Digital Library Program
Project Proposal Form
Date Submitted: _____October 10, 2008______
Please e-mail this form with all supporting documents to DLP_PROJECTSL@INDIANA.EDU
Your Name: _____Tony White__________________________________
Your Phone: __855-5743__________
Your email:__antmwhit@Indiana.edu_____
Department/Campus: ________Fine Arts Library, Bloomington____________
Project Name: _____Fine Arts Library Artists’ Books Collection _________
1. Please describe your project.
I would like to create and provide digital reference-images for all the 1000+ artists’
books held in the Fine Arts Library’s special collection. In addition, I would like to
use standardized terms to describe these books. For most items in the collection a
digital image of the book cover would be a minimum (size to be determined in
consultation with DLP staff, but certainly a thumbnail would be required). However,
due to the unusual structure, form and contents of many of the artist’s books, a detailimage and/or an overview-image may be included for reference purposes only.
Once a process is established for the current holdings I would like to have this be an
ongoing process for the (20-40) new books that are progressively added each year.
2. Describe the significance of this project to the IU community and beyond. Will this
complement or enhance other digital resources?
At present the artist’s books are stored in a locked area within the library. Library
patrons can only access these visual materials/art objects through the text based
IUCAT or a paper printout held at the circulation desk in the Fine Arts Library.
Providing digital reference images for ‘visual materials’ will greatly enhance the
browse-ability of the collection; subsequently use of the collection will increase. One
of the significant frustrations expressed by many current faculty and students (in the
School of Fine Arts, Collins Living and Learning Center, and non-IU scholars) is that
access to this collection is a frustrating endeavor. Providing digital reference images
will greatly enhance the accurate searching and locating of specific artist’s books for
review. These images will also promote the collections to a national and international
scholarly audience. This will be a service to the IU community (especially the School
of Fine Arts, Gender Studies, IU Art Museum, and Journalism), the national and
international communities of students, faculty and scholars in the book arts, artist’s
books, textual studies, art history and print media disciplines and departments.
3. Describe current and potential users. Is there faculty, library, or departmental interest
and support for digitizing these materials for either research or teaching purposes?
Current users of the artist’s books collection primarily consist of faculty and students
here at IUB, and from regional campuses, including faculty and students from the
Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI. Each year a class also visits from the
University of Kentucky and as well as an area high school in Bloomington. In 2007 I
provided 6 in-depth library instruction sessions to over 120 students. I discuss the
history of artist’s books and provide a show-and-tell type demonstration of books
from the collection. Considering the closed stacks nature of this very special
collection and the limited text based access via IUCAT – faculty and students must
rely on my knowledge of the collection to provide additional access to these
materials. Digital reference images would greatly enhance user access to this
collection of artist’s books.
I have strong support from book arts and printmaking and photography faculty here at
IUB, from graduate students, and undergraduates, too. This support comes from a
desire to use and access the collections for personal research and for classroom
teaching. Library patrons, unfamiliar with the variety and diversity of this collection,
cannot fully grasp the breadth of visual elements within the collection without seeing
what a book looks like. This is where digital images would play a very important role
as a discovery tool.
4. Describe types of materials to be digitized and number of each (i.e.: 6 books with a
total of 700 pages, 600 black and while photographs). Include format, condition, and
any special handling requirements.
The materials are artist’s books. Books of all binding and material types. The size of
the books also varies in size from miniature books to very large table-top portfolio
and sculptural works. Most of the books are in sound condition, a few are fragile due
to poor paper quality, or perhaps from being rebound into an archival pamphlet with
animal hide glue. But such examples are few. It is my expectation that staff from the
Fine Arts Library would be handling, photographing and assigning descriptor terms to
all of the artist’s books and related publications (catalogs, critical literature, serial
publications, ephemera, etc.).
5. Do you have any existing descriptive information that could be used for searching
these materials? In what form does this descriptive information exist (on paper, in a
Word document, in an Excel file, etc.)
About 800-900 titles are already cataloged in IUCAT. The other 200 +/- titles that
are in the cataloging backlog are waiting for the creation of a brief title records. This
is a recent project that is being coordinated between staff in technical service and the
Fine Arts Library. I would also be interested to use the descriptor terms and
categories developed by Fred Hillbruner former cataloger at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
The categories of terms, with sub-terms, include:
printing method
die cutting, drawing, handwriting, ink jet printing, intaglio printing, laser printing,
letterpress printing, lithography, offset printing, other, photocopying,
photomechanical processes, relief printing, rubbings, screen printing, stamping
(marking);
materials
acrylic, cloth, fiber, found objects, glass, handmade paper, leather, metal, mixed
media, paint, photographs, plastic, postage stamps, thread, wood;
visual
black-and-white, colors, illustrations, photographic, text (layout feature), visual;
binding
albums, bags (as containers), boxes (as containers), folded books, folders (as
containers), grommets, Japanese sewing, loose-leaf binders, other, perfect bindings,
portfolios (containers), portfolios (groups of works), post binders, ring binders,
saddle stitching, side stitching, smyth sewing, spiral bindings;
movement/genre
automatic writing, conceptual, concrete poetry, local book arts, post-conceptual;
object category
alterations, artists’ books, collages (visual works), exhibition catalogs, flip books,
multiples, pop-up books;
literary format
aphorisms, autobiographies, biographies, comics, diaries, documentaries, essays,
graphic novels, memoirs, novels, plays, poems, scores, short stories;
publication format
monographs, periodicals, serials, zines;
production format
assemblages, books, broadsides, CD-ROMs, DVDs, floppy disks, post cards, posters,
scrolls, sound recordings, video recordings;
language
Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish,
Turkish.
6. How do you envision people accessing your materials? Are their similar resources
that you could give as examples?
I imagine the DLP helps to set up a database with a search interface (perhaps similar
to the one at SAIC): a search interface that allows users to search by: keyword,
image, search term, author, and IUB affiliation (student, staff, faculty). If possible I
would also like to have an ‘exhibits’ and/or ‘curated lists’ tab/button on the front
page. I would like to invite scholars in the field (faculty, students, librarians,
curators, etc.) to curate small ‘exhibits’ from the digital images available in the
database for display online (www.artistsbooksonline.org, has an example of this
feature). I would also like to use the list feature to allow faculty here at IU to cluster
lists of books that support a class they are teaching here at IU. Although, this could
also be accomplished using the Personal Collection feature of ARTstor. Either way
would work for me.
Within each item record would be the reference image(s) of each title, the appropriate
terms as noted above, a link to IUCAT or WorldCat Local where a patron would have
access to the catalog record, etc.
Some successful examples of institutions that are providing digital images of their
artist’s books collections include: the Joan Flasch Artist’s Books Collection at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/); Otis College
of Art and Design’s digital library database for their artist’s books collection
(http://content.otis.edu/collections/artistsbooks.htm; Yale University Library’s Art of
the Book collection Digital database for ephemera
(http://images.library.yale.edu/aobdl/SearchExec.asp); the University of Wisconsin,
Madison: Artists’ Book Collection (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/ArtistsBks/);
Artists’ Books Online (http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/).
Some have features that are more successful than others.
7. Describe the contribution you and your staff can make to this project. Please name
the project manager for your project. Tony White, Head of the Fine Arts Library, will
be the project manager. His staff and interns will assist with the photo documentation
of books in the collection and with the application of the descriptive categories and
terms as noted above. This process could be added to the annual workflow as books
area acquired to the collection. Digital image files and text files could be forwarded
to the DLP to be added to the image database they will support and maintain.
8. Are you expecting to receive external funding for this project? Do you have funding
sources in mind? What is the date for submission for these opportunities?
No, I am not expecting external funding.
9. Other general comments, issues or concerns.
Similar projects have been created and supported by other educational institutions.
This is a tremendous opportunity to support and provide enhanced access to the very
special artist’s books collection here at the Fine Arts Library and perhaps this project
will also be a model to other schools considering this option to promote their special
collections.
10. Copyright Status
Please refer to the Copyright Management Center at
http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/quickguide.htm for information to help you
determine the copyright status of your materials. Below, please explain your
understanding of the copyright status of the material.
___No__ Public domain
___No__ Owned and controlled by Indiana University
___No__ Owned by someone else, but permission secured
___NA__ Situation unknown or unclear
Copyright explanation:
These books are ‘art works’. Almost all have been created by artists who are still
alive.
In general artists who create artist’s books lack sufficient distribution mechanisms.
There is a feeling within the community of book artist’s supporting the sharing of
their work(s) with others, especially students. Otis College of Art and Design
originally posted their digital database many years ago only after consulting with
legal counsel from the Getty. They posted many links to copyright sites and included
‘take down’ language on all their web pages… so that any artist who did not want
their works pictured in the database could request the library to pull their images. To
date I do not believe there have been any such requests. Most artist’s realize that
having digital images of their artist’s books in these databases can be an effective
means to promote their work and increase both visibility and sales of their artist’s
books.
I think a take-down notice would be sufficient. Additional helpful links to the
creative commons and government websites for copyright and fair use could be
included.
Revised April 2. 2008