, was formed to respond to the accelerating need to make fully accessible to a new generation of scholars the unique materials found in scholarly researched photo archives around the world. The Consortium is currently engaged in a pilot project to support the creation of a digital research platform using the ResearchSpace software (British Museum) that will contain nearly 1.5 million images with accompanying scholarly documentation from six of the fourteen PHAROS member institutions. The platform is making use of technologies such as automated image searching and Linked Open Data to create an essential resource for those engaged with new research methodologies within the framework of digital humanities. It will have the capability for researchers to re-purpose the data for new research applications such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) that are in constant need of large datasets of images with well-researched metadata.
12:30 - 12:40 Megan Lotts, Art Librarian, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Urban Sketching is a movement created in 2007 by Seattle journalist and illustrator, Gabrile Campanario. Although similar to plein air painting (to paint outdoors), a term which was made most well-known by the French Impressionists during the 19th century. Urban Sketching looks at the ideas of visual storytelling in a virtual environment, and the educational value of on-location drawing. This movement encourages drawing spaces and places on location, rather than drawing from photographs. Urban Sketching brings together an international group of people who “Show their world one drawing at a time”. The goal is simple-sketch what you see, in or outdoors, and share online. You don’t need to be an artist, expert or someone who draws all the time. The Rutgers Urban Sketching project encouraged the Rutgers-New Brunswick campuses to think about life in new ways during a stressful time. During the pandemic, people needed activities, like urban sketching, to help them connect, share, and escape their everyday lives. Sketching scenes from daily life elevated seemingly mundane moments, allowing us to see our own world from a different perspective. Urban sketching relieves stress, hones observational and analytical skills, and forces us to take a moment to stop and “draw the roses.” But also, urban sketching is similar to the scholarly research process. Both rely on observation, analysis, storytelling, and contributing to community knowledge and, both processes use a curated set of data and observations to tell a story that will likely turn into something more. This project began on November 2, 2020, and ended on December 6, 2020, including building a collection of 96 drawings submitted from members of the Rutgers New Brunswick communities. This Lightening talk will briefly address this project including an urban sketch assignment for student workers, a Rutgers University Libraries- New Brunswick staff workshop, virtual drawing sessions, highlighting collections, a research guide, an assessment plan, and what comes next.
12:40 - 12:50 Eric Wolf, Head Librarian, Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York and Scott Davis, Reference and Catalog Librarian, Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York
Eric and Scott will speak about the Sotheby's Institute of Art's Implementation of Digital Commons for student and faculty work.
12:50-1:10 Q & A
