COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY
VISUAL ARTS
Last revision date: March 25, 2009
PRINCIPAL SELECTOR:
Henry Pisciotta, Arts and Architecture Librarian
W320 Pattee Library
865-6778
henryp@psu.edu
PROGRAMS SUPPORTED:
Selection of materials is based primarily upon the needs of the following departments and
programs:
School of Visual Arts:
Art Education Program
Interdisciplinary Digital Studio Program
Studio Art Program
Department of Integrative Arts
Graphic Design Program
Photography Program
(partial support of the Integrative Arts Program)
Palmer Museum of Art
Bachelors
Masters
Doctoral
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X
X
X
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X
The School of Visual Arts currently has 33 tenured or tenure-track appointments and 11 affiliated
faculty. The Art Education Program has an outstanding reputation and is particularly unusual for
teaching and research in the history of art education. The program offers a focus in art education
for schools or for museums and cultural institutions. The Studio Art Program offers
concentrations in Ceramics, Drawing & Painting, New Media, Photography, Printmaking, and
Sculpture, as well as support areas for Metal Art/Technologies and Critical Studies. The highly
interdisciplinary Department of Integrative Arts has 9 tenured or tenure-track appointments and 3
other faculty appointments. (Several of these faculty hold joint appointment with other
departments.) The Graphic Design Program offers courses in Communications Design,
Typography, Design Technology, Packaging Design, and related topics. The Integrative Arts
Program is thoroughly interdisciplinary and only a small fraction of the course offerings are
supported by the visual arts collections. Integrative arts also offers courses in music, popular
culture and related topics that are supported primarily by other parts of the University Libraries
collections. The Palmer Museum of Art has 15 staff (5 of whom are curators) and employs
several graduate assistants. Related courses taught in other departments as well as courses in
art history and related disciplines offered at other Penn State campuses are also served by these
collections.
DISTANCE LEARNING
Integrative Arts has been active with distance learning initiatives for many years. At present they
offer 7 courses with the E-Learning Institute of the College of Arts and Architecture. The School
of Visual arts currently offers 9 E-Learning Institue courses and has 5 more in development.
Current courses are at the 200 level or below. Courses in development include the 300 level and
a Digital Arts Certificate program.
SUBJECTS COVERED IN THE COLLECTION:
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contemporary art
graphic design
art theory, aesthetics, visual perception, and similar fields as appropriate to the study of
art and graphic design
art practices (career development, techniques, health hazards, legal aspects, etc.)
art education and its history
museum studies
other cultural studies relevant to art and art education
FUNDS USED:
Funds with ARTGL or ARTPT prefixes are the primary sources for purchases and journal
subscriptions. These funds are also used to support art history (ARTS or ARTBZ).
RELATED FUNDS:
ARTS & ARTBZ funds
 art history
 art theory & criticism
(ARTGL is also used to support Art History needs.)
ARCHT funds
 contemporary environmental design (architecture, landscape architecture, urban design,
interior design, and furniture design)
 theory and criticism of the above
 techniques and professional practice of the above
 building science and technologies as related to design
 land use, ecology, and related fields as appropriate to landscape architecture
Education funds (a portion of the Art Education Program is supported by the Education
collections)
Arts and Humanities Library group funds
Rare Books funds
centralized E-Resources funds
LOCATIONS OF MATERIALS:
Primary location for housing materials related to the ARTGL & ARTPT funds is the Arts and
Humanities Library. Materials with high replacement costs, loose plates, or fragile design may be
shelved in closed stack areas with limited circulation. Special Collections also collects many
materials of importance to the visual arts programs on other funds and houses them within their
facilities. Due to space constraints some materials are stored in remote annexes. Items with low
use and extra copies of items with average use may be selected for remote storage. Special
considerations of heavily illustrated publications (browsing as a means of selection, the relation of
printed illustrations to digital copies, etc.) limit selections for remote storage. Some large sets
cannot be stored in annexes because most uses require access to index volumes, complex
tables of contents, spine markings, etc.
LANGUAGES:
This is primarily an English language collection. Other languages are collected only in special
circumstances – for example, when important pictorial content overrides language considerations.
The history of art education, however, is collected with a selection of titles in other languages.
FORMATS AND TYPES:
Most formats and types are collected. Books, periodicals, exhibition catalogs, databases, and
graphic novels are important formats.
Video recordings and artists books (books as works of art) are collected more selectively. “How
to…” books or videos are collected on an extremely selective basis. (However, “How to…” books
and amateur’s manuals before 1970 are collected in support of Penn State’s exceptional
collections of the history of drawing manuals and related subjects in the history of art education.)
Generally not collected: 35 mm slides, audio books, teaching kits, juvenile literature, price guides,
and amateur manuals. Information for current prices and values of art and antiques is not
collected. (Teaching kits are collected in the Education and Behavioral Science Library and some
of these may be of interest to art educators.)
At this time digital images of contemporary art are not collected in support of these programs.
These types of images are particularly difficult to collect because of their rights and marketing
environment. Labor-intensive local production-on-demand and “fair-use” approaches are the
most common methods of building this type of collection, but staffing has never been identified for
this type of service at Penn State. The needs of most faculty seem to be met by personal
collections or Penn State collections focused on related subjects: architecture and art history.
EDUCATIONAL LEVEL:
The collection is intended to support teaching and research in higher education. Academic
publications are the focus. Popular level publications are acquired very selectively, when they
provide good introductory information, treat subjects of peripheral interest, or provide exceptional
illustrations.
COLLECTING LEVELS FOR SUB-TOPICS
This portion describes the current levels of collecting intensity for appropriate sub-topics topics
(and should not be misconstrued as estimates of the strength of the existing collection.) The
collecting levels estimate what types of activities (teaching, research, etc.) are supported and
range of languages required for that support. The codes for levels are defined in Appendix 2,
below.
Generalities
Aesthetics, Philosophy, & Theory of Art
3E
Art Criticism
3E
Art and Society (since 1950)
3E
Art and Collaboration (since 1950)
Museums
2E
Economics of the Arts (since 1950)
Arts Management
Collectors and Collecting (since 1950)
1E
Techniques (“How to…”)
1E
Preservation Technology
1E
Conservation of Artworks
1E
Prices and Values
[not collected]
Art Education
Art Education
History of Art Education
Pedagogy
Visual Culture and Language
Technology
Museums and Cultural Institutions
3E
4F
3E
3E
3E
2E
Studio Art
Professional Practice
Health Hazards
Legal Aspects
Marketing
Drawing
Design
Design Principals
Graphic (Communication) Design*
Posters*
Typography*
Other Graphic Design*
Illustration*
Industrial Design
Painting
Easel Painting
Mural Painting
Watercolor
Printmaking
Photography
Photojournalism
Performance Art
Sculpture
2E
2E
2E
2E
3E
2E
3E
3E
3E
2E
2E
2E
1E
3E
3E
2E
1E
3E
3E
2E
4E
3E
Installation Art
Public Sculpture
Art with New Technologies
Computing (Aesthetic aspects)
Video (Aesthetic aspects)
Audio (Aesthetic aspects)
Artists Books **
Graphic Novels ***
3E
3E
3E
3E
2E
1E
2E
3Y
* Primary audience for these materials is the Graphic Design program in the Department of
Integrative Arts.
** The collection of artists books is small and select and primarily collection by, and housed in,
the Special Collections Library.
*** Graphic novels are also purchased with funds dedicated to English Language and Literature.
In addition to a substantive collection of graphic novels in English, Penn State has an unusually
strong collection of graphic novels and related forms in French that has been developed with gifts
and funds earmarked for French literature.
DEACCESSIONS
Items may be removed from the collections when they are deemed to be irrelevant to the current
collection priorities. Since the Penn State University Libraries has cooperative arrangements with
other research libraries a other libraries within Pennsylvania, deaccession of rare or unique items
is handled cautiously.
APPENDIX 1
Collection Development Statement is designed and implemented in keeping with the statement of
values recorded in the Penn State University Libraries Strategic Plan 05/06–07/08:
VALUES
The Libraries are committed to:
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excellence in professional practice
intellectual freedom
equitable access to resources
service
leadership
collaboration
diversity
stewardship of collections and resources
protection of patron's confidentiality/privacy
APPENDIX 2
TERMS AND SYMBOLS USED TO DESCRIBE COLLECTION LEVELS:
Throughout the policies, librarians have expressed evaluations based on a standard set of
numbers and letters. Collection levels as defined by a committee of the American Library
Association are:
5 = Comprehensive level. A collection in which a library endeavors, so far as is reasonably
possible, to include all significant works of recorded knowledge for a necessarily defined field.
4 = Research level. A collection which includes the major published source materials required for
dissertations and independent research, including materials containing research reporting,
new findings, scientific experimental results, and other information useful to researchers.
3 = Study level. A collection which supports undergraduate or graduate course work, or sustained
independent study; that is, which is adequate to maintain knowledge of a subject required for
limited or generalized purposes, of less than research intensity.
2 = Basic level. A highly selective collection which serves to introduce and define the subject and
to indicate the varieties of information available elsewhere.
1 = Minimal level. A subject area in which few selections are made beyond very basic works.
Language codes
E = English language materials predominate; little or no foreign language material is in the
collection.
F = Selected foreign language material included, primarily Western European in addition to
English language material.
W = Wide variety of foreign language material in addition to English language material. No
programmatic decision is made to restrict materials according to language.
Y = Material is primarily in one non-English language. The overall focus is on collecting material
in the vernacular of the area.