(I wrote this review of last Friday’s cardiParty as part of an assignment for my Masters. I thought I might as well repost it here.)
Last Friday I attended a tour of the Museum of Broken Relationships organised by newCardigan.
NewCardigan describe themselves as “a social and professional group for people who work in galleries, libraries, archives and museums – and for those who like hanging around with GLAM types.”
One of the events they organise are monthly cardiParties, which are a tour of a library, gallery or museum, followed by drinks, dinner and socialising at a nearby pub. I’ve been to several cardiParties in the past, including tours of PBS FM’s music library, Incendium Radical Library in Footscray, and the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives in St. Kilda.
This month’s cardiParty was a tour of the Museum of Broken Relationships exhibition at No Vacancy gallery. I noticed quite a few RMIT students were there.
Me being me, I livetweeted the tour. (Me being me, I left my glasses at work and so it’s full of typos.)
The Museum collects items and stories that mark the end of relationships. It started as an art installation by an ex-couple, but now it’s a physical building in Croatia, with exhibitions that tour the world. The items are mostly pretty humble: a jar of buttons, a dress, a handful of lollies. The stories range from the funny to the heart-rending.
The No Vacancy gallery manager gave a talk that covered the history of the gallery, her career, and the story of the Museum of Broken Relationships. We had some time to explore the exhibition. Then the newCardgian committee raced through their Annual General Meeting, including announcing their new President.
Business concluded, we all decamped to the Moat for food and drink.
Which is an important part of cardiParties. Seeing different institutions and hearing about the philosophies behind them is fascinating. But sharing a drink and chat with fellow GLAMers is what builds a community.
Interesting article from the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit magazine about how China and Russia are using museums and galleries as a way to expand their soft power in diplomatic relationships:
(This white paper defines soft power as ‘the ability to influence the behaviour or thinking of others through the power of attraction and ideas’ )
The soft power article made me think about this Guardian article about Harvey Weinstien and how ‘ostentatious, targeted philanthropy’ was one of the ways he tried to repair his reputation.
Are international art exchanges neutral?
Or is there an ethical dimension to participating in these programs?
China jails democracy activists. The Russian government is accused of killing journalists. Is collaborating with K11 or the Hermitage also whitewashing the crimes of these regimes, in the way Weinstein tried to whitewash his crimes?
From the Guardian:
‘In Weinstein’s case, intended beneficiaries were, effectively, cast as accomplices in Bloom’s Rose [McGowan]-persecution schedule. But at other times they might be helping purge historical links with, say, Vladimir Putin, with fascist organisations or with discreditable financial practices. You sometimes get the impression that, usefully for donors and their advisers, complacency on this point, and carelessness about complicity, is most likely in organisations whose motives are unassailably pure and high-minded.’
The author, Alissa, is a friend of mine and an inspiration. She argues passionately for the role of cataloguing and metadata in helping people get the best out of libraries.
“…my job is not directly user-facing. But it is user-focused. Everything I do as a librarian, I do for my library’s users…”
Look, I’ve been a manager. Budgets are a constant problem. There’s never as much money as you’d like, and sometimes you have to cut some services to keep other open. So I’m sympathetic to the Brisbane City Council Library Service prioritising front-of-house over cataloguing, simply because you can’t outsource front-of-house.
But metadata and cataloguing are still part of the overall user experience.
Which makes me think: most companies don’t keep a plumber or electrician on staff. They have a Facilities Manager who then hires in plumbers and electricians as needed.
Perhaps libraries could move to a similar model: a UX librarian on staff, who then works with shelf-ready providers to ensure the metadata is tailored to the needs of that particular library.
From the Medium piece: “At its core, librarianship is about discoverability. Librarians connect people with information and improve access. They are masters of service design thinking.”
(Now I’m thinking about becoming a UX Librarian one day. It’ll probably stop being trendy by the time I had the qualifications, though.)
Anyway… Alissa is awesome and you should totally read her blog and follow her on Twitter if you care about cataloguing, inclusiveness, and libraries serving their communities.
The BBC have released a trailer for their adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series.
Allow me to summarise my reaction: Lyra! Lyra! Lyra!
I hope this is good.
Actually, I’m quite pleased that there’s now a TV version as well as a movie version, because it emphasises these are versions Lyra Belacqua, rather than the real one who lives in my head.
Lyra is oddly precious to me.
It’s some combination of wanting to be her, in her bravery and fierceness, wanting to protect her, wishing perhaps that I had a daughter like her, and simply wanting to admire her.
Bonnie Mary Liston’s excellent essay ‘The wildness of girlhood’ starts with quotes from Emily Bronte and Catherynne Valente, but it made me think of Ms. Belacqua.
“Every four years or so, the young girls of Athens between ages of five and ten would go into the woods to make sacrifices to Artemis, run races, dance and live like bears. Literally. They were called arktoi, which means ‘little bears’, and they were supposed to run around pretending to be bears, wearing special bear skins…”
Twine is tool for creating choose-your-own-adventure style text games.
I’ve just played a fun example of using Twine to educate people about the work cataloguers do: the Cataloguing Gameby Victoria Parkinson.
So a while ago I made a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure cataloguing game for a session introducing non-cataloguing colleagues to metadata. If anyone else would like to play, it's here: https://t.co/8QSEf2PWct
I like it because it gives you a gentle but hands-on experience of what it’s like to catalogue a book. (It also gives you a choice of hot chocolate, coffee or tea.)
I’ve played a few Twine games, but I haven’t seen many educational ones like this. A quick google pulls up a few articles about using Twine and interactive fiction in the classroom:
I currently work on a software support desk, and I’ve idly considered replacing our troubleshooting flowcharts with a Twine game. Past a certain complexity, flowcharts get too hard to read, whereas a Twine game limits you to exactly the choices you need to make. Maintaining it would be the hardest part.
I made short Twine game years ago, just to test it out, based on something that happened to me on a tram: Bystander
I’m really like the work Tegean Webb does. Start with Young Spells, about teenage girls preparing a witchcraft ritual.
And my first real introduction to Twine was the bizarre and surreal Mastaba Snoopy. Perhaps not really safe for work, or sanity.
That makes sense. There’s no point in trying to tell a company how to do things better if you haven’t first proved you know what you’re talking about.
(There are, obviously, problems with this when it comes to reporting harassment or abuse: new starters are vulnerable because they haven’t built up a reputation yet, and the quality of work often suffers if someone is being harassed. You still need strong organisational procedures that can counter this bias.)
#2 – The Annual Report
Deborah Brown from Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney talked about how she creates an annual report for her library to show how it supports the schools strategic goals, and demonstrate its value to staff, students and the community.
She uses Venngage to create lots of punchy, colourful infographics – there’s some examples in my Twitter thread.
The big lesson here: it’s not enough to just do a good job. You need to be able to sell your value to others.
It’s also a useful tool to track progress. I left the session thinking about writing a personal annual report record how I’m going in my personal goals.
#3 – Talk with marginalised groups, not on behalf of them
This came up in Nikki Anderson’s talk on Deviating With Diversity, and Craig Middleton’s keynote on queering museums to make them more inclusive.
If you want to include marginalised communities, you need to spend time talking with them, and listening to them, and earning their trust.
Related: I picked up a copy of Making Spaces Safer by Shawna Potter while I was in Adelaide. I’m not sure when or how I’ll get to use the advice it contains, but it seems like one day it’ll be useful.
Goal 2: A better understanding of the sector.
I’ve never actually worked in a library. I even contributed a comic about it to the NLS zine. What did I learn about the industry at NLS(?
I learnt there are a lot of passionate librarians determined to make their libraries more inclusive.
I learnt that there are still lots of historical obstacles to that goal, from subject headings in metadata to the fraught relationship between Indigenous and settler ways of knowing.
I learnt there’s an ongoing need spruik the value of libraries.
What wasn’t discussed was whether there will be a future…
No libraries on a dead planet
While I was at NLS9, Professor Jem Bendell posted A Year of Deep Adaptation. Deep Adaptation was his paper that argues that societal collapse due to climate catastrophe is now inevitable.
I haven’t read that paper yet. I don’t feel strong enough.
But there’s no point planning out a career in the library industry if there’s no libraries left to work in. At some stage I’m going to have to read these reports, and think about what this means.
One of my goals for NLS9 was to touch base with my motivations. This has to be part of it.
There are days I think the future will just be self-driving Ubers shuttling the last trillionaires through a post-climate disaster wasteland. And there are days I genuinely think libraries may help us prevent this. #nls9https://t.co/j7zrnXKFqD
