Category Archives: Meetings

72nd Annual Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Conference Report, Providence, RI (April 24-28, 2019)

Architecture, Archives, Conferences, Meetings

By Aimee Lind, Getty Research Library (ARLIS SAH Liaison)

The 72nd Annual Society of Architectural Historians conference was held in Providence, RI from April 24-28, 2019. As it was my first time visiting Providence, I wasted no time exploring the city’s historic Downtown and residential College Hill neighborhood by foot. Of course, as a librarian, I couldn’t help but visit other libraries, and Providence has some great ones. I particularly enjoyed seeing RISD’s extraordinary Nature Lab and Visual + Materials Resource Center, as well as the delightful Athenaeum.

RISD Nature Lab,  Edna Lawrence Natural History Collection

Providence Athenaeum

Rhode Island State House (McKim, Mead, & White, 1895-1904)

Industrial National Bank Building (aka Superman Building) ( Walker & Gillette, George Frederick Hall, 1928)

 

Old Stone Bank Building (C.J. and R.J. Hall, 1854)

Wednesday Evening

The conference got started on Wednesday night with the Opening Night Social Hour, held in the ballroom of the Rhode Island Convention Center, followed by the SAH Business Meeting. SAH President Sandy Isenstadt spoke about the present state and future directions of the organization:

Strategic plan for the decade ahead developed two years ago

  • Global and local approach to promoting the study of the built environment
  • Teaching and scholarship
  • Financial sustainability
  • Nurture next generation of scholars; promote diversity

In evidence at this conference

  • Paper sessions on new regions and issues
  • Inaugural Edward Sekler talk
  • Graduate student resources
    • Book group
    • Lightning talks
    • Mentoring cafe
    • Free professional headshots
  • Addition of poster sessions
  • Session on Vectors of Change, pressing issues coming to the fore
  • Pop Up session on Notre Dame

JSAH made some online issues open access in order to raise awareness of the journal. The issue on the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus has been accessed by 150,000 people.

Buildings of the US & SAH Archipedia continues to lower barriers to access with more scholarly content in a more user friendly format.

Archipedia 3.0 now has:

  • Open access including metadata
  • Mobile friendly
  • Updated legacy materials
  • New back-end /content mgmt system

SAHARA now features highlights with themes.

SAH is providing youth outreach, funding fieldtrips for underserved K-12 students, teaching them to observe and analyze the built environment.

For adults, there were study programs / field seminars /study days:

  • 2018 Cuba
  • 2019 Japan (12 days, led by Ken Oshima)
  • Summer 2020 N. China and Mongolia (led by Nancy Steinhart)
  • Study days at National Museum of African American Culture, DC

A two year grant from the Mellon Foundation is underway to gauge health of architectural history as a degree of study and gather data about the academic status of this study in higher education. Sarah Dreller will be leading this research.

He took the opportunity to review the SAH policy statement

  • Core values
  • Personal conduct
  • Position statements (ACLS)
  • New page on website, Click on ADVOCACY tab

…and then Treasurer Michael Gibson reported on the organization’s finances and fundraising events:

  • Chicago Arts Club Gala raised $139,000
  • Fall fundraiser Weimar, Dessau, Berlin tour sold out in hours
  • July 17th NYC Century Club event honoring Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Finances 2018

  • Successful fundraiser in Paris
  • $110,000 unrestricted donation
  • $70,000 netted from St Paul conference [Clarification:  $70,000 is the net figure prior to expense allocations, which aren’t applied until the end of the fiscal year. SAH actually netted $-3K after expenses and administrative allocations.]
  • Bumpy rise with investments but currently at 5.7 million, 4.5% draw rate from portfolio
  • Half of funds raised for Charnley-Persky House

Grants

  • Gill Family Foundation for grad students
  • NEH Open Humanities Portfolio Program
  • Mellon Grant, arch history in higher ed study

Following the Business Meeting, we were treated to an introductory address by Barnaby Evans, founder of Waterfire Providence, who gave a great talk about the history of the city, its architecture, and the preservation movement that has led to such a vibrant downtown.

Thursday

On Thursday I attended several open panel sessions that included papers on topics as varied as Memorial Libraries as Cenotaphs, the Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, College Unions, CIAM, Boredom, Installation Art, and the 1964 New York World’s Fair Pavilion of Spain as well as a panel session called Space, Architecture & Cultural Identity: Materializing Asian America.

The entire conference program with abstracts is available here.

Of great personal interest to me was the roundtable on The Preservation of Digital Architectural Records, led by Ann Whiteside, a follow-up to last year’s roundtable:

Ann started off with a Building for Tomorrow update

2018 activities:

  • Building for Tomorrow Forum was held at SAH in St. Paul.
  • At issue: Barriers to collecting for different stakeholders
  • List of strategic directions over the course of the next 5 years
  • Held a Steering Committee meeting in May
  • Spent June-July refining the strategic directions
  • Late summer/early fall – sent out a call for volunteers to participate in several efforts:

Present efforts:

  • In 2018, connecting with Community Standards for 3D Data Preservation (CS3DP) (convened working groups)
    • Preservation Best Practices – Rebeccah Baker (NARA), Emily Vigor (Berkeley), and Will Rourke (UVa)
    • Metadata Standards – Katie Pierce Meyer (UT Austin)
    • Copyright/Ownership – Nicole Meyer (Morphosis), Nancy Hadley (AIA)
    • Access/Discoverability – Katie Pierce Meyer

Work includes – meeting with these groups to understand the work they are doing, and to  provide input about design records specifically.

2019 activities:

  • Creating an Effort Map and inventory of allied digital curation efforts; Volunteers include Rebeccah Bake (NARA), Nancy McGovern (MIT), Birgitte Sauge ( department of architecture at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway). They have created a map of digital curation efforts around the  globe, and have identified key contacts at those institutions to talk with about their work.
  • Literature Review group – to update the SAA Design Records Section bibliography (CAD/BIM). Volunteers are Emily Vigor, Matthew Allen (U Toronto), Emily Pugh (Getty), Jessica Qualiaroli (Yale), Kit Arrington (LC). They have updated the bibliography and are in the process of sharing their work.
  • Stakeholder Outreach Plan. This group includes Aliza Leventhal (LC), Pauline Saliga (SAH), Sylvia Welsh (Harvard). This group has developed a list of questions for interviews is software vendors.

Software vendor outreach is a next critical step in our work. IF ANYONE HAS CONTACTS, Please let Ann know asap. This has been the biggest challenge.

  • Presentations have been given at SAH 2018, AASL, 2019. A Roundtable session will be held at SAH in2019, also DLF.
  • Building for Tomorrow has had representation at the LC 3D Data Stewardship Forum in November 2019; Building for Tomorrow is a chapter in the recently published 3D/VR in the Academic Library: Emerging Practices and Trends. 2019. An article on the project was written for Arredamento Mimarlık,  Turkish architecture and design journal.

A lively discussion on these updates followed at the SAH Providence Roundtable. I am including my notes in full at the request of several attendees.

Need for educating design students about thinking about records upon creation

Session with Matthew Allen @ GSD; content: what is being produced? Teaching basic file management

Thoughts from practitioners?

  • Talk to deans of architecture schools
  • Teach archival awareness as an educational component of the degree
  • Make the case for preservation; cut through levels of bureaucracy to acquire and preserve materials

Firms not understanding that scanning once is not enough; preservation is an ongoing, iterative process

Animations: no consistency in software; models: CATIA, Autodesk, Form 2, FinalCutPro, Illustrator etc. files can’t be accessed; need ability to emulate software and computing environment; ideally firms need a dedicated digital asset manager to keep them up to date.

CAD  models etc.– print out hard copies but BIM can’t be printed

Bottom line, especially for state run agencies– what is the cheapest way to do this?

Students are just trying to get project done

Can we keep paper when possible/practical and only deal with digital when we need to? But paper preservation methods require maintenance too.

Some firms have archivist(s) on staff; file structure that project teams have to follow; established practice but generally only the larger firms.

Ongoing process but most concerned about smaller firms– need to be given mechanism and info to preserve.

Could we go to AIA and set up archive bureau so the message is spread? AIA disseminates message and pays to do so; could be part of continuing education credits/criteria for licensing.

Legal problems

  • clients own a lot of what is produced
  • Terrorism concerns with plans getting out

Not just architecture firms, but Engineering and GIS need to be captured/preserved.

Firm websites – web archiving, good way to capture at least basic information on smaller firms?

If only keeping final versions of models, drawings– concern over loss of depth of intellectual content / process.

Saving / organizing email? Even many archivists do a bad job of this. How can we expect others to do better?

So much data! Digital documentation of cultural heritage sites (archaeological) can easily have 10 years of data on one site.

Digital data will eventually be the biggest asset. How to protect data and protect against others being able to access it illicitly.

Are intellectual property rights shifting? In Italy you now need permission to publish photos taken at certain cultural heritage sites.

Drawings vs. models vs. 3D models made by 3rd parties -what is the true model/ record of a structure especially if IP owned by so many shareholders?

Software currently in development will provide IP/GPS location of anyone who accesses it as part of metadata; can self-destruct of not approved.

Concern for protecting moral rights of creators.

Documenting students / competitions- who knows what will be important to future researchers?

By providing existing digital archives for students to work with, would that help them understand the importance?

Harvard Archives keep student work for accreditation purposes; reserve right to use for non-commercial purposes; essentially persistent licence for non-commercial use.

Looking at doing digital design records pilot; where are roadblocks?

GSA standard for BIM modeling

May also need to talk to developers

Port Authority requires that architects/contractors use their hopelessly outdated software- who owns what?

Thursday Evening

That evening, the awards reception was held at the stunning Providence Art Club, followed by the inaugural Eduard F. Sekler talk given by Joan Ockman who spoke at the historic First Baptist Meeting Hall on the Future of Modern Architecture.

Providence Art Club (Sydney Burleigh and Edmund R. Willson, 1885)

Friday

On Friday I attended panel sessions on Architectural Drawings as Artifact and Evidence, the Spatial, Visual, and Social Effects of Surface in Architecture, Architecture & Copyright, Transatlantic Encounters: Africa and the Americas and attended a lunchtime roundtable on Pluralizing Histories of the Built Environment.

Saturday

Regretfully, my travel arrangements and a very full conference program precluded me from attending the closing event at the RISD Museum or going on any of the tours offered, clearly to my detriment. They included:

Sunrise on the Riverwalk

Roger Williams in God’s Providence

The Crest of College Hill

Social Class and Religion in Stained Glass

LGBTQ Providence Walking Tour

Adaptive Reuse on College

Before Antoinette: African-American Sites along Benefit Street

The Stones of Providence

The Architecture of Industry

Benefit Street

Newport’s Best-Preserved Colonial Neighborhood and Climate Change

Bristol’s Architectural Legacy

Gilded Age Newport in Color

Ira Rakatansky: Mid-century Modern in Providence

Rhode Island Vernacular: From the Stone-Ender to the Square Plan House

Brown University: An Architectural Tour

Parkitecture: The Built Environment of Roger Williams Park, 19th Century to the Present

Women Designers in Rhode Island

H.H. Richardson and North Easton, Massachusetts

Cape Cod Modern House Trust Tour

Complexities and Contradictions of 20th-Century Architecture in New England

Eighteenth-Century Newport

Great Spaces: Architectural Landmarks of 19th-Century Newport

Seaside Resort Architecture at Watch Hill

If you were lucky enough to attend any of these tours or have additional items of interest to report on the SAH Conference, please do not hesitate to comment below.

Providence, R.I.— you are a charmer, indeed. I’ll be back!

Conference Mania!

Architecture, Conferences, Meetings

This month’s post highlights several upcoming conferences that many of us might be interested in attending.

There are two very important conferences in late March: ARLIS/NA will be meeting in Salt Lake City and AASL will be meeting in Pittsburgh.  Unfortunately, they are meeting at almost the same time, but hopefully  many of us can take advantage of both or learn from our colleagues when we can’t.

Here’s some information of particular relevance to our architectural interests.

ARLIS/NA Conference, Salt Lake City
March 26-30

Tours of SLC architecture, Park City, Ogden, and Spiral Jetty, among others, are planned for March 26th and March 30th.

Among the sessions of particular relevance to our group are:
“You Too Can Write a Review” on Wednesday at 1:30 pm (getting the inside scoop on writing reviews for ARLIS/NA)
“Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Accessing Design Work” on Wednesday at 4:10 pm (This is a discussion session about documenting and saving student design work (physical and digital design).)
“Architecture Networks: Building Connections Between Collections” on Friday at 2 pm (highlighting several online architectural collections created by our members)

Architecture Section meeting:  Thursday 8 am
Urban Planning SIG meeting:  Thursday 8 am
Materials SIG meeting:  Thursday 12:30 pm

AASL Conference, Pittsburgh
March 28-31

Tour of Pittsburgh architecture on March 28th and 2 Frank Lloyd Wright inspired tours on March 31st.

Sessions on the 29th and 30th relating to architectural librarianship (we’ll be on the Carnegie Mellon campus on the 30th).  The conference coincides with the ACSA (Assoc of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) annual meeting.

ARCLIB Conference, Venice, Italy
May 8-10, 2019

ARCLIB (UK Architecture Librarians) are meeting with CNBA (their Italian counterparts) in Venice in May.  I’m sure they’d welcome any of us who could join them.

SAH 2019 Annual Conference, Providence, RI
April 24-28, 2019

There are sessions on architectural treatises, drawings, and copyright among other themes.

ARLIS UK & Ireland, Glasgow, Scotland
July 15-17, 2019

ARLIS UK & Ireland will be celebrating their 50th anniversary next summer in Glasgow. They just issued a call for papers. I had the good fortune to attend their conference in London last summer and found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience.

A Visit to London: Attending ARLIS UK & Ireland

Architecture, Archives, Conferences, Exhibits, Meetings, Special Collections

Rebecca Price
Architecture, Urban Planning & Visual Resources Librarian, University of Michigan

Thames View
River Thames View

It is with great delight that I report on my recent trip to London, England. I feel fortunate to have been able both to attend the ARLIS UK & Ireland conference and to extend my stay so that I could visit a number of architecture and design libraries.

Though marked by uncharacteristically sweltering heat and dry weather, my visit was tremendously productive and meaningful in that I visited several architecture libraries and talked with their librarians. I am very grateful to support from the Kress Foundation as well as supplemental professional development funds from the University of Michigan Library making the trip possible.

Digital Fabrication at The Building Centre

The conference (July 26-27) offered two full days of programming and a day of tours of selected London libraries. I found the presentations interesting, inspiring, and highly relevant to my work. Some personal favorites were a session on the use of Special Collections to support creativity and critical thinking in the studio as well as the classroom. It was a lesson in using eccentric objects and deliberately odd experiences to provide the unexpected for students. In addition, there were several presentations on artist’s books and their value in highlighting current issues and social themes, as well as in providing meaningful hands-on learning experiences. I presented on the use and value of materials collections and happily heard several other papers offering new perspectives and experiences related to materials collections.

Materials at Central St. Martin’s, London

Four keynote speakers spoke over the two days.  With keen insight and humor, they brought new points of view challenging our norms of practice and thought. They each spoke to broader issues of librarianship, particularly in arts or special libraries. Each one challenged us to reconsider our definitions of the typical librarian, the typical library user, and the typical library. I was particularly impressed by how their words asked us to think about how our teaching methodologies and collection practices can lead to silences and excluded voices.

On the Saturday after the sessions, the organizers offered an optional tour day. I participated in two museum library tours; the National Gallery Library and the Tate Britain Library. It was truly special to be able to walk through their library collections and archives in spaces that only their library and curatorial staff can access. Particularly fascinating in the Tate Britain Archives was a model ship used by Turner in many of his seascapes and depictions of sea battles.  Everyone was exceedingly generous with their time and knowledge.

Turner’s Ship Model, Tate Britain
Turner Seascape, Tate Britain

 

 

 

 

 

 

A high point of the trip was being able to take the time to visit six art/architecture libraries. I pre-arranged meetings with each of the art and architecture librarians. Highlights were touring collections and spaces, and talking with librarians and staff at the Architectural Association, the Bartlett at University College London, the Royal College of Art, Central St. Martin’s College of Art & Design, Ravensbourne University, and RIBA.

RIBA Collections, London

They graciously took the time to meet with me and talk about their libraries. It was especially inspiring to learn from them, to see their collections, and to discover the challenges that we share and those that are different.

The biggest take-away for me was realizing the surprising similarities in the work of the arts librarian in the UK and the arts librarian in North America.

Interactive Visitor Art, Tate Modern, London

In addition, I visited a few materials collections, twelve museums, and two historic houses.  I chose to visit several museums focused on art and design (The Design Museum, The Fashion and Textile Museum, The Tate Modern and Tate Britain, The V&A, The National Gallery, Sir John Soane’s Museum) and some focused more on the social history of the city (The Museum of London, The Museum of London Docklands, The Transport Museum, The Foundling Museum, and The Tower of London).

Design Museum London, Words

And there were the fun hours walking through the neighborhoods and parks of London.

Attending the ARLIS UK & Ireland conference gave me the opportunity to talk with and hear from numerous international colleagues and to gain a much deeper understanding of their work. If any of you are given the opportunity to attend in the future, I highly recommend it. And as librarians visit us from other countries, I hope that we open our collections to them as generously as was done for me.

Assessing Competencies in Architecture and Architectural History Studies

Architecture, Conferences, Meetings, Studio

Alan Michelson
Head, Built Environments Library, University of Washington, Seattle

This February at the 2018 ARLIS/NA Conference in New York, James Sobczak and I presented our information competencies for the fields of architecture and architectural history. We received some excellent feedback there from the discussion group that was convened. Interested in expanding some of the ideas brought up there, we attended the annual conference of the Association of Architecture School Librarians in Denver, to discuss the idea of coordinating a nationwide effort to study the goals of educators in these two fields and to survey recent graduates to see if they felt they were getting skills that they needed in the workplace. With this perspective on what educators are seeking to teach and what students say that they need, we are hoping to develop data that can assist architecture school librarians with developing effective information literacy strategies. At the very least, we are hoping to understand what key courses should be targeted with greater levels of cooperative teaching from librarians. In this way, our limited time could be spent most efficiently.

Drafting Class at Armstrong Technical HS, Washington, D.C., 1942, Marjory Collins, photographer. Library of Congress Collections (Digital ID fsa 8d20247 //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8d20247)

Since that time, we have been in contact with a small group of volunteers to consider next steps in this long-term project. We have discussed implementing several features in our research methodology. These steps would include initial collection of data–syllabi, departmental outlines of curricula, accreditation reports, and other written statements of purpose by departmental leaders–about the courses currently taught in architecture and architectural history. An initial study period of this departmental data seems fundamental to familiarizing ourselves about the overall curricular structure, areas of pedagogical focus, and the approaches of individual instructors.

James Sobczak has developed a survey instrument for students who’ve graduated, either at the undergraduate or graduate levels. This survey focuses on skills that young professionals got while in school, and to ask if they saw any deficiencies in their training. Additionally, surveys could be prepared to query incoming graduate students about skills that they hoped to obtain while earning their degrees.

Contact me (alanmich@u.washington.edu) if you’re interested in participating.

Architecture Section Updates to ARLIS/NA Website

Architecture, Conferences, Meetings

By Aimee Lind, Getty Research Library

All known architecture-related ARLIS/NA sessions through 2017 are now listed on the ARLIS/NA Website’s Architecture Section pages, with links to the presentations themselves where available.

Thanks to Rebecca Price for doing the legwork on this and to Mark Pompelia for updating the website. It’s so nice to have these all in one place in order to see all of the important & brilliant work our colleagues are doing! If you know of a session that is not included, please contact me at alind@getty.edu or comment below and I will make sure it is added.

New York City Meeting at ARLIS/NA 2018

Conferences, Meetings

Architecture Section Meeting
ARLIS/NA Annual Conference, New York
February 27, 2018

Please send any corrections to alind@getty.edu

Present:
Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez (CCNY) – Moderator
Aimee Lind (Getty Research Library) – Vice-Moderator, Minutes
Jessica Aberle (University of Florida)
Robert Adams (BAC)
Lucy Campbell (New School of Architecture + Design)
Rachel Castro (University of Arizona)
Raymonde Champagne (Universite de Montreal)
Kitty Chibnik (Columbia University)
Karen DeWitt (North Carolina State University)
Cindy Frank (University of Maryland)
Eleanor Gawne (Architectural Association)
Ted Goodman (Avery Library)
Janine Henri (UCLA)
Katie Pierce Meyer (UT Austin)
Alan Michelson (University of Washington)
Mar González Palacios ((Canadian Centre for Architecture)
Effie Patelos (University of Waterloo)
Rebecca Price (University of Michigan)
Irene Puchalski (University of Toronto)
Shannon Robinson (Drexel University)
James Sobczak (University of Washington)
Ann Whiteside (Harvard GSD)

Self-introductions of members in attendance

Old business:
Approval of minutes from 2017 meeting
Motion to approve.
Motion seconded and passed without opposition.

Discussion: Architecture section online spaces – what’s next?
Despite a lengthy conversation on the same topic at last year’s meeting, very few people contributed to the Architecture Section’s Facebook page and Blog in 2017. Potential content could include liaison reports, conference summaries, new courses, exhibitions, renovations, books of the year, publications, or any projects or news relevant to the group. In the past, there was a sign-up sheet at the Architecture Section meeting where people committed to providing specific content. There was general agreement that this was a good way to move forward, with Rebecca Price volunteering to act as de facto blog editor. Rebecca has the sign-up list and will contact content providers a month prior to their blog publication date.

New business:
Discussion: architecture sessions/posters at ARLIS New York conference?

  • Cindy Frank presented “Life Comes First: A Solo Librarian’s Balance of Life and Work” and was a speaker at “Scope Drift – Blending and Rebranding in Visual Resources”
  • Ann Whiteside was responsible for the poster session “Building for Tomorrow: Collaborative Development of Sustainable Infrastructure for Architectural and Design Documentation” as well as an invitation-only workshop/forum on the topic of creating an infrastructure for archiving digital design data.
  • Rebecca Price presented “Building a Collection from the Ground Up” and was a speaker at “Library Collections and Object-based Learning in the Art and Design Curriculum”
  • Rebecca Price and Alan Michelson presented “Pushing the Bounds: Library as Physical and Intellectual Civic Space”
  • Shannon Robinson moderated and Alan Michelson was a speaker at “Information Competencies for Students in Design Disciplines
  • Janine Henri was a speaker at “Pushing the Boundaries: Teaching and Learning outside the Classroom”
  • Aimee Lind presented “No Art Library Left Behind: Cross-Border Resource Sharing Among Art Libraries”

Discussion: new directions for Architecture Section?

  • Alan Michelson discussed “Information Competencies for Students in Design Disciplines” and the effort to reinvigorate the information competencies created by ARLIS in 2006. See Farrell & Badke’s 2015 report “Situating Information Literacy in the Disciplines: A Practical and Systematic Approach for Academic Librarians”. He suggested creating focus groups amongst faculty to determine priorities. If we can create a network of focus groups, we will then have the data on learning outcomes from our peers to take to faculty. Ideas suggested included polling recent alumni regarding perceived gaps in their education and taking that back to faculty focus groups. Effie Patelos reported that the University of Waterloo has hired an information literacy librarian. Embedded librarians may be able to map competencies to what is being taught using syllabi. The relative merits of focus groups vs. surveys were debated with a caveat to appreciate differing local contexts (undergrad, grad, accredited, unaccredited, basic to intermediate to terminal degree expertise). Janine Henri suggested aligning with ACSA to get faculty buy-in. Consider what is *our* place to meet *their* expectations? Are we only the support/service people or can we have a partnership with faculty, providing an essential education in image research, copyright, etc. that may be left out of curriculum otherwise? Focus groups could present an opportunity to guide the conversation. Should we examine syllabi first or survey first? To be continued…

Reports:
Janine Henri – update on SAH conference activities:

  • Janine reported on the 2016 Pasadena conference and the 2017 Glasgow conference, including informing the group about publishing sessions, and library visits to the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Strathclyde. She encouraged us all to reach out to colleagues when traveling to other cities/countries. Janine also mentioned Barbara Opar’s extremely useful new book list, published on the SAH website monthly. SAHARA now has over 100,000 images. The 2018 SAH meeting will be held in St. Paul, MN 4/18/18-4/22/18 and in Providence, RI in 2019.

Aimee Lind- update on CalArchNet:

  • CalArchNet is an informal group of librarians, archivists, and curators working with architecture archives in California. Aimee briefly reported on the group’s last meeting in Palm Springs and their upcoming meeting at Cal Poly SLO and Hearst Castle. For more information, email calarchnet@gmail.com.

Gabriella Karl-Johnson on AASL:
“A Brief Update on AASL: Strategic Planning Implementation + 2018 Denver conference” (Aimee read this report from Gabriella, who was unable to attend)

  • As some of you may know, since late 2015 the Association of Architecture School Librarians has been actively working on strategic planning for the first time in the association’s history. In October of 2016 the Executive Board approved a new Strategic Directions document, including a new Mission statement, Vision statement, and a set of Strategic Directions objectives. (The full document is available on AASL’s newly redesigned website at http://www.architecturelibrarians.org/strategicdirections .) The document was drafted by the Strategic Planning Task Force based upon input from our membership and feedback gathered during the well-attended Strategic Planning Session held at the 2016 AASL conference in Seattle. The Strategic Planning Task Force has now given way to a Strategic Directions Implementation Committee, which is working on concrete ways to enact the objectives outlined in the Strategic Directions document. Our upcoming 2018 conference in Denver will provide a forum via a two-hour planning session for the full membership to discuss and help shape the ways that our strategic directions will translate to action. Speaking of the conference, the 2018 AASL conference will be held in Denver on March 14-17. We will be meeting alongside the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture conference at the I.M.Pei-designed Sheraton Hotel, and the AASL conference planners have worked into the schedule more time for cross-pollination between ACSA and AASL. The conference will offer an excellent complement of presentations and talks based around the theme of identity, as well as walking tours of Denver that promise to provide views of the city’s history and recent transformations. Registration is open until March 3, and we hope to see you in Denver!”

Ted Goodman – update on Avery Index:

  • Ted is retiring in June. The Avery Index will continue though he doesn’t believe his position will be refilled, rather there will likely be some restructuring within Avery and possible reexamination of the Index’s coverage. Congratulations Ted! We are so grateful for your tireless work that benefits us all every day!

Visit to Avery Library: Details
Directions were provided for our visit to the Avery Library. It was agreed that we would meet at the Hilton’s tour gathering spot near conference registration.

Call for Vice-Moderator
A call went out for incoming Vice-Moderator (Salt Lake City) / Moderator (Saint Louis) but there were no takers. Aimee will send out another call on the listserv.

Meeting Adjourned

CalArchNet Group

Architecture, Archives, Conferences, Exhibits, Meetings

By Aimee Lind, Getty Research Institute

Founded in 2016 by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Director of Special Collections Jessica Holada and Getty Research Institute librarian Aimee Lind, CalArchNet (pronounced Cal-Ark-Net) was conceived as a means to foster dialogue and collaboration among librarians, archivists, and curators at California institutions that house architecture archives. CalArchNet provides a twice-yearly forum for this specialized group of professionals to learn more about California architecture, understand the ways California architecture records are used, share information and expertise, seek advice, build a community committed to standard practices that improve operations and services, and bring greater visibility to collections and programs.

October 27th, 2017 marked the third meeting of CalArchNet, held at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Architecture and Design Center, with representatives from thirteen California institutions in attendance. Topics discussed included historic site preservation research methodology, leveraging statewide resources to enhance discovery of collections, security considerations, GIS mapping technologies, and the use of linked open data to make connections between collections. The day concluded with a curator-led tour of the exhibition Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi: A Search for Living Architecture.

If you’re an archivist, librarian, or curator working with architecture archives in California and would like to become involved with CalArchNet, email calarchnet@gmail.com or check our website for more information. The next CalArchNet meeting is scheduled for March 30th, 2018 at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.