EMBEDDING LIBRARY INSTRUCTION IN THE DESIGN CURRICULUMAuthor(s): Cristine C. Rom and Elizabeth A. LantzSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 7,No. 4 (Winter 1988), pp. 137-139Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947952 .

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Art Documentation, Winter 1988 137

EMBEDDING LIBRARY INSTRUCTION IN THE DESIGN CURRICULUM

By Cristine C. Rom, Library Director Cleveland Institute of Art

and Elizabeth A. Lantz, Head Cataloger

Cleveland Museum of Art

Abstract In order to provide artist-students with access to material

supporting design concepts, bibliographic programs in art schools should begin with an orientation program that empha sizes basic library survival skills. Dealing with subject indexes is one of the most important of these skills. Browsing and seren dipity must be accommodated. Advanced instruction is best done in collaboration with instructors.

"I use libraries frequently . . .," said video artist Joan Boc

cino at a 1987 ARLIS/NA conference session entitled "Igniting the Imagination of the Artist." "Various pieces and installa tions have required . . . research [on] topics as diverse as electrical wiring and karate. Ideas for other works have come from just checking out the shelves. As in a grocery store or hardware store, I often wander around and see what looks good. In a library there is no topic without merit,. . . [and] librarians are . . . wonderfully non-judgmental."1 Bibliographic instruction is a formal presentation to a class

by a librarian who teaches use of library resources and skills and provides a framework for research. Library skills gener ally mean the systematic gathering of information using li brary reference books and formal indexing structures. Re search is generally understood by librarians and scholars to be a linear or cumulative process of expanding knowledge within a discipline.2 Research seems, on the surface, to be a methodical and linear process.

Scholarly research, however, as Stephen Stoan per suasively argues in the March 1984 issue of College and Re search Libraries, is not merely a cumulative and linear pro cess, but also creative, often personal, and occasionally serendipitous.3 Stoan notes that research in all areas of hu man thought is directed not only by logic, accumulated infor mation, and disciplinary constructs, but also by inspiration, imagination, intuition, and even luck. Boccino's approach to libraries is typical of the visually

literate, underscoring Pacey's description of the artist as a "compulsive browser."4 Boccino's use of libraries does not follow a linear research strategy (although she may some times use such an approach) nor is she on a fact-finding mission; her library use demonstrates a highly personal, overtly serendipitous creative process for which there may be no perfect reference book, standard index, or systematic approach. The elements of information, methodology, in spiration, and luck may be the same as those of scholarly research, but the mix is different. While traditional bibli ographic instruction usually addresses the methodological and informational elements of library research, we want to share our musings on the mysterious creative process and how it might be supported by a more general library instruc tion program that encourages self-directed explorations of ideas and visual images (that is, browsing), and is unre stricted and non-judgmental in its possibilities. Significantly, our concern is very much the same as that of traditional bibliographic instruction how best systematically to teach groups of students to use library resources for their projects and ideas.

The creative process is life-long, limitless, and fundamental to the artist. Boccino told us that the library is fertile ground

for her explorations. If we accept the idea that academic li brarians should teach library skills extending beyond an indi vidual classroom assignment and that formal instruction is the best systematic way to teach groups of students, then our responsibility looms large. Precisely because the creative process is so self-directed and frequently serendipitous, li brary instruction should provide the means for artists to ex plore ideas. The charge is as difficult as it is important. We offer merely our prejudices, supported by a few experiences at Moore College of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Art during the last several years.

Before discussing how and when to provide such instruc tion, we need to decide what we should teach our artist students. Here too, the clue comes from video artist Joan Boccino. Our first task is to show our students that the library is filled with lots of wonderful things, and that the place is theirs to explore. This may seem merely a public relations issue, but promotion of the library resources and services has always been a motivating factor in library instruction and has important implications for the success of all levels of instruction. If we do not convince students early on in their careers that libraries have much to offer, we have missed a crucial opportunity and, consequently, may have little chance of building the foundation necessary for other types of li brary and bibliographic instruction.

Librarians' instructional responsibilities are not satisfied, however, by this promotional introduction to the library. We need to give students some notion of how to approach this wonderland of information, ideas, and visual images. At the 16th "Annual Workshop on Instruction in Library Use," Mar ion Wilburn, coordinator of Library Techniques Program at Sheridan College, urged a minimalist approach to instruction. She suggested outlining what students must know, should know, and could know; then, she advocated eliminating what students could and should know, as well as some of what they must know, concentrating, in effect, on basic survival skills.5

Deciding what students must know is perhaps the most difficult task of library instruction. We believe it is essential that students know information and visual images come in a variety of physical formats books and magazines, slides, CD-ROM, audio and video tapes, computer discs, and picture files and that there is a way for students to get from their ideas to their answers through the library's systems, classi fications, and organization. We want them to know further that libraries have some useful reference books but that not all problems can easily be solved by reference books, and that no approach to a topic is invalid. Since many students approach concepts and techniques through the work of other artists, and because artists and exhibitions are of primary importance to art and design students, it is important that they be able to locate information on individual artists. Lastly,

we want the students to know the names of the library staff and to feel comfortable asking for help, but not to view this help as either essential or detrimental to their exploration of the library.

Recent studies of library use in general academic set tings clearly indicate that course-related library use is for librarians, at least worrisomely low, independent of aca

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138 Art Documentation, Winter 1988

demie achievement, and generally limited to a few, upper division elective classes.6 Clearly, most college students receive from their instructors and textbooks, and not from librarians, the information required for their courses.

Is it different in an art and design school, where most foun dation courses as well as many upper-level classes deal with concepts and explorations of personal style and where tech nique is learned from teachers in an hands-on environment?

We think so. Our experience suggests that our artist-students' primary use of the library is not as a formal informational support for classroom instruction, but rather more often for personal exploration of ideas and images, or in Pacey's words, "to spark off their imagination."7 Many art and design school freshman, for example, come to the library not to investigate directly such concepts and techniques as space, light, line, or collage for an assignment, but rather to look for ideas and images to solve assignments focusing on such concepts and techniques. The difference is subtle but crucial. They may want a photograph of a nuclear bomb explosion, marching soldiers, or Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe prints instead of a book on design concepts, or repeat patterns; information on paper sculpture, commercial package design, or Japanese wrapping, or perhaps a pop-up book rather than information on three-dimensional design; slides of Joseph Cornell's boxes, not a book on collage; or perhaps a descrip tion of a yurt, kite, or umbrella to explore materials and ten sion. Painter AI Wunderlich, also at the 1987 ARLIS/NA ses sion on "Igniting the Imagination of the Artist," said that his painted construction "Artful irregular" drew its inspiration from the concept of the golden triangle as well as the 19th century science fiction book Ffatiand.8 An artist's possible ap proaches to an idea or image are limitless.

Precisely because many introductory studio classes rely on the wide range of personal explorations of general artistic concepts, library instruction early on is both important and, at the same time, perhaps ill-suited to traditional assignment derived bibliographic instruction. Because librarians are pri marily purveyors of information and not often also creative artists, we might plan instruction for a "time" and "space" design project by focusing on resources about these abstract concepts. However, such an approach is too literal, probably redundant to the classroom experience, and far too narrow for the purposes of the assignment. How, then, can art li brarians provide instruction covering all possible creative re sponses to abstract concepts such as "time" and "space"?

One solution to this dilemma is library orientation, pre sented at the beginning of the students' schooling. Orienta tion can be interdisciplinary and easily be made instructional in its general outline, and it encourages self-directed brows ing. The too-often-slighted tour of the facility is a significant entree for our artist-students' explorations, showing them the physical locations of the library's resources; familiarity

with the physical environment is more important to art stu dents than librarians generally acknowledge. We propose a re-definition of library orientation going beyond the tour to include brief instruction in the variety of information-bearing formats as well as a general introduction to the different approaches to each format. Such orientation may well ade quately serve our students during their early studies as well as provide a sufficient foundation for all successive and in cremental library instruction.

The question of when to provide instruction is then par tially answered; general introductory instruction through ori entation should be provided as early as possible. Advanced bibliographic instruction specifically tailored to a final project is offered during the senior year. Orientation and advanced bibliographic instruction should be linked by an on-going in structional program geared to the artist-students' design cur riculum and presented throughout their schooling.

Having determined what to teach our artist-students and when various types of library instruction might be most effectively provided, the question of "how" remains. How do we teach students the variety of ways to get from their ques tions and ideas to their answers by means of the library's informational structure and organization? How do we provide library instruction that facilitates browsing, creates self-reliance, and is tailored to the artist's internal creative

process? And how do we, as librarians, extricate ourselves from dependence on our reference collections in order to provide library instruction best suited to the needs of studio artists?

An important step in creating self-reliant library users, equipped with the skills to locate unrestricted information, is to set in place library instruction that addresses the funda mental concepts of subject access. It is not necessary, however, to explain subject heading construction which can be baffling at best, even to catalogers. Nor is it necessary to provide lengthy explanations of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Instead, the crucial concept to be communi cated to students is that their ideas absolutely must be linked to the library's already established (albeit frequently out dated and subjectively selected) terminology if the students are to find their way successfully among the library's won derful and varied resources.

Conveying the concept of linkage between ideas and li brary terminology can be difficult. Subject access poses problems of communication, demanding that the terms used by students match those chosen by the cataloger. According to catalog theorist E. J. Coates, this communication problem would be solved

. . . if there were an uncomplicated one-to-one relation

ship between concepts and words; that is to say, if there were a single word corresponding to each sepa rate concept and a single concept corresponding to each separate word. In fact, we have on the one hand concepts that can be rendered by any one of a number of words, and on the other hand, concepts for which no single word equivalent exists in the natural language.9

The problem of communication looms larger in the art and design school environment, where many students are more comfortable with visual images than with words and much of their library use is focused on the personal and explora tory, often with no particular assignment or specific end in view.

One important strategy for accomplishing our instructional goals is to provide students with the basic knowledge neces sary to use all types of materials providing subject access: subject catalogs, magazine indexes, vertical file indexes, and locally provided cross-references. Our experience has shown that most questions asked by artist-students can be an swered through subject access. Therefore, if we focus on subject access aids and stress the relationship between words and concepts, it is possible that students will better understand both the significance of linking their ideas to the library's terminology as well as the usefulness of the library's provision of links in the form of cross-references. Once stu dents at Moore College of Art were exposed to LCSH, they were willing and able to look up alternative terms.

Students need to know that commonly used terms for certain subjects do not always match the library's pre determined language. Information on African arts, for exam

ple, is found under ART, AFRICAN rather than under African art, and information on ergonomics is found under a variety of terms, including HUMAN ENGINEERING, or perhaps AN THROPOMETRY or INTERIOR DECORATION HUMAN FAC TORS. Students also need to know that the name of an artist can be considered both a subject and an author. If students are not to turn away from the catalog discouraged upon lo cating little, if any, pertinent information under CERAMICS (which Library of Congress defines as a technical rather than art-related term), then they should have the opportunity to discover that their search would be successful under the terms POTTERY or perhaps PORCELAIN.

In theory, and one hopes in practice, subject access strives to provide an alphabetical approach to the concepts inherent in library materials, thus adding another dimension to the linear arrangement achieved through classification systems. Providing students with the keys to subject access enables them to select the areas they think most appropriate to their interests, without imposing arbitary limitations such as call number ranges and the finite possibilities of a specific refer ence book, or without falling into the trap described earlier in

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Art Documentation, Winter 1988 139

which we, acting as librarians and not as artists, provide exhaustive references on such abstract concepts as "time" or

"space" but possibly fail to provide access to materials as sisting creative responses to those same concepts.

Much basic information on subject access can be given to art and design school students in orientation by using gen eral examples pertinent to their interests and needs. Subject access information can also be presented through point-of reference instruction, but it is best provided in the context of studio classes and assignments. Traditionally, it has been far easier to collaborate with academic faculty, primarily due to the method in which bibliographic instruction has been ap proached, a method better suited to the more factual infor mation needs of academic assignments than to the concep tual needs of studio assignments. As Pacey notes, art students try traditional bibliographic research techniques only for their academic classes; otherwise, art students use libraries as starting points for the creative process. Therefore, if we intend library instruction to help artists with the crea tion of art, it is imperative, in the art and design school en vironment, that library instruction be tied to the conceptual needs of studio classes whenever possible. Only by doing so can librarians ensure that such library instruction is relevant to artist-students.

Collaboration between the library staff and studio faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Art, over the last several years, provides new possibilities for library instruction. Library staff worked with studio faculty to provide library support for spe cific design assignments. Faculty gave design assignments to the library staff in a variety of formats ranging from a brief verbal description, to a year-long multi-faceted project pre sented in a grid format, to lengthy and specific written prob lems. In every case, a library staff member went over the assignment expectations with the faculty member to insure a common understanding. Generally, the assignment had al ready been handed out to the students or was to be handed out in the immediate future. The library staff quickly pre pared an assignment-tailored handout outlining the variety of approaches to the topic, introducing all the possible for mats, suggesting artists working with particular concepts, style, or materials, and noting the necessary subject access for each format; an effort was made to avoid any limiting guidance, such as call number ranges, and only occasionally did the handouts include bibliographies.

The Cleveland Institute of Art library staff benefitted from this arrangement as much as did the students and faculty. The staff learned about the precise nature of various studio assignments, gained some insight into the creative process, was better able to evaluate and select materials for the li

brary, and, as a result, provided local cross-references for the public catalog to help students and instructors link their artis tic ideas and words with the library's subject headings. This arrangement had the added advantages of informing and even "educating" individual faculty and providing instruc tional support for classes without making large time de mands on the library staff.

We found that both faculty and students appreciated hav ing something written down. Although the library staff pre pared the handouts, the studio instructor was responsible for distributing them to the students and discussing their use in relationship to the assignment. This practice is in direct con trast to the popular notion that librarians must and should be the sole providers of library instruction. Without doubt, li brarians are best qualified to present bibliographic instruc tion, which involves a thorough and detailed knowledge of library resources and methodical library search strategies.

Also, librarians are probably the best suited to providing general library instruction, such as orientation. In an art and design school environment, however, librarians may

not be the most effective purveyors of a conceptual brand of instruction in support of artistic concepts and studio assignments.

In past years at Moore College of Art, for example, an instruction assignment was proposed to an enthusiastic fac

ulty member. The instructor presented the assignment to the students, discussed the various library resources and ap proaches, and introduced the librarian as the project liaison responsible for preparing the library materials. The class re sponded well to the information. The faculty member's par ticipation imbued the assignment with a validity it might have lacked had the librarian delivered the same information alone. At the same time, the role of the librarian and the librarian's contribution to the content was recognized and given additional authority through the collaborative effort. In any classroom setting, it is difficult, if not impossible, to alter the primacy of the teacher. The studio environment is no exception. For this reason it may be more effective for stu dents to learn about the library's resources at an early stage, from their artist-teachers or from a librarian in conjunction with faculty. Experiences at Moore College of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Art strongly support collaborative li brary instruction.

Any one form of library instruction may be unable to achieve all possible goals. We have attempted to propose an integrated instructional program receptive to the needs of art and design school students. We are still grappling with many of the issues and mechanics of our ideas, and so our pro posals are preliminary. Moreover, we do not want to give the impression that other areas of instruction should be ignored or that all faculty are willing to participate in a program such as we have outlined. Instead, we suggest that all areas of instruction can and should complement each other and that there are alternatives to traditional modes of instruction.

There are important benefits to be derived from this pro posed style of library instruction. If students are helped in using the library in their way, not just ours, they will undoubt edly feel more receptive to the library. As the library staff strives to implement instruction in response to the student's personal and creative process, faculty may also become more aware of library resources and more willing to work with the library staff. In a library with the flexibility to tailor local subject-access tools, the library staff's understanding of studio assignments and student approaches to conceptual problems can contribute to more responsive subject cata logs, indexes, and cross-references as well as to greater eval uation of existing collection strengths and weaknesses.

Ultimately, a library instruction program, as we have out lined, serves the specific needs of its constituents, performs the long-acknowledged public relations function, and edu cates our artist-students and faculty in the ways of effective serendipity.

NOTES 1Joan Boccino, "Art Libraries: The Grocery Store Approach," Art Libraries

Society of North America Conference Abstracts, 15th Annual Conference, 1987, p. 38. 2Stephen Stoan, "Research and Library Skills: an Analysis and Interpretation," College & Research Libraries 45, no. 2 (March 1984): 99-100. 3Stoan, 102. 4Philip Pacey, A Reader in Art Librarianship (New York: K.G. Saur, 1985), p. 53. 5Barbara Love, "Library Instruction: Recreating the Image," College & Research Libraries News 48, no. 8 (September 1987): 482. eStoan, 104-105. 7Pacey, p. 53 8AI Wunderlich, "Untitled," Art Libraries Society of North America Conference Abstracts, 15th Annual Conference, 1987, p. 37. 9E. J. Coates, Subject Catalogues: Headings and Structure (London: Library As sociation, 1960), p. 19. 10Pacey, p. 53.

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