Metropolitan Museum of Art: Operation Conservation

After a year of extensive redesign and renovation the Watson Library has just opened an out-of-this-world book conservation lab called the Sherman Fairchild Centre for Book Conservation.

While I am pretty sure this isn't the lab responsible for the handling of the Met's collection of incunabula, the Watson does holds a strong representation of the art publishing that exploded in the 19th century. And beyond. Rare books abound. The new lab demonstrates the Watsons commitment to book conservation in the traditional sense and also to digitisation as a conservation method. And it is HUGE!

This lab is a veritable wonderland of devices new and archaic, book presses, glues, brushes, magnifiers. I feel like I have entered the book-preservation version of Wonker's factory. It is very exciting. And while the lab still has that new car feel, the smell of old books drifts about.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Florence and Herbert Irving Reading Room

I am quite enamoured by the Scandinavian-y chair design in the Thomas J. Watson Library and accompanying Florence and Herbert Irving Reading Room. Beautiful.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Thomas J. Watson Library

Not one to shirk his duties, Chief Librarian Ken Soehner still has regular Reference and Registration Desk shifts here at the Thomas J. Watson Library. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Chief Librarian's Office

Chief Librarian Ken Soehner shows me into his office and fills me in on the significance of this incredible Museum and its Library.
Ken himself is pretty impressive. Director of the Thomas Watson Library for the last 16 years (a tenderfoot compared to the regularly long tenures common in this august institution), he has a Masters in Art History from Columbia as well as the requisite MLIS. He was president of ARLIS/NA in 2008. He teaches Library Science at Pratt as Associate Professor. And was unendingly gracious as my chronically sleep-deprived, caffeine addled brain bumbled through the conversation. There is simply no
rest for those who tackle international travel with small infants.

The Met, founded in 1817, is the largest research institution in the world for the history of art. There are more active, productive scholars working in this place than any other place. On the Planet.
They are researching in all the areas the Met represents in its encyclopaedic collection. And the Thomas J Watson Library, helmed by Ken, maintains a research level collection in all these areas. See the holdings info for the library here and here.

The Book Called Celestina, on the shelf in Ken's office

I ask all the librarians I visit about any bespoke practice, approaches and projects they are doing that sets them apart from the other art school and museum libraries.
Approaches to collection management came up, naturally. A locale such as the Met is a powerful magnet for publications. It is not hard for museum libraries to acquire books. Directors give them, curators give them. Authors give them. Donations are encouraged by the American tax codes. The Watson Library acquires through purchase and donation about 1500 books a month. Making these (hundreds of thousands) of books a viable resource requires some serious library science. So organisational development here at the Watson is paramount.
But dedicated, proactive acquisition practices also came up. To support the extraordinary reach of the museum's collection the Watson is making extra effort to acquire material from far flung corners of the globe. When I spoke to Ken they were working on acquiring modern and contemporary catalogues from Estonia, and also New Zealand.
One does not usually see NZ, Australia and eastern bloc countries lumped in together, but apparently we share a highly ineffective record of distribution of our museum and gallery catalogues. This stuff is simply not getting circulated out of the region. The Met is working to build their collection in these areas, and is soliciting material directly form the organisations when necessary.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Thomas J. Watson Library

I set off for my meeting with Ken Soehner, longtime Chief Librarian of the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sometime President of ARLIS/NA on a stunningly beautiful New York afternoon. Ken had been very encouraging of my art-library-tourist endeavours at the ARLIS/NA VRA conference earlier in 2011 in snowy Minneapolis, and I was very pleased to have some time with him in his august domain here at the Met.

The Very Impressive entrance to the Met (above) is matched by the Very Impressive chamber (below) one crosses to enter the Watson Library within.

Once within the library proper, however, I feel a little closer to familiar scale. The ubiquitous, imperceptible buzz of fluorescent tubes is a great democratiser.