Pub Date : 2019-12-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019893172
Andris Vilks
This year, the National Library of Latvia (NLL) is celebrating its centenary. Five years have passed since it was housed in a new, specially designed and constructed building. Two decades ago, we were focused on defining the functions of the new library project, the need for which had been defined 10 years after its founding, and design work had begun as early as 1989. Twenty years ago, it was concluded that the new library should be accessible to the public: to some extent public, to some extent academic. This was imposed by the fact that Riga has no metropolitan-type, central city libraries, but the University Library, also founded in 1919, had been destroyed twice, but now the university campus was being developed just 500 m from the NLL. The year 1999 saw the beginning of the digital era – the Library launched the National Digital Library programme. Ten years ago – in 2009 – the construction of the new building had already started. Questions about the implementation of its functions, in what was now a real setting, were at the forefront. It was necessary to plan not only the logistics of basic functions – of collection development, processing and access, but also the acquisition of robust technological equipment, the organisation of public space for various cultural and social events, and its adaptation to research and education purposes. No less important were infrastructural technical solutions – safety, microclimate, mobility, requirements for people with special needs, catering and so on. Particular attention was paid to the presence of high-quality art both inside and outside the Library. As a result, from 2014 the NLL started intensive operations in a completely unrestricted conference and exhibition centre (including a permanent, museum-type exhibition on publishing – Books in Latvia). At the same time, reading rooms with wide-ranging, open-access collections are located across eight levels. The millionth visitor to the building was welcomed as early as in 2017, but the number of registered readers has reached some 150,000, close to 8% of the country’s population, and the number of
{"title":"The National Library of Latvia","authors":"Andris Vilks","doi":"10.1177/0955749019893172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019893172","url":null,"abstract":"This year, the National Library of Latvia (NLL) is celebrating its centenary. Five years have passed since it was housed in a new, specially designed and constructed building. Two decades ago, we were focused on defining the functions of the new library project, the need for which had been defined 10 years after its founding, and design work had begun as early as 1989. Twenty years ago, it was concluded that the new library should be accessible to the public: to some extent public, to some extent academic. This was imposed by the fact that Riga has no metropolitan-type, central city libraries, but the University Library, also founded in 1919, had been destroyed twice, but now the university campus was being developed just 500 m from the NLL. The year 1999 saw the beginning of the digital era – the Library launched the National Digital Library programme. Ten years ago – in 2009 – the construction of the new building had already started. Questions about the implementation of its functions, in what was now a real setting, were at the forefront. It was necessary to plan not only the logistics of basic functions – of collection development, processing and access, but also the acquisition of robust technological equipment, the organisation of public space for various cultural and social events, and its adaptation to research and education purposes. No less important were infrastructural technical solutions – safety, microclimate, mobility, requirements for people with special needs, catering and so on. Particular attention was paid to the presence of high-quality art both inside and outside the Library. As a result, from 2014 the NLL started intensive operations in a completely unrestricted conference and exhibition centre (including a permanent, museum-type exhibition on publishing – Books in Latvia). At the same time, reading rooms with wide-ranging, open-access collections are located across eight levels. The millionth visitor to the building was welcomed as early as in 2017, but the number of registered readers has reached some 150,000, close to 8% of the country’s population, and the number of","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115951045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019892373
Ana Santos Aramburo
National libraries are the institutions responsible for the conservation and transmission of the culture manifestations that countries have generated throughout their history. Their evolution has accompanied the changes in different media for developing people’s capacity for creation and their history is comparable to the development of the countries where they were founded. It is therefore clear that the strongest national libraries are those from countries with a long history regarding the concept of state and support for cultural creation. Although the above may seem obvious, this will continue to determine the keys to the national libraries of the future. It is sufficient to know, albeit superficially, which milestones have been definitive in their evolution to give us an idea of the factors that are already marking the present, and therefore the future, of national libraries. The rationale of national libraries is based on the existence of legal deposit legislation. The development of the publishing industry and the generation of different types of media have determined the need for national libraries to adapt to the conservation requirements of the different collections and the service demanded by their users. One cannot talk about creation and dissemination of knowledge without an awareness of the foundations and trends of an industry as complex as publishing. The evolution of the legal deposit legislation is proof of this. The adaptation of this norm to the evolution of the publishing and cultural industries has enabled national libraries to guarantee the conservation and transmission of culture for hundreds of years. This issue is particularly complex and, in view of the rapid changes that are taking place in different cultural areas, a great deal of uncertainty exists. The instruments used for new creations are no longer traditional media. Many new works are freely created and disseminated and often these are not controlled by the publishing industry. In this rapid
{"title":"The future of national libraries","authors":"Ana Santos Aramburo","doi":"10.1177/0955749019892373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019892373","url":null,"abstract":"National libraries are the institutions responsible for the conservation and transmission of the culture manifestations that countries have generated throughout their history. Their evolution has accompanied the changes in different media for developing people’s capacity for creation and their history is comparable to the development of the countries where they were founded. It is therefore clear that the strongest national libraries are those from countries with a long history regarding the concept of state and support for cultural creation. Although the above may seem obvious, this will continue to determine the keys to the national libraries of the future. It is sufficient to know, albeit superficially, which milestones have been definitive in their evolution to give us an idea of the factors that are already marking the present, and therefore the future, of national libraries. The rationale of national libraries is based on the existence of legal deposit legislation. The development of the publishing industry and the generation of different types of media have determined the need for national libraries to adapt to the conservation requirements of the different collections and the service demanded by their users. One cannot talk about creation and dissemination of knowledge without an awareness of the foundations and trends of an industry as complex as publishing. The evolution of the legal deposit legislation is proof of this. The adaptation of this norm to the evolution of the publishing and cultural industries has enabled national libraries to guarantee the conservation and transmission of culture for hundreds of years. This issue is particularly complex and, in view of the rapid changes that are taking place in different cultural areas, a great deal of uncertainty exists. The instruments used for new creations are no longer traditional media. Many new works are freely created and disseminated and often these are not controlled by the publishing industry. In this rapid","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122505127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: The no-nonsense guide to leadership, management and teamwork","authors":"R. Bickley","doi":"10.1177/0955749019896458b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019896458b","url":null,"abstract":"A book review of: The no-nonsense guide to leadership, management and teamwork / by Barbara Allan. London : Facet, 2019 (ISBN: 9781783303960).","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126962467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019896458
K. Ladizesky
{"title":"Book review: International and comparative librarianship – Concepts and methods for global studies","authors":"K. Ladizesky","doi":"10.1177/0955749019896458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019896458","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134507266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-14DOI: 10.1177/0955749019885675
Katarína Krištofová
When I became Director General in 2012, the Slovak National Library was on the brink of a huge digitisation project that aimed to digitise all (or at least most) Slovak-related printed cultural heritage materials from the library’s collection in the years (or decades) to come. Then the mission was clear: to facilitate the transition of a traditional national library of the 20th century into the digital era. Now, a few years after its successful implementation, digitisation has become an integral part of the national library’s routine workflows in virtually all library processes, from acquisition, through bibliography and cataloguing, to the patron services and preservation. It is obvious that it was by no means the final step, rather just one of the first steps in the paradigmatic change that lies ahead of national libraries (and libraries in general) in the years to come. And it is not a distant future: the truly exciting things that can be done with the vast quantities of digitised high-quality content from the libraries are already happening or are about to happen – the digital humanities, text and data mining (with the extensive use of artificial neural networks), automated text classification, analysis and description and all the other popular buzzwords of the library world, all driven by artificial intelligence, whose role is increasing rapidly, are reality. They are part of a wider pattern in the society powered by accelerated development of technologies that start to dominate people’s lives and shape the future of the world (or at least the luckier, wealthier part of it) – things like industry 4.0 affecting the way we work and live profoundly or the internet of things, for example. And the next big thing, practical use of quantum computing with its farreaching impacts, is just around the corner. There is no way that libraries (including the national libraries), which have been an integral part of society for centuries, can remain unaffected by these developments. In
{"title":"The next 10 years of the Slovak National Library","authors":"Katarína Krištofová","doi":"10.1177/0955749019885675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019885675","url":null,"abstract":"When I became Director General in 2012, the Slovak National Library was on the brink of a huge digitisation project that aimed to digitise all (or at least most) Slovak-related printed cultural heritage materials from the library’s collection in the years (or decades) to come. Then the mission was clear: to facilitate the transition of a traditional national library of the 20th century into the digital era. Now, a few years after its successful implementation, digitisation has become an integral part of the national library’s routine workflows in virtually all library processes, from acquisition, through bibliography and cataloguing, to the patron services and preservation. It is obvious that it was by no means the final step, rather just one of the first steps in the paradigmatic change that lies ahead of national libraries (and libraries in general) in the years to come. And it is not a distant future: the truly exciting things that can be done with the vast quantities of digitised high-quality content from the libraries are already happening or are about to happen – the digital humanities, text and data mining (with the extensive use of artificial neural networks), automated text classification, analysis and description and all the other popular buzzwords of the library world, all driven by artificial intelligence, whose role is increasing rapidly, are reality. They are part of a wider pattern in the society powered by accelerated development of technologies that start to dominate people’s lives and shape the future of the world (or at least the luckier, wealthier part of it) – things like industry 4.0 affecting the way we work and live profoundly or the internet of things, for example. And the next big thing, practical use of quantum computing with its farreaching impacts, is just around the corner. There is no way that libraries (including the national libraries), which have been an integral part of society for centuries, can remain unaffected by these developments. In","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"35 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123406232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019876383
Robyn Reed, Julie Lohnes
There is diversity in our stacks and cultural collections. How might an academic library present these differently from a museum or art gallery to create dynamic and inclusive exhibitions? This case study will examine the use of our library’s spaces to showcase its collections and art, which are often more representative of diverse populations than the campus at large, to present a theoretical and practical framework with which other libraries might exhibit their rich resources. As part of our theoretical discussion, we will take up such practical issues as displaying cultural work in a non-museum setting, anticipating possible resistance and cultural challenges, and exploring partnerships between art curators and academic librarians. We also hope to show how such exhibits can forge new relationships with teaching faculty and foster more meaningful interactions with students and community users. Additionally, the Afrofuturist exhibit and art installation presented in this article will show how a library can be purposeful in art and artifact displays that reflect the institutional commitment to inclusion and diversity and support student retention efforts.
{"title":"Tripping the Black fantastic at a PWI: Or how Afrofuturist exhibitions in an academic library changed everything","authors":"Robyn Reed, Julie Lohnes","doi":"10.1177/0955749019876383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019876383","url":null,"abstract":"There is diversity in our stacks and cultural collections. How might an academic library present these differently from a museum or art gallery to create dynamic and inclusive exhibitions? This case study will examine the use of our library’s spaces to showcase its collections and art, which are often more representative of diverse populations than the campus at large, to present a theoretical and practical framework with which other libraries might exhibit their rich resources. As part of our theoretical discussion, we will take up such practical issues as displaying cultural work in a non-museum setting, anticipating possible resistance and cultural challenges, and exploring partnerships between art curators and academic librarians. We also hope to show how such exhibits can forge new relationships with teaching faculty and foster more meaningful interactions with students and community users. Additionally, the Afrofuturist exhibit and art installation presented in this article will show how a library can be purposeful in art and artifact displays that reflect the institutional commitment to inclusion and diversity and support student retention efforts.","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134287107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019876384
Hailley M. Fargo, Rachel White
This article focuses on an exhibition curated by library employees at the Pennsylvania State University. Their exhibition, Depth of Field, grew out of a common reading program collaboration. In creating the exhibition, the authors of this article aimed to create a dialogue around the way in which viewers interact with visual and textual imagery, specifically as it relates to war photography. Photojournalism is interdisciplinary and provided the authors with multiple avenues in which to approach themes, thus making it the perfect vehicle to cross boundaries and find common space for visitors to the exhibition. The intent of this article is to provide an example of a cross-campus collaboration that resulted in an engaging exhibition, how to take complex ideas and theories and make them digestible for a first-year student audience, and strategies for academic libraries who are considering a similar project at their institution.
本文关注的是宾夕法尼亚州立大学图书馆员工策划的一个展览。他们的展览《景深》(Depth of Field)源于一个共同的阅读项目合作。在创建展览时，本文的作者旨在围绕观众与视觉和文本图像互动的方式进行对话，特别是与战争摄影有关的对话。新闻摄影是跨学科的，为作者提供了多种途径来接近主题，从而使其成为跨越边界的完美工具，为展览的参观者找到共同的空间。本文的目的是提供一个跨校园合作的例子，该合作导致了一个引人入胜的展览，如何采用复杂的想法和理论，并使其易于一年级学生理解，以及为正在考虑在其机构中进行类似项目的学术图书馆提供策略。
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Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019876122
F. Marini
The author addresses key questions that librarians, archivists, curators and administrators face when producing physical exhibitions in special collections, rare book libraries and archives. The author’s direct experience is complemented by data gathered through a pilot study she conducted in 2017 and is placed in the context of professional literature. The questions discussed focus mostly on physical exhibitions. While the context of this article is North American, the questions are also relevant to institutions in other countries. This article is especially of interest to new professionals, as an introduction to exhibition work, as well as to experienced professionals who want to reflect on their practices in comparison to those of other institutions.
{"title":"Exhibitions in special collections, rare book libraries and archives: Questions to ask ourselves","authors":"F. Marini","doi":"10.1177/0955749019876122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019876122","url":null,"abstract":"The author addresses key questions that librarians, archivists, curators and administrators face when producing physical exhibitions in special collections, rare book libraries and archives. The author’s direct experience is complemented by data gathered through a pilot study she conducted in 2017 and is placed in the context of professional literature. The questions discussed focus mostly on physical exhibitions. While the context of this article is North American, the questions are also relevant to institutions in other countries. This article is especially of interest to new professionals, as an introduction to exhibition work, as well as to experienced professionals who want to reflect on their practices in comparison to those of other institutions.","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125393244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019877084
Katherine M. Crowe, Robert Gilmor, R. Macey
The University of Denver (DU) Libraries has been producing exhibitions for close to a decade and has recently increased its efforts to partner with classes, campus units and community organizations to integrate exhibit practices and resources into curricular and co-curricular opportunities. Student- and class-curated exhibitions feature prominently in the DU Libraries’ strategic plan, and the long-term partnerships between the Libraries and the DU Writing Program are central to the library’s agenda. Through an interdisciplinary lens of critical information literacy, archival theory, museology and Writing Studies, this article explores the 5-year collaboration and exhibition project between DU Special Collections and Archives and a faculty member of the DU Writing Program. The authors cover the background of the partnership, the evolution of the instructive and creative elements of the course, with a particular focus on the integration of archival research and exhibition practice, and examples of various iterations of the student-curated exhibits produced as part of the coursework. The article concludes with a discussion of the cross-disciplinary outcomes and challenges of initiating and managing a collaborative university writing and research course incorporating archives and exhibition in an academic library in the United States.
{"title":"Writing, archives and exhibits: Piloting partnerships between special collections and writing classes","authors":"Katherine M. Crowe, Robert Gilmor, R. Macey","doi":"10.1177/0955749019877084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019877084","url":null,"abstract":"The University of Denver (DU) Libraries has been producing exhibitions for close to a decade and has recently increased its efforts to partner with classes, campus units and community organizations to integrate exhibit practices and resources into curricular and co-curricular opportunities. Student- and class-curated exhibitions feature prominently in the DU Libraries’ strategic plan, and the long-term partnerships between the Libraries and the DU Writing Program are central to the library’s agenda. Through an interdisciplinary lens of critical information literacy, archival theory, museology and Writing Studies, this article explores the 5-year collaboration and exhibition project between DU Special Collections and Archives and a faculty member of the DU Writing Program. The authors cover the background of the partnership, the evolution of the instructive and creative elements of the course, with a particular focus on the integration of archival research and exhibition practice, and examples of various iterations of the student-curated exhibits produced as part of the coursework. The article concludes with a discussion of the cross-disciplinary outcomes and challenges of initiating and managing a collaborative university writing and research course incorporating archives and exhibition in an academic library in the United States.","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121762148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0955749019876374
Jeremy Brett
A cultural institution choosing to mount an exhibit centered on the theme of diversity (or at least to ensure that a reasonable variety of types of objects/creators is presented) faces an inherent contradiction. Namely, while the human experience is infinite, exhibit space is not. Trying to contain the naturally uncontainable obliges an exhibit curator to make choices of materials, manners of display, and item descriptions, which provide a sense of the subject, knowing that inevitably some people and groups will be excluded. Such was our experience at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives with the creation of our 2019 exhibit The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The exhibit is based around the social, ethnic, racial, gender and other diversities of science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) – diversities in creators, in themes, in characters and in plots. Curatorial decisions respected the overarching exhibit theme while also recognizing the physical reality of the space and ensuring an optimal educational experience for patrons. The exhibit is organized thematically rather than by a specific ‘type’ of diversity, because the idea of boxing groups into specifically delineated, ghettoized areas of the exhibit was counterintuitive to the idea of diversity. Most of the exhibit themes were chosen for their broad nature, which allow for a wider range of authors and works to represent them. Items were chosen that we felt could best reflect the diverse nature of the SF&F genres and demonstrate their commonality as documents of the human cultural experience. Exhibit display is also a process involving many factors. In creating exhibit descriptive material, we sought to make subtle rather than overt connections to the overall exhibit theme where possible. The exhibit, in short, is intended as a diversity ‘sampler’ rather than any sort of attempt to try to capture the breadth of the subject. No exhibit with ‘diversity’ as a theme – whether overtly stated or implied – can realistically do more than acknowledge its inability to be a full chronicle. In doing so, exhibit curators actually recognize, in fact, the deep and limitless richness of their chosen subjects.
{"title":"Diversities of choice, choice of diversities: Practical aspects of a diversity-centered exhibit","authors":"Jeremy Brett","doi":"10.1177/0955749019876374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0955749019876374","url":null,"abstract":"A cultural institution choosing to mount an exhibit centered on the theme of diversity (or at least to ensure that a reasonable variety of types of objects/creators is presented) faces an inherent contradiction. Namely, while the human experience is infinite, exhibit space is not. Trying to contain the naturally uncontainable obliges an exhibit curator to make choices of materials, manners of display, and item descriptions, which provide a sense of the subject, knowing that inevitably some people and groups will be excluded. Such was our experience at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives with the creation of our 2019 exhibit The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The exhibit is based around the social, ethnic, racial, gender and other diversities of science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) – diversities in creators, in themes, in characters and in plots. Curatorial decisions respected the overarching exhibit theme while also recognizing the physical reality of the space and ensuring an optimal educational experience for patrons. The exhibit is organized thematically rather than by a specific ‘type’ of diversity, because the idea of boxing groups into specifically delineated, ghettoized areas of the exhibit was counterintuitive to the idea of diversity. Most of the exhibit themes were chosen for their broad nature, which allow for a wider range of authors and works to represent them. Items were chosen that we felt could best reflect the diverse nature of the SF&F genres and demonstrate their commonality as documents of the human cultural experience. Exhibit display is also a process involving many factors. In creating exhibit descriptive material, we sought to make subtle rather than overt connections to the overall exhibit theme where possible. The exhibit, in short, is intended as a diversity ‘sampler’ rather than any sort of attempt to try to capture the breadth of the subject. No exhibit with ‘diversity’ as a theme – whether overtly stated or implied – can realistically do more than acknowledge its inability to be a full chronicle. In doing so, exhibit curators actually recognize, in fact, the deep and limitless richness of their chosen subjects.","PeriodicalId":431623,"journal":{"name":"Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125848755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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