This synopsis focuses on specialized science and art museums whose libraries are open to the public as well as to researchers and scholars. However, other types of museum libraries will generally follow these same patterns.
OBJECTIVES OF SERVICES
Bierbaum states, "Museums and libraries have similar missions: they acquire, describe, and make accessible to us the records of our human experience."
Museum libraries are differentiated from many other types of libraries in that their purpose is often directed more at archiving rare or unique materials for posterity and research rather than to collect new and modern materials to educate and/or entertain the general public.
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICIES
Depending on the size and type of a museum library, collection policies, objectives and procedures vary dramatically. Because of their nature, museum libraries of all types focus primarily on obtaining reference materials pertaining to their fields or museum collections. A natural history museum library used for research will collect historical documents and journals, as well as botanical and zoological illustrations, while a small art museum devoted to fauvism may focus on collecting relevant writings on the movement as well as on individual artists such as Matisse. Although there are a few significant large museum libraries in the country (The Smithsonian, for example), most museum libraries are relatively small, with seventy percent of them having collections of less than 5,000 books (Bierbaum). Small museum librarians often have minute budgets to work with and often have to settle for whatever reference materials they are able to obtain inexpensively or through donation.
STAFFING MODEL
In an ideal museum, the library is staffed by individuals knowledgeable in an area pertaining to the museum’s specialty, whether it be art history or ecology. When the library contains out-of-print or unique manuscripts, a librarian with strong cataloging and archiving skills is essential to create a well-developed and useful catalog.
Unfortunately, conditions in most small museum libraries are far less than ideal. A few of the largest have a solid team of full-time library staff, but many do not even have a single full-time librarian. As Bierbaum has found, "In a museum library, the primary role of the person in charge of the library is not necessarily that of librarian; the librarian's hat may be one of several doffed and donned successively by the person responsible for the library." Museum administrators tend to pay little attention to their libraries, disregarding the benefits a good one can bring to their members and staff.
ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY
Because museum libraries tend towards the very small, the hierarchy of the staff is usually very flat. Often the individual in charge of the library may also work in another capacity within the museum. When a full-time librarian is in place, she or he may report to the person in charge of the museum’s collections, the head of museum research services, or directly to the museum administration.
As for the hierarchical standing of the library itself within the organization, it tends to be very low-ranked and prioritized except in the case of large museums or museums oriented towards research. "There are several measures of departmental status within an organization. One is funding; another, staffing and services. By the first of these measures, the museum library's status is not exactly stellar; by the second, status is ambiguous (to say the least), but the services offered by library personnel, especially to museum staff, somewhat redeem the situation" (Bierbaum).
FUNDING SOURCES
Museum libraries do not generally receive much funding from their museum, and they often do not qualify for programs which assist other types of libraries (IMLS). What little funding is available is often from donations. Strangely enough, although science museums are usually better funded than art museums, they have fewer libraries (Bierbaum).
The Museum and Library Services Act is part of a governmental effort to help support libraries and museums through the guidance of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 250 million dollars has been set aside for the 2004 fiscal year, and if used efficiently, could make worlds of differences to small and struggling libraries, including various types of museum libraries. More information on this act, as well as information on other grants available can be found at:
Institute of Museum and Library Services
http://www.imls.gov/grants/appl/index.htm#nlgm
Museum & Library Services Act
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_reports&docid=f:sr083.108
CLIENTELE SERVED
The clientele of a museum library vary depending on the museum, its size and its policies. The library may be used by students and researchers, curators, educators, administrators, museum members and sometimes by the general public. However, many of the museums do not allow checkout privileges except by the staff and sometimes museum members (Bierbaum).
WEB PAGE EVALUATION
An Art Museum Library: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
http://www.moma.org/research/library/index.html
MOMA's online library catalog (the "Dadabase") is easy to learn and returns search results quickly, but definitely has room for improvement. The site has a nice, very comprehensive FAQ with descriptions of the types of files in the museum library collection, descriptions of the library's various collections of materials, and all sorts of information about using the library from procedures for photographing delicate materials to the reason why patrons aren't allowed to use sticky-notes to flag pages.
One nice feature of the catalog is that when you click on a call number in the search results, it jumps you to a different view, where you can browse through the books in order of call number. This is very handy when looking for a variety of books on a specific topic. Some topics in the search results also had special "notes" with suggestions on other subject headings to search for that particular subject. However, there are some features that could use some improvement. The "Help" pages have some broken links, and the aesthetics are very dull and neutral (for an art museum, one would expect more!). There also appears to be very little material available online digitally, which limits the library's usefulness to those patrons who are in the New York area.
A Science Museum Library: The Natural History Museum, London
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/library
The Natural History Museum's Library web site has some definite pros and cons. It is laid out in an extremely clear manner with concise language. The page layout is simple, but interspersed on the introductory and subject pages with gorgeous botanical and zoological illustrations from the library's collections. The site is broken down into subject areas with brief but well-developed descriptions of the holdings for each subject area, as well as contact information for staff in that subject area and links to related web sites.
However, the search engine was frustrating. It was extremely easy to use, with helpful directions, but it lacked some key features that would make it much more useful, especially to a remote audience. For instance, the site has a collection of electronic journals, but there is no obvious way to search just the articles in those journals. There is an area of the catalog where it is possible to browse by Call Number, and in that section, you may specify the material type, but not in the simple or advanced search.
TRENDS AND ISSUES
There are three primary concerns to a museum library today: organizational support, cataloging and technology.
Organizational Support: Most museum libraries receive little attention or funding from their museum administration. "Museum libraries do not yet appear to be an overwhelming concern for the museum profession" (Bierbaum).
Cataloging: Bierbaum has found that many small to medium-sized museum libraries do not follow standard cataloging rules. She emphasizes the difficulty these libraries will have when faced with the prospect of putting their catalog online and trying to make it compatible with other libraries and museums.
Technology: For museum libraries with significant technology budgets, much focus is being put upon putting their catalogs online, and beginning digitizing projects to visually preserve unique or important materials and make them available to more people. However, small museums rarely have any budget for technology, with twenty percent reporting "no funding for technology" at all (IMLS).
Some organizations are making full use of technology to bring materials to the public. One such example is the Colorado Digitization Project, which is a collaborative effort of Colorado’s libraries, museums, historical societies and government archivists to make their records available online in one place. This is truly an example of the combined effort producing greater results than the individual efforts could ever produce. For more information, see:
Colorado Digitization Project
http://www.cdpheritage.org/
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bierbaum, Esther Green. "Museum Libraries: the more things change". Special Libraries 87.2 (1996): 74-87.
Institute of Museum and Library Services. Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries. Washington: 2002.
ADDITIONAL WEB SITES OF INTEREST
Science Museum Libraries:
The Field Museum, Chicago
Specializing in biological systematics, evolutionary biology and ecology, and the study of the world’s cultures.
http://www.fmnh.org/research_collections/library/default.htm
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
Specializing in the history of scientific instrumentation.
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/library/index.htm
Science Museum Library, London
Specializing in the history of science, technology and medicine.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/library/index.asp
SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution Research Information System)
Online catalog of 1.5 million books; thousands of digitized documents and historical photographs available electronically.
http://www.siris.si.edu
Art Museum Libraries:
Art Libraries Society of North America
An organization "providing resources and services for the worldwide arts information community."
http://www.arlisna.org/
Frick Art Reference Library, New York
Reference materials documenting Western visual arts.
http://www.frick.org/html/libf.htm
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Supports advanced research in visual arts and architecture.
http://www.getty.edu/research/library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A collection of specialized libraries regarding costuming, African art, photography and more.
http://www.metmuseum.org/education/er_lib.asp
National Art Library, London
Supports the curatorial department of the Victoria and Albert Museum; reference materials regarding the art, craft and design of the book.
http://www.nal.vam.ac.uk
San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum
"Dedicated to collecting, preserving, and making available to the public materials documenting the history of the performing arts in the San Francisco Bay Area."
http://www.sfpalm.org/