AAT UPDATEAuthor(s): Patricia BarnettSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 5,No. 4 (Winter 1986), pp. 177-178Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947676 .

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Art Documentation, Winter, 1986 177

I WOMEN AND ART DOCUMENTATION GROUP edited by Edith L. Crowe

News

A At its summer meeting, the ARLIS/NA Executive Board dis cussed our request for designation as an official SIG. At the same time the Board addressed the broader issue of whether or not SIGs and TOLs "adequately address specific areas of interests." The Board decided to postpone a decision on the

Women and Art Documentation Group SIG until the full membership has the chance to discuss the entire organiza tional structure of ARLIS/NA and look at alternatives such as "roundtables" or "forums." Thanks to all of you who sent petitions to the Board; they are being kept on file at Head quarters. Supporters of the Women and Art Documentation "Group" should make a special effort to attend the Member ship Meeting at the 1987 Conference and participate in the discussions, in order to obtain whatever status in the organi zational structure we feel is most appropriate to our aims. See you in Washington! A In June 1985 the National Women's Studies Association established a new Task Force on Feminist Scholarship. One of the motivations behind the founding of this Task Force was to attract people who are active in women's caucuses and sec tions of traditional professional associations but have not par ticipated in the NWSA because they do not view it as a forum for the presentation of scholarly work in their specific fields. The Task Force hopes to play an important role in the de velopment and support of women's studies scholarship, and to address such broader issues as the role of scholarship in encouraging "elitism and resistance to change of the un-femi nist academy." The new Task Force held its first official meet ings at the NWSA Conference in June. For further information contact one of the co-conveners: Sandra Coyner, Director,

Women's Studies, Eisenhower Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506; or Kathryn Brooks, Women's Center, 1824 Las Lomas NE, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131. A The Art Information Center, founded in 1959, is a clearing house for information on the exhibition histories and gallery representation of 65,000 contemporary artists. The Center also maintains a slide registry that contains the work of over 3,500 artists. This information is available to museums, gall eries, dealers, collectors, the press, and others interested in locating work by living artists. Contact: Dan Concholar, Art Information Center, 280 Broadway, Suite 412, New York, NY 10007.

Periodicals A Feminist Studies, a multidisciplinary journal of feminist re search, theory and analysis, seeks contributions from artists and art historians. Articles furthering the scholarship of gen der and art may focus on women artists' experience or on gender as a category of critical analysis and should be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience. They publish serious

writing of a critical, scholarly, speculative, and political nature, as well as creative art work. All manuscripts or inquiries re garding the submission of manuscripts should be directed to Feminist Studies, do Women's Studies Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Events A The Birth Project exhibit schedule for early 1987 is as fol lows: Rochester, NY, University of Rochester Student Union

Gallery, Jan. 12-Feb. 6; Norfolk, VA, Norfolk General Hospi tal, Jan. 12-Feb. 21; Fresno, CA, Fresno Art Center and Mu seum, Fresno City College?Arts Space Gallery, Gallery 25, Fresno State University?Phebe Conley Gallery, Jan. 18- Mar. 8; Jackson, Ml, Ella Sharp Museum, Jan. 25-Feb. 22; Bronx ville, NY, Sarah Lawrence College?Esther Raushenbush Li

brary, Feb. 1-Mar. 15; Tallahassee, FL, Florida State Univer sity Fine Arts Gallery and Museum, Feb. 12-Mar. 8; Hartford, CT, Trinity College?Austin Arts Center, Feb. 28-Mar. 20. An audience of about 100,000 annually have viewed The Birth Project, now in the second year of a planned three-year tour (which may be extended).

Resources A The Women's Caucus for Art is offering discounts on their backlist for ARLIS/NA members (both individual and institu tional). All orders must be prepaid and will be filled while supply lasts. Allow four weeks for processing. The following titles are available: Newsletters vol. 7 #2, 4, vol. 8 #1 -4, vol. 9 #1 -4, vol. 10 #1, 3, 4 ($1); Honors Catalogs 1980-83, 1985 ($2); Women Artists in Washington Collections ($8); WCA Di rectory 1982 ($1), 1985 ($5); Printed by Women ($6); Views by Women Artists ($5); Women: Self Image ($1). Checks should be payable to WCA National Office, Moore College of Art, 20th & The Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 854-0922. A The National Association of Artists' Organizations and the Visual Arts Program of EA have released their survey on alternative spaces and artist-run organizations. This survey sought data on organizational structure, functions, artistic ac tivities, and finances. To identify artist organizations which

were neither EA applicants nor NAAO members, regional arts councils and state arts agencies were contacted. Organi zations created by and for artists, in which artists maintained an active role in decision-making, and which supported the production, presentation, and/or promotion of contemporary artists, were included. Copies of the survey are available for $6.17 from: National Association of Art Organizations, 930 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20004. NAAO is the only national network of artist-run organizations. It provides consultants and referrals regarding funding, management and technical assistance.

AAT UPDATE edited by Patricia Barnett

A In September, the attention of the AAT staff was focused on the move to permanent quarters in Williamstown. This move puts the AAT offices near the research facilities of RILA and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. AAT is also awaiting delivery on a new Britton-Lee IDM computer, an in telligent relational database management machine, which will replace the PLEXIS system with a custom-made program for

mounting the hierarchies and authority files. AAT hopes with in a year to have a selected group of users accessing the IDM directly. Their new address and telephone is: Art and Archi tecture Thesaurus Project, 62 Stratton Road, Williamstown, MA 01267,413-458-2151. A Work continued throughout the summer on completing those hierarchies marked for completion this summer. Since the last update, DESIGN ELEMENTS AND ATTRIBUTES (e.g., Patterns, Motifs, Shapes, Colors, etc.) along with TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT and TECHNIQUES AND PROCESSES were com pleted and reviewed by panels of experts and returned to AAT for final revision. As of September, a new project was undertaken to add SCOPE NOTES and RELATED TERMS to the existing hierarchies. A Toni Petersen delivered a paper entitled "The AAT: the Path to Becoming a Standard" at the Society of American Archivists Conference in Chicago at the end of August. A One project using the AAT not mentioned in the last AAT column is a slide project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jeanne Keefe-Watkinson, librarian of the RPI architectural slide library, is overseeing the cataloging of 50,000 slides of architecture using the MARC visual materials format. The li brary has selected those fields it finds relevant and is input ting them on the RPI's online catalog using AAT in the 650 field. A Bethany Mendenhall and Murray Waddington of the RLG Art and Architecture Program Committee's Taskforce on the AAT Application Protocol have spent the summer testing a

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178 Art Documentation, Winter, 1986

large sample of architectural books using the proposed AAT protocol. The results will be reported at a meeting of the full Taskforce set for November. A AAT has retained a consultant to compare the AAT applica tion protocol with PRECIS (Preserved Context Indexing Sys tem) and other relevant indexing systems. We will report on the results in the next issue. A Plans for the Washington ARLIS/NA Conference include an AAT users group roundtable which will consist of informal discussions and demonstrations by current AAT users. These projects are indexing a variety of material, including periodi cal particles, architectural drawings, and slides.

I I REPORTS OF CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS

Society of American Archivists Conference August 26-30,1986

Over 100 sessions of various formats (papers, workshops, "poster" sessions) celebrated the 50th anniversary of the SAA under the theme, "SAA at 50: Past Accomplishments, Future Challenges." Issues addressed included the participa tion of women and minorities in the profession, the admin istration of national archival programs, the relationship be tween archivists and genealogists, the development of modern descriptive practices, and the expansion of academic, religious, and business archives. Most evident in the sessions I attended was the intense

focus on special concerns of the present: implementing the MARC format for archives and manuscripts and the use of microcomputers in archival collection control received the most attention. It is especially interesting to watch archivists wrestle with "their" MARC format, for they come to it with some very different perspectives from their librarian col leagues. Not having a long history of shared cataloging data, issues like authority control present new challenges. AACR2 rules for name headings are in some ways not applicable for archival records, and Library of Congress Subject Headings seem totally inappropriate to archivists. There is thus much talk of building authority files, but with some confusion as to the procedures to follow. Several speakers described their institutions' grappling with this problem. In a session on Sub ject Access and the Implications of the AMC (Archival and Manuscripts Control) Format, for example, Harriet Ostroff of the Rare Book Division at the Library of Congress detailed NUCMC's (National Union Catalog of Manuscripts) plans for automation and the resulting changing of their subject index ing policies. They will be conforming to LC name authorities and LCSH as much as possible, but will modify headings where necessary, using local field in the MARC format.

David Bearman of the Smithsonian Institution urged archi vists of the necessity to connect to other "inventory" databases in libraries and museums, and thus to relate to systems used by these databases. But he pointed out that the methods used by these systems are not equal to the prob lems of user access and satisfaction, and noted that the future holds the prospect of vast databases of randomly stored, in discriminately collated data which will give incredible diffi culties in retrieval of information unless we develop better organizational structures now. Bearman urges the use of vari ous facets or dimensions in storing data and points out that such facets can be used as pathways from one database to another. An interesting session on the application of the MARC for

mat for visual materials in various institutions held some lessons for visual resource collections that are seeking to au tomate, and might be replicated with good effect at an ARLIS/ NA conference. Examples of cataloging in the VM Format were given by Diane Vogt-O'Connor of the Smithsonian, Wen dy Hensen of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Sound

Recording Division of LC, and Angela Girai of Avery Library at Columbia University.

Noting the proclivity of archivists toward the development of special thesauri, a session was devoted to such thesauri for non-book materials. Jackie Dooley spoke about the thesauri for prints and photographs being developed by Elisabeth Betz Parker and Helena Zinkham at LC. I gave a talk on defining what a standard is, and the special problems of developing a thesaurus, the AAT, which has the goal of becoming a stan dard for the information community. Susan Jurist of RLG then spoke about how such special thesauri might become assimi lated in the network environment. A parting note for ARLIS/NA: I was impressed at the Busi

ness Meeting of the SAA to see how active this society is in going after funding to achieve goals of their profession. Among an impressive listing of Council on Library Resources, National Endowment for the Humanit?s, and private founda tion grants, for example, was funding for a project to encour age archival education. SAA is probably three times the size of ARLIS/NA and has a paid staff of about six people, includ ing a program officer to develop grant projects. Perhaps we have taken the first step toward an expansion of our own programs with the move to a separate office and staff to handle clerical details of society business.

Toni Petersen Art & Architecture Thesaurus

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES Reference

A Publishers, Distributors and Wholesalers of the United States 1985- 1986 is available from R. R. Bowker Company, New

York, for $59.95 plus shipping and handling. World Guide to Libraries, seventh edition, is available from K. G. Saur, Munich and New York, for $175.00. A A series of videotapes on Museum Careers, produced by and available from The Audiovisual Program of the Office of Museum Programs, Smithsonian Institution, Arts & Industries Building, Room 2235, Washington, DC 20560 (202-357-3101), is a collection of informal interviews with Smithsonian staff. Loan cost per video is $20, purchase price is $55. A "Meeting the Researcher's Needs: The Limitation of Refer ence Tools and Creative Strategies" by Linda Swieszkowski is a new reference, comprising a short bibliography of contem

porary women's art. (Hue Points XIV (Spring 1986): 7-8). See also Joyce Zemans' "A Guide to Canadian Women Artists' Organizations" (Hue Points XIV (Spring 1986): 43-44). A "Women's Studies in Western Europe," a publication of ACRL, is now available from the ALA Order Dept. It contains a review and annotated directory of women's publishing in twenty-seven western European countries, complied by Vir ginia Clark. (ISBN 0-8389-7037-0, $18pbk).

Technology A The American Library Association has announced publica tion of Library Video Magazine, the first magazine in videocassette form for library and information professionals. The first issue of the magazine features segments on micro computer staff training, the Public Library Association's na tional conference, optical disc technology, storage and cir culation techniques for audio compact discs, and preservation. A one-year subscription is $199.95. Contact: Do nna Kitta, ALA Video, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. A FINEART, an electronic arts bulletin board, is available from various networks, such as ARPANET, CS ET, UUCP, IN TERNET, and by direct dial, 415-545-0376. Contact: Ray Lauzzana, 366 FAC, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003. A Periodical literature on technology is its usual prolific self. "Securing Mainframe Computing in the Slide Library at the Ohio State University," by Mark J. McGuire, traces this project

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