VRA/ARLIS Conference: Sunday

Chock full of tingly library goodness, I launch into my 4th and final day of conference events.
I pass the 'am-i-covered-in-baby-vomit-or-worse' door check, acquire a large coffee and and head down to the Poster Sessions.

Next up is the excellent Collaborative Ventures, Collaborative Gains, which proved to be a really concentrated fireball of the conference theme.

Last, but by no means least was the simultaneously invigorating and enervating Paving the way for an Uncertain Future.

While true of all conference events, these latter sessions were particularly excellent opportunities to see the profession's top brains moving beyond issues of survival, instead outlining new standards of excellence in the contemporary landscape of information use and technologies.

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Saturday

On todays menu: Case Studies IV, the grand-scale conference luncheon, then a short break to minister to family.

One of the presenters for my afternoon session Engaging New Technologies is Heather Cleary, Visual Resources Librarian from Otis College of Art and Design back in L.A. - my first art-school of the 'crawl.

Here she is readying herself for the podium.

I acquired the flickr app Indicommons she recommended (while she was still on said podium), and it is indeed fab. Thanks Heather.

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Walker Art Center

Here is the lovely Anna Simon, who presented as part of Inside Out: Examining studio artists perceptions, representations and actual use of the fine arts library earlier that day.

Brian: Special Dude

Librarians on the loose

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Walker Art Centre

Friday evening's Icebreaker was held at the stunning Walker Art Centre. Fun!

Arriving late (dastardly children, again) there are still many library stars working the room.

I grab myself a martini and scout about.

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Friday: part two

The rest of the afternoon is as busy and equally fruitful.
There really was an overabundance of sessions I felt I simply must attend. I wound up in Images Unleashed: Expanding Beyond Traditional Disciplines which dealt with image collection development, outreach to faculties beyond the arts, and some great systems being used for the digital repositories of some institutions.
I caught almost all of Inside Out: Examining Studio Artists Perceptions, Representations and Actual Use of the Fine Arts Library, but ducked out/ dragged myself away at the end to catch the image reference for film studies presentation in the New Voices in the Profession session.

It was a good day.

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Friday

Friday is jam packed.

I kick off at 7:30 with the First Time Attendees and New Members Breakfast.

My experience has to be the exact one in mind when imagined by the organisers. I am seated at a table with a fine group- a delightful mix of library students, experienced librarians new to the conference circuit, and longtime ARLIS and VRA members and mentors (including VRA vice-pres Brian Shelburne). We talk shop. We swap backgrounds and interests. Cards are handed out. And the food is okay! (always a make or break for me at any event...)

I have a particularly fine old time with Maaike from Cornell, whom I would love to visit on the 'crawl but Cornell just a little too far off the beaten track from NY.

I race back to the room to attend small babies and squealing toddlers.

I head back downstairs and accidently position myself in the wrong session (Case Studies II, which nonetheless provides a great talk on teaching visual literacy).

I sneak into Case Studies I in time to see Ryan Evans talk On Rehousing Special Collections of the Alternative Spaces. Just great. I cornered Ryan after the talk to rope him into the 'crawl. I'm particularly interested in the open source he mentioned in relation to the White

Columns archives. Must go over my notes from his talk and schedule him for my NY leg ASAP!

Leap into the elevator and execute some motherly duties up on level 25.

Back downstairs I head into the exhibitions hall. So many delightful objects.

I stumble across a specialist Scandinavian Art and Design bookseller. She is selling a book I have been trying to get my hands on for some time.

While I cannot in anyway decipher the text it contains, this monograph highlights a Danish furniture piece we purchased for the skylab a couple of years ago (so expensive we have been a little too afraid to actually USE it). This was the book was waved at us by the furniture seller during the sale, and at the time was only available through non-english language bookselling sites. The ultimate coffee table coffee table book!

Lena (Scandinavian book-dealer) was particularly lovely, and invited me and the girls to coffee back in Southern California post-conference. I think she will make a lovely addition to the 'crawl.

The family has headed off to the Mall of America to acquire the iPad2 which is released locally today. I slip straight into the next session: Open Plenary- Works and Fair Use: Can bridges be built between educational users and copyright owners?

My fears about this session being another dry, depressing coverage of intellectual property rights issues relating to libraries were immediately put aside: Jule Sigall is an amazing presenter and his enthusiasm for the subject translate into an excellent experience for me, one-time copyright officer / long-time legal dunce sitting way down the back.

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Thursday

There are a couple of interesting events on Thursday I had been really looking forward to.

After a long morning wrestling children I show up in the lobby of hotel as instructed and lo! I had missed the shuttle bus to our offsite location. Nonetheless tickled by the news I would be leaving the hotel, I charged upstairs to change into sensible shoes and grab my coat, and headed out into sunny, snowy Minneapolis. Look at this place!

My destination is the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Here it is, under all that snow.

I'm booked in for the workshop Postcards from the Edge IV: Fashion and Textiles.

While I arrive late and take leave early to make it to another event back at the Hilton, it is still a rewarding session. I sneak out brimming with a fresh brainload of fashion and visual art resources, and some really great ideas on library-faculty collaboration.

The conference theme of collaboration proves to be a truly coherent thread through all sessions I'm to attend this week.

The next event is the Material Libraries Special Interest Group, presented by Mark Pompelia of the Rhode Island School of Design's Fleet Library.

Materials collections are super exciting to me as a lover of things. And in an era when the visual is increasingly digital and non-corporeal, materials are taking on a whole new importance in the field of art and design libraries. The makers of things are lovers of things too!

VRA + ARLIS/NA Joint Conference

On Wednesday the entire family unit shipped to Minneapolis so that I may attend the VRA + ARLIS/NA Joint Conference 'Collaboration: building bridges in the 21st century'.

Wow! I'll be attending as many events as time and babies allow, and will be pestering as many librarians as I can to take part in my art library crawl.