BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION FOR MUSEUM DOCENTS: THE ROLE OF THE MUSEUM LIBRARYIN MUSEUM EDUCATIONAuthor(s): Laurie ReeseSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 5,No. 4 (Winter 1986), pp. 153-155Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947659 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 03:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmerica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.24 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:45:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Art Documentation, Winter, 1986 153

port their efforts to encourage student attendance. They enjoy bringing visitors to the library who are made to feel welcome, and this projects a positive image of the institu tion. Also, the project provides a non-routine task and a challenge for a resourceful staff member. Our staff who routinely attend lectures also found them to yield, beyond the stimulation of the presentation, collection development input and recognition as a peer by faculty and teaching assistants. This visibility of library staff is strongly encour aged by the library administration, which has been recep tive to the benefits of the new exhibition program.

In such a short time, this collaborative activity has be come such an integral part of our services that I cannot conceive of its being discontinued. In spite of Coswell's claim that library exhibits are labor intensive and time con suming,7 for us, the returns are high for minimal prepara tion and staff time.

There is no doubt that an administration less concerned with maintaining consistency of service throughout the li brary system would enable a librarian to develop more client-centered services. The instances listed above illus trate how branch librarians who are sensitive to the special nature of their patron community can initiate services

which originate from an evaluation of the particular user population, its expressed or implicit needs, and respond to faculty input. None of these services represents a major expense, merely an alertness to using available resources to their full extent.

The location of the branch library near the studio and classrooms assimilates the librarian and library staff into the climate of creative activity. Physical distance from the main library, although it may hamper communication, also enables the librarian to assume a different perspective on the services needed in the branch environment. ACRL's fifth standard for college libraries could alone justify the ser vices outlined here: "The library shall establish and main tain a range and quality of services that will promote the academic program of the institution and encourage optimal library use."8 The need to present, rationalize and defend proposed service changes to the library administration may place the branch librarian in a precarious position at times, and a strong conviction is needed to take the steps which will secure administrative approval. This conviction has to stem from a secure assessment of one's professional val ues, standards and philosophy. "Taking time to become conscious of what we believe and value about our work can give us the vision and the strength to render effective ser vice and create a social context that promotes the ideals we hold for our particular library."9

Micheline Nilsen University of Pennsylvania

(formerly Montana State University)

FOOTNOTES ""Philip Pacey, "How Art Students Use Libraries," in A Reader in Art Librarian

ship, ed. by Philip Pacey (New York: K. G. Saur, 1985), p. 53. 2|bid., p. 54.

3|bid., p. 54

?Ibid., p. 54.

5Lucy S. Caswell, "Building Strategy for Academic Library Exhibits," College and Research Libraries News 46:4 (April 1985): 165-68. 6Jane Kemp, "Creating Exhibits in the Smaller Academic Library," College and Research Libraries News 46:7 (July

- August 1985): 344-46.

7Caswell, op. cit., p. 165. 8Association of College and Research Libraries. College Library Standards Committee, College and Research Libraries News 47:3 (March 1986): 189 - 200. 9Michael O. Engle, "Librarianship as Calling: The Philosophy of College Librarianship," The Journal of Academic Librarianship 12:1 (March 1986): 30-32.

I I BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION FOR MUSEUM DOCENTS: THE ROLE OF THE MUSEUM LIBRARY IN MUSEUM EDUCATION

As information specialists, museum librarians anticipate and respond to the needs of individual user groups and promote learning within the museum. Their libraries have the potential to serve gli members of the museum staff involved with exhibition preparation and interpretation. Mu seums communicate information to visitors, and museum libraries communicate information to those representatives

who go, in one way or another, before the public. This paper analyzes the informational needs of one such

group of these representatives, the docents, and calls for the establishment of programs of bibliographic instruction by museum librarians in response to these needs. Imple mentation of such programs focuses on what docents need to know and what information they need to find rather than on determining what they do or do not know about locating information in libraries. The paper is concerned not only

with what docents do, but with how they prepare to do what they do, and what role the museum library plays in this preparation. It is not a survey of current practices of museum library-docent activities across the country. Rather, it is a thought piece. It considers the museum li brary's relationship to the overall educational mission of the museum by investigating docent interaction with the museum library. What are the informational needs of do cents? What instructional strategies are most effective for docents in a museum library setting?

RELATED LITERATURE ABOUT MUSEUM LIBRARIES AND MUSEUM EDUCATION

Use of the museum library by non-curational personnel is a topic that receives little attention in either library or mu seum literature.1 Nor is there precedent for considering a museum library's role in bibliographic instruction for mu seum staff.2 Museum education research into the function and training of docents has failed to consider library use and the research activities of docents,3 or to argue that library training and the efficient searching of information

are necessary to a docent's performance.4 Docents are all but absent from guides to the literature of art.5 When museum librarians undertake a literature review of instructional programs, they will come upon one important

work, User Education in Art and Design: Theory into Practice, edited by Mike Avann and Kath Wood, which describes in structional services art librarians offer to a variety of user groups, such as architecture students and students of fash ion design.6 They will find articles dealing with academic libraries and their users, from chemistry and engineering students, to those of law, business, and medicine, but they will find they lack a model on which to develop unique

instructional programs for their own users. Articles that go on at great length about the importance

of museum education often fail to include even the briefest mention of the museum library.7 The time has come to remedy such an omission and broadcast the special ser vices we art librarians provide to our diverse user popula tions. The time has come to make explicit such important connections as that between the museum library and mu seum education, an issue which affects the larger consid eration of how the communication of information flows throughout a museum.

THE INFORMATIONAL NEEDS OF DOCENTS Booth, Krockover, and Woods define a docent as an "inte

gral part" of a museum's function. By sharing information, by functioning as teacher, facilitator, and interpreter, the docent attempts to make a particular exhibit more mean ingful to museum visitors.8 An important part of the do

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.24 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:45:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

154 Art Documentation, Winter, 1986

cent's role is "to help the visitor critically examine and ana lyze museum objects and exhibitions for information."9 But

where do docents go for information? How are they taught to evaluate works of art? How do they encourage museum visitors to evaluate objects in a museum's collection? How do they sharpen their own observational and analytical skills?

Docents work with art; they also work with people. Their information needs fall into two categories: factual and in terpersonal. They need information about particular artists, periods of art history, styles, schools, techniques, termi nology, and iconography. Docents communicate all this information by applying appropriate touring techniques to different visitor groups.

In developing and implementing a program of bibli ographic instruction for docents, museum librarians must consider the unique characteristics of each museum docent group. What is the size of the group? What experience do docents have in doing art historical research? How familiar are they with using a library? In what kind of museum do they operate: art, natural history, science and technology, etc.? Museum librarians should assist in establishing goals of docent programs and presentations. What requirements must docents fulfill before giving tours? Are tours informal or highly structured? Is docent preparation for tours mostly oral or written, and are docents evaluated on the basis of both oral as well as written (research) skills? Careful atten tion to these questions will ensure a more effective integra tion of the theory and practice of bibliographic instruction

within the museum library.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION AND THE MUSEUM LIBRARY

The literature of bibliographic instruction is filled with strategies, models, theories, and definitions, all of which attempt to answer what bibliographic instruction is and what its specific characteristics are.10 Bibliographic instruc tion involves learning theory: How can a variety of users be taught in ways that effectively and appropriately respond to their individual informational needs? Bibliographic instruc tion encompasses the identification of information, its gathering, and its use. It considers a particular audience within a particular setting, and it shows this audience how to use the library, how to do research, and how to locate information in response to stated needs. Although knowledge of library organization and particu

lar reference tools and of the process of finding information is essential to any program of bibliographic instruction,

more is involved than the creation of an educational pro gram for an identified user group. Breivik divides the plan ning of such a program into ten areas: the rationale for, the politics of, the need for establishing goals and objectives, meeting the needs of the groups to be served, setting pri orities, characteristics of quality instruction, contents selec tion and timing, evaluation, staffing resources, and public relations.11

Librarians should determine why implementation of such a program will be beneficial. How important are library skills to the function of the user group identified, and does this group think it requires library instruction to do its job? Once librarians have answered these questions, they can better justify the value of bibliographic instruction to mu seum administrators and professional educators.

The goal of bibliographic instruction for docents is to pro mote library use and to enrich docent performance through the effective use of library materials and interaction with information. Librarians can employ numerous methodol ogies to these ends, from tours, group and self-paced, to lectures, handouts, and forms of programmed instruc tion. Individual components of instruction may vary, but all must be relevant to user needs at the time they are offered, integrated with a particular course of study, and of use

when applied in other situations. In the case of the museum library, goals and objectives of user education must be con sistent with the requirements and specific projects of the overall docent training program. A program that encour ages and demands library use in the preparation of scripts

and tours reinforces the relevance of the museum library to museum education.

Bibliographic instruction will put docents in touch with information out of which tour themes can develop. It identi fies the museum library as an information center within the museum, one staffed by information specialists who over see a collection developed for the benefit of all involved with exhibit preparation and interpretation. Ultimately, such a program satisfies the needs of the museum public. If this audience can feel confident about the information it re ceives, and if it can witness fine preparation and communi cation skills on the part of museum docents, surely it is plausible that this audience will translate its favorable im pressions into support for the museum that is both psycho logical and monetary. "Education, properly conceived," says Laura Chapman in her article, "The Future and Museum Education," "is built on trustworthy knowledge organized for the purpose of educating the public."12

A PROPOSED PROGRAM OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION FOR MUSEUM DOCENTS

Docents should not pass up the chance to prepare for their tours by utilizing their museum library after they have spent time in their museum's galleries. The museum library can augment the docents' visual experience by providing them with verbal and visual information, by presenting sources of factual information and reproductions.

Before docents get to know the library, however, li brarians should get to know the docents and evaluate infor mational needs based on observation. Librarians should be an integral part of the docent training program, be sen sitive to the kinds of ideas and methods of teaching to

which docents are exposed, and, in conjunction with docent organizers, formulate information distributed at training sessions. In the form of a library packet, such information can include a plan of the library, a directory of staff names, library phone numbers, hours of operation, an outline of the library's classification scheme, and any special policies the library enforces.

Museum librarians should take full advantage of the uniqueness of the setting in which they offer bibliographic instruction to go beyond traditional classes, tutorials, and bibliographies, and make the library component of docent training tour- and exhibition-oriented. They should:

?integrate library sessions into lectures docents attend on the history of art;

?select materials and time their presentation in accor dance with exhibits currently on view in the museum;

?develop assignments that focus on specific pieces in an exhibit, or in the permanent collection, and promote awareness of topics less explicitly recognized in the history of art, for example, women in the visual arts? what sources provide information on women artists and images of women in art, and how these can be located;

In short, librarians should present the museum library as a stimulating and relevant resource to which docents can turn to write their scripts and prepare for their tours. Do cents will interact with information in the hands-on, par ticipative, and interpretive fashion they are accustomed to using with their own audiences. What results is an effective use of information in the library that will help docents do what they do best: focus on paintings and objects as iso lated entities, focus on these within the context of a particu lar time and place, and focus on the object as a frame of reference for comparison and contrast with other objects and images.13

CONCLUSION Chapman argues that the "future of the museum de

pends in large measure on the quality of the experience it affords the visitor."14 Can it be assumed that this future also depends on the quality of the museum library and the expe

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.24 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:45:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Art Documentation, Winter, 1986 155

rience it affords those working in the museum? Museum librarians, educators, administrators, and docent organizers

would do well to exploit the journals, workshops, and con ferences available to them, share their experiences with docent programming, and consider the implications of making explicit the role of the museum library in museum education. What will be the effect on museum library re sources and services when analyzed with docent functions in mind? Collection development, for example, would surely diversify as librarians acquire educational materials from museum education departments nationwide as well as childrens' books on art. Bibliographic instruction allows museum librarians to enhance the ways in which they de velop their collections, hire staff, and propose budgets, and provides docents with yet another place to learn, to look, and to create ideas for tours.

Many issues of future research await members of the library and museum communities. What bibliographic in struction programs for docents have been used or are cur rently in use in museums across the country? What forms of instruction are used, and what relationships exist be tween museum librarians and docent councils? How are docent functions affected in museum that do not have ac tive library-docent relationships? Does the museum com munity turn to the museum library as a resort of first choice, or does it rely upon other sources of information? Further research is needed on the information needs and information-seeking behavior of all who utilize museum li

brary resources. The museum library is in a position to expand the scope

of its reference and collection development activities, pro mote service to other groups within the museum, and foster cooperation among different museum departments. Bibliographic instruction is but one catalyst to change in the relationship of the museum library to its users.

Laurie Reese Getty Center Library

FOOTNOTES 1Bolton includes registrars, museum administrators, designers, and mu

seum shop managers among his list of groups the museum library serves, Bruce D. Bolton, "The Museum Librarian," in The Role of the Library in a

Museum, Joint Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums and the Canadian Museums Association (Boston, Mass., June 1980), pp. 14-15; Bojin and Tepper include the museum educator as part of the exhibit staff the librarian supports, Minda A. Bojin and Leslie H. Tepper, "The Role of the Museum Library in Support of Educational and Outreach Programs," in

Museum Librarianship, ed. John C. Larsen (Hamden, Conn.: Library Profes sional Publications, 1985), pp. 79-87.

2The art library setting in general does not appear in the 68-entry listing which comprises "Dissertations in Bibliographic Instruction," Research Strat egies 2 (Summer 1984): 149-52; 2 (Fall 1984): 202-7. 3For example, Jeanette Hauck Booth, Gerald H. Krockover, and Paula R.

Woods, Creative Museum Methods and Educational Techniques (Springfield, III.: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1982); Inez Wolins, Sherry Spires, and

Helene Silverman, "The Docent as Teacher: Redefining a Commitment to Museum Education," Museum News 64 (April 1986):41

- 50. 4As has been argued in favor of art teachers, Priscilla C. Geahigan and

George Geahigan, "Library Research: Answering the Information Needs of Art Teachers," Art Education 35 (May 1982):34-39.

5Clarence Bunch, Art Education: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale, 1978); Elizabeth J. Sacca and Loren R. Singer, Visual Arts Reference and Research Guide: For Artists, Educators, Curators, Historians and Therapists (Montreal: Perspecto Press, 1983); Lois Swan Jones includes docents in the subject index to her Art Research Methods and Resources: A Guide to Finding Art Information, 2d ed. (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1984), and refers them to certain sections in the text concerning research methodology, specifically, to books on pronunciation, how to write, and how to go about understanding specialized art references. 6Mike Avann and Kath Wood, eds., User Education in Art and Design:

Theory into Practice (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Art Libraries Society, 1980). 7Such articles include: Rene Dreyfus, "Museum Interpretation: The Obli

gation of the 80's," Bolletino dArte, supplemento, 1 (1982):97 -

98; Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, "Some Basic Principles and Issues Relating to Museum Education," Museums Journal 83 (September/December 1982): 127-30; Donald Moore, "Thirty Years of Museum Education: Some Reflections," The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship 1 (September 1982):213-30; Frank Oppenheimer, "Museums for the Love of Learning?A Personal Perspective," Museums Studies Journal 1 (Spring 1983); 16-18; Roy Strong, "The Museum as Communicator," Museum 35 :2 (1983)75-81. ^Creative Museum Methods, pp. 7

- 8

9|bid., p. 10. 10Articles reviewed for this paper include: David Carlson and Ruth H. Miller, "Librarians and Teaching Faculty: Partners in Bibliographic Instruction," C&RL 45 (November 1984):483-91; Frances L Hopkins, "A Century of Bibli ographic Instruction: The Historical Claims to Professional and Academic Legitimacy," C&RL 43(May 1982); 192-98; Connie Koppelman, "Orientation and Instruction in Academic Art Libraries," Special Libraries 67 (May/June 1976);256-60; Constance A. Mellon, "Process Not Product in Course Integrated Instruction: A Generic Model of Library Research," C&RL

45 (November 1984):471-78; Brian Nielsen, "Teacher or Intermediary: Alternative Professional Models in the Information Age," C&RL 43 (May 1982):183-91; John Cornell Selegean, Martha Lou Thomas, and Marie Louise Richman, "Long-Range Effectiveness of Library Use Instruction," C&RL 44 (November 1983): 476 - 80; Stephen K. Stoan, "Research and Library Skills:

An Analysis and Interpretation," C&RL 45 (March 1984):99-109; Thomas T. Suprenant, "Learning Theory, Lecture, and Programmed Instruction Text: An Experiment in Bibliographic Instruction," C&RL 43 (January 1982):31-37; C. Paul Vincent, "Bibliographic Instruction in the Humanities: The Need to Stress Imagination," Research Strategies 2 (Fall 1984):179-84; and "Why Bl or LI: A Forum," Reference Services Review 12 (Spring 1984):59-66. "Patricia Senn Breivik, Planning the Library Instruction Program (Chicago: American Library Association, 1982). 12Laura Chapman, "The Future and Museum Education," Museum News 60 (July/August 1982), p. 51.

^Creative Museum Methods, p. 11.

14Chapman, op. cit., p. 51.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.24 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:45:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions