library of primitive art

Keeping busy for fun and non-profit

FOR THOSE FEW BUT DEDICATED READERS: My apologies for not posting here sooner. Though I've had little to show for it in this space, I haven't been idle.

Props to Garrett Hungerford of Library Zen for introducing me to Google Co-Op, one of those many Google spin-offs (or outright purchase? Dunno, my back was turned), now with Create Your Own Search Engine. (Sounds like laundry product ads from my childhood.) Garrett's adaptation to compile a search engine for LIS bogs, LISZEN, is a masterful case of killer app -- the very sort of thing that at its best sets one to thinking.

One of my less whiz-bang responsibilities at work (until now) has been selecting titles for the library. We have few vendors who can match our narrow and specialized scope and broad spectrum of publishing venues with their approval plans. That puts a premium on finding titles on your own in order to guarantee the fullest coverage. Over time I have compiled a monster bookmark with the url's of all the publishers, trade and academic, putting out titles in our subject areas. A great start, but a pretty dull to plow through. Each publisher insists on designing its web site differently, providing for different search strategies (if any), arrangement and groupings of products, file formats (including the ever frustrating pdf), and page displays. (I feel that by now I could give an excellent presentation on how not to design a publisher's web site.)

Along comes Google Co-Op, and 'twas then the penny dropped. If I gathered all the root url's from the publishers' web sites, I could search across all their pages for keywords as I would any Google search. It's no substitute for hunting down the new titles one by one, but it could certainly cover most of the pages I'd need on a regular basis.

The mechanics of working in GC-O were surprisingly easy (with a few blunders along the way). I was even able to strip out the annoying advertising by attesting to being a 501(c)(3) institution. A few more deft taps and I could drop my test search engine into this blog. (That's it under SEARCH ENGINES at the bottom of the left column.) For now I've only managed an engine for the academic presses; I may still do one for trade publishers (if I sense a need for different keyword strategies) or fold it into the existing one.

It is worth pointing out that GC-O defaults to root url's (i.e., www.site.com). Web sites with subsites (subsite.site.com) need to be individually specified. At this early stage I haven't yet taken advantage of Google Marker, a handy way to gather url's to populate your search engines.

This particular application will probably spend most of its time behind the scenes. What's cool is that this also comes at the very moment that we are dismantling our Intranet pages and fashioning wiki pages for the same information. My colleague is working to transfer a key reference page featuring the web addresses for art and ethnography museums worldwide. The logical next step is a publicly-available search engine crossing all these museum web sites. That should find its way into the Goldwater Blog -- stay tuned.

Lest you think I spent all my time with my nose to the grindstone, I also took time out for Hallowe'en (left) and to visit a cemetery, but that's the stuff of another post on another blog.

About the blog's name

The phrase primitive art may still offend some people. To them, my apologies. But for those of us 'in the trenches' of research in the area, the term lost its pejorative meaning long ago, leaving only a wispy quaintness in its wake. But for me it also evokes the history of 'my' library and pays tribute to my library mentor, Allan Chapman.

The Museum of Primitive Art opened in 1957 in a townhouse on West Fifty-fourth Street. And up on the third floor sat the museum's new librarian, Allan Chapman, surrounded by 'fifty books and a lamp', as he often said -- adding wryly, 'The typewriter came later.' From that modest beginning the Library of the Museum of Primitive Art grew steadily, becoming by the time of its closing in 1975 the preeminent collection of African, native American and Pacific Island art and archeology. For much of this time it was Allan alone who saw to the acquisitions, cataloging and public reference in the library.

In 1969 Nelson Rockefeller offered the entire Museum of Primitive Art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which established a curatorial department for the care, study and exhibition of the works. Allan and the library moved uptown to the Met in 1976, shifting about in temporary quarters while the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing was under construction. The library moved into its present quarters in 1980 and opened to the public in 1982, shedding the primitive art moniker to be rechristened as The Robert Goldwater Library. [Goldwater (1907-1973) was the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art.] The department continued to be known as the Department of Primitive Art until 1990, when it changed to the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

It was also in 1980 that I started work at the then Department of Primitive Art Library, as a callow library assistant to Allan. I learned a lot from Allan, even though I didn't always appreciate the wisdom at the time. In many ways Allan chose to resist what he saw as faddish changes in library practice: The library continued to use ALA 1949* until his retirement in 1989. But his core beliefs, borne of his Progressive and commonsense Wisconsin upbringing no doubt and tempered by his adopted Brooklyn smarts, have proven timeless. Chief among these, his unwavering belief in the importance of the professional standing of librarians.

I assumed responsibility for the book collection on his retirement -- thirty-two years after Allan began the library. And here I was, only a year older than the library itself, and nearly the same age as Allan was when he began there.

Allan wouldn't have taken easily to the idea of a blog: I seem to recall he had great difficulty dealing with the mutli-button PBX telephone. ("Put the phone down, Allan!") But I expect he would have recognized instinctively its potential for reference and outreach.

• Read a remembrance of Allan Chapman (on page 7) [.pdf]

* A.L.A. cataloging rules for authors and titles. 2nd ed.