RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE: AWARENESS & ACCESS IN MUSEUM LIBRARIES

GLAM Guide | Madison Carmichael

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On our faculty’s recent trip to Ottawa, I was enlightened to the existence of the museum library. My fellow students and I saw many; we visited in the Military History Research Centre at the Canadian War Museum, and we spent time in the Resource Centre at the Canadian Museum of History. Upon further digging, I discovered that the National Gallery of Canada and the Canada Science and Technology Museum – other stops on our whirlwind tour of Ottawa – also contained library collections.

These libraries had been hiding right under my nose. But I’m not the only one. Lisa Harms, a former Assistant Museum Librarian at the Museum of Metropolitan Art, wrote something similar for the MET’s blog nearly a decade ago: 

“It does not occur to most Museum visitors that museums usually have libraries. In fact, until I saw the job opening for my position, it had not really occurred to me either."

Lisa Harms worked at the Thomas J. Watson Library at the MET. Like myself – and many other members of the public – she hadn’t considered a ‘museum library’ until working in one. (Source.)

When the GLAM sector speaks of collaboration between the museum and the library, these conversations often settle around the notion that museums could benefit from the public-oriented spirit of the public library. Thinking back on my time in various museum libraries in Ottawa, I wonder what these conversations might mean for these seemingly hidden collections; and I wonder why they seem hidden from us at all.

In 1999, Jan van der Wateren wrote on the importance of the museum library. He explained that as museums grew in number in the 19th-century, the library formed an integral part of these growing institutions. These libraries were established in conjunction with the museum’s collection, either to document the objects within it or to provide further context for them. In essence, van der Wateren tells us, the museum library was – in its earliest incarnation – meant to compensate for the inherent limitations of the museum in comprehensively researching, documenting, and even interpreting an object.

Jan van der Wateren wrote from a position at the library within Victoria and Albert Museum, which was established in the mid-1850s to hold illustrated books for the School of Design. (Source.)

Historically, this has been their purpose, and as a result, their purveyors largely remain within the realm of scholarship and research. Esther Roth-Katz, who completed a survey study of art museum library websites, concurred. Within the museum library, research collections developed to meet the needs of their institution’s staff and researchers. The access guidelines of the websites in her survey reflected this: while over half the libraries she looked at allowed public access, 25% made no mention of who was allowed or else limited their user groups to scholars and researchers.

I’d argue that in part, Ms. Harms had the right of it: for many, the existence of a museum library doesn’t occur to them. But it's also worth considering that because museum libraries are grounded in a research-oriented history, this lack of awareness may also stem from the fact that many members of the public don't identify with terminology like scholar or researcher; and so they do not consider museum libraries as a space open to the public more broadly.  

The German National Museum was created in 1852, alongside a library and archive to better document the history the German art in its collection. (Source.)

All of this is to say that museum libraries are an interesting facet of any conversation about opening up GLAM institutions to greater visitor access. Many institutions are using digitization and the internet more broadly to increase the visibility of their collections. However, as Roth-Katz puts it, visibility does not accessibility make. While libraries have a vested interest in sharing their knowledge with the public, the materials they hold are oftentimes rare and valuable. There is a tension between the preservation and protection of those materials and the belief that the public is entitled to access them as well. It speaks to the conversation that museums are having more broadly about their collections; as repositories of history, what do they hold those histories for? And more pertinently, for whom?

It’s a difficult question, one mitigated by the necessity to protect and preserve objects within a library’s collection. But such a necessity does not mean keeping library doors closed. Museum libraries allow public access to their collections, either by visit or by appointment, and the growing initiative of GLAM institutions to digitize their collections or else grow their digital presence works to increase awareness of their library collections and resources.

I was discussing this topic with a colleague last week, and she offered up a quote I’d like to close with. Augustus de Morgan said the following in his book, “Arithmetical Books from the Invention of Printing to the Present Time,” of the library in the British Museum:

“If it be wanted, it can be asked for; but to be wanted it must be known.” (Augustus de Morgan. 1806-1871)

It’s all well and good for the public to have access to the museum library. But considering that Ms. Harms wrote of a discovery much like my own nearly a decade ago, I would argue that it is just as important that we know about these wonderful collections in the first place, so that we might think access them at all.