The second section of this paper focuses on how art historians address information transfer as teachers. The literature shows art historians tend to do their own library research, although this is not always the case. While they embrace technology, they continue to rely on the printed work, the work of art, and the archive for the last word.

Assignment One

My first assignment was a synthesis of my current environment with a brief biography, since the parameters of the assignment seemed to want something of this sort by the questions it posed. The assignment asked to convey my experiences, of which my current life made up a very small part, the tip of the iceberg. It did not convey my formal education, or the domestic or foreign places I had visited: Egypt, France, Italy, England, Germany, Austria, to name but a few. To transfer an accurate picture of my experiences, too, I mentioned living in an Umbrian farmhouse with no central heating and two minute tepid showers in the middle of winter, renting the room of an elderly Sienese woman while conducting research in Siena, standing amidst the stench of the interior of the Pyramid of Giza, and so forth. This otherness was a proper presentation of information transfer in this stage of my understanding of the term.

Much of the biographical element in this assignment, however, dovetailed with the second assignment, in which I interviewed an art historian. We shared many of the same experiences (e.g., teaching university level courses, archival research abroad, living for extended periods in foreign country, and having special access to works of art). We worked in the Vatican Library, lived in Rome, and examined first-hand many of the 15th to 17th century Italian and Dutch pictures in the great museums of Europe.

Assignment Two

My interview with an art historian was the most enjoyable and most profitable experience this semester. Although we discussed information transfer in a rather oblique fashion, I found myself temporarily returned to my training and teaching experiences as an art historian. We agreed on almost every aspect of teaching pedagogy, but talked little of our research. Our conversation touched upon the quality of students, the problems involved in transforming film slides to digital images, and the importance of good research librarians.

This professor’s teaching style did embrace many of the constructivist methodologies or concepts stressed in Aber’s second lecture on constructivism (Aber, 2007). This art historian did not pass around a print or a set of engraving tools during the lecture I attended but on the other hand, she has integrated the collections of the university museum, which is located two floors above the classroom, as well as those of a significant art museum in a nearby major metro area. Her general method of bringing works of art closer to her students was by citing similar examples in real life (e.g., personal experience). In the class I attended she referred to a project, which asked students to find an image that related either figuratively or thematically to images shown in class. This is a constructivist technique, although mental rather than tactile in approach.

Collaboration with other colleagues, a definite mode of information transfer, was obliquely referenced in my interview. We discussed the work of colleagues we had in common—what they were currently working on, where they teaching, and so forth. This mode of infromation transfer is also identified in the literature. Brockman et al. (2001) have shown, collaboration is a key in the transference.

Circulation of drafts, presentation of papers at conferences, and sharing citations and ideas…are collaborative enterprises that give social and collegial dimension to the solitary activity of writing. At times the dependence of humanities scholars upon their colleagues can approach joint authorship of a publication. (Brockman et al., 2001)

This professor’s years of experience and cautious acceptance of electronic resources has certainly led her to use grey literature, a term coined by librarians for resources that lack bibliographic control. The Getty Research Institute, for instance, frequently posts lectures of resident scholars who have given papers at the Getty. Looking up the syllabi or resources of another professor at a different university is as also a case of using grey literature. List serves, ARLIS or MUSEUM-L for instance, are another resource format that my interviewee used and are a form of grey literature similar to e-mail, but communication among an entire group of colleagues from all over the world.

Assignment Three

My interview experience with a professor in the natural sciences was entirely different from my experience with history of art professor. As I suggested in this penultimate assignment, I attributed the differences to the academic environment, the teaching experience (or lack thereof) between the two professors, and the supportive versus antagonistic college libraries. Here I would also include the university from which each teacher graduated and belief systems. My interviewee was a recently hired assistant professor with prior experience as a high school biology teacher. Her responses would vary in content and finesse as compared to the art historian. Also, despite an extensive database on the several websites, including the Science department website, I could find no listing of publications or research interests for this biology professor with the exception of former employment at a nearby zoo. This is radically different from the art historian’s website which listed her undergraduate and graduate education, publications, service positions, and so forth.

This professor's teaching style and level of knowledge, however, was good. In class she rarely referred to notes, she spoke directly to her class, she reiterated the mains points of her lecture, and she illustrated sometimes difficult concepts with actual examples. For instance, she illustrated a type of mutation with of black and white moth that live near English plants; the majority of moths were white before the coal plants were built, and mostly black years after the coal plants had begun production—a survival mechanism.

In contrast to my art historian contact, my biologist contact appeared to have little access to or use for biology-related databases and Internet resources, with the exception of e-mail. There was little or no communication between the college library and the science faculty. This point was corroborated by my interviewee’s office partner, who reiterated even more vehemently the total lack of cooperation between biologists and librarians at this college. I also mentioned that a quick search of available databases on the library’s website revealed a few minor, not useful science-oriented databases, and no databases directly aimed at biology and related fields.

In the end, neither a constructivist methodology nor the use of grey literature was strongly observed. Laboratory exercises acted to supplement class work and provide a reality check on what was discussed in class; however, this insertion of the practical into the theoretical was not strongly in evidence in this brief classroom observation. I shall discuss the possibilities of the absence of these two important concepts within information transfer further along in this paper.

The synthesis of my two interviews is skewed and certainly cannot be construed as typical or universal for the disciplines of art history and biology. The first participant in this study had years of teaching experience and extensive scholarly record with several books and publications to her name. The latter participant had years of teaching experience in secondary school and was new to higher education with no established scholarly record. The biologist inferred that she came from a religious background and was old school in her teaching methodology. Had I interviewed a biologist with as many years of teaching and scholarship as the art historian, my findings would have been different.

The greatest contrast between the art historian and the biologist was their perceptions of the libraries. The art historian had access to an art library and a subject specialist librarian, who had worked for the Art History/Classics Department at UC Berkeley and was extremely well-versed in bibliography and research techniques of the department’s often quite eccentric scholars. This art history librarian kept in touch with the latest in art history and image databases. As my professor stated, she could not imagine how she could teach her classes without the assistance of the head art librarian. The librarian in this case was proactive, doing whatever she could to make the lives of the art history professors as easy as possible.

The assistance of a subject specialist librarian is in marked contrast to the community college librarians, who seemed, according to my interviewee, to be as unhelpful as possible. Other more lucrative departments did receive funding and aid, but this seemed to depend on just that: departments that made the college money. Interlibrary loan was unproductive, and there was little interest in purchasing even the most basic biology-oriented databases. The librarians had created such a rift between the professors and themselves that the professors were reluctant to recommend the library to their students. The biologists stated, “If I as a professor experience such reticence from them [librarians], why should I subject my students to this treatment?”

Perceptions of Technology Advances and Resource Formats

My two interviewees were also separated in their attitude towards technology. The revolution Internet has played in how we approach teaching and researching seems self explanatory. For the art historian I interviewed, we did not discuss grey literature per se because I had not been introduced to the term. Given my own experiences, however, I imagine that she used this literature format primarily as a bibliographical tool, since many of the articles she would want are either not available or very limited (e.g. Simiolus, Art History) as are the many Festschrifts in her area of expertise. The same goes for Ancient and Italian Renaissance art; while Classicists are an aberration, having embraced technology in its early stages as a means of putting on-line as much Greek and Latin literature as possible. During our interview I had the impression that my professor was most impressed by the efficiency of interlibrary loan and her ability to obtain a book or document from an overseas library in very short order. Rather, the future of digital images and how to build a universal library of digital images seemed at the forefront of her thinking. Images are, after all, the primary teaching tool of the art historian.

By contrast, the biologist seemed disengaged from technology, though I suspect my perception might be different if I had pushed her on the subject. Her colleague, whom I did not have the opportunity to conduct a proper interview, had a much different attitude. She was constantly using university connections to obtain articles for her students through biology databases. This biologist was computer savvy and I suspect that the biologist I interviewed may have been the exception rather than the norm.

Constructivist teaching is not as manifest for art history and biology courses as Aber’s summation of this learning theory in her lectures; however, this study is based on two course assignments and thus, limited in scope and breadth. The art historian’s basic asset is the work of art itself. The art historian could pass around an example of a crummy print, but it is much better to show a really good print from the print room under the observant eye of a curator. The same goes for a painting or sculpture. Biology is a much different matter. For biology, however, there is the lab.

As an art historian, I have a background experience on how one might intensify a course, particularly an undergraduate introductory course, with more constructivist examples. I also know that I and my art historian colleague use grey literature extensively—we have simply been unaware of this librarian terminology, and we have never encountered a librarian to tell us otherwise because we dealt with subject specialists.

In my reading of the methodologies of art historians in general, there is little discussion on these topics. This may be because the sources on these topics are not very populous, and such studies are fairly old, published in the 1980s and 1990s, with the most recent one being published in 2001 (Brockman, et al.). Even so, one of the most complete studies of the habits of art historians was published in 1988 with the assistance of the Getty Trust’s Art History Information Program (AHIP), now the Getty Research Institute (Bakewell, 1988) and will be reviewed below.

Constructivism and the Influence of Mentors

Bakewell (1988) conducted a project that had little to do with teaching strategies, except in the case of graduate student assistants helping scholars on long-term projects. She recorded the comments of scholars regarding the impact their own teachers had on them (Bakewell, 1988, p. 72). On the other hand, their description of their experiences with them demonstrates a one-on-one constructivist relationship between graduate student and mentor:

I went to see [Ernest Gombrich] at the Warburg and said I was very interested in the way he did things. He was very nice to me. He took me around the library and showed me things, like documents. I was very interested in archival work and he showed me facsimiles and said, “Why don’t you come here [to study?] (Bakewell, 1988, p. 72)

[Meyer Schapiro and I] talked about…new and exciting things…like semiotics and how that related to the past of the discipline. He talked a lot about his experiences and the changes in his own theoretical and methodological orientation from the thirties to the present. (Bakewell, 1988, p. 73)

As I stated above, the art historian I interviewed received many of her best ideas through dialogues with colleagues. “After graduate school, associates become increasingly important sources of inspiration and stimulation to the scholars…” a process that contributes immensely to the flow of information transfer.

Also, Bakewell (1988) underscored another teaching strategy that is highly constructivist: connoisseurship or the training of the eye to distinguish the quality and styles of works of art. This type of training can only be done in actual works of art. Again, this sort of training cannot be done in an undergraduate course, or even a large graduate seminar. Connoisseurship is a uniquely one-on-one activity. It requires a visual sensitivity that is frequently called a gift: you have it or you don’t.

Libraries and Archives

Art historians are wedded to the library and the image. If one is lucky, many sabbaticals are spent rummaging around archives. On the other hand, few if any studies have been done on how archivists, especially archivists in overseas countries, can facilitate scholarly research. Scholars are frequently at the mercy of the index, past relationships with the archivist, or letters of introduction. An archivist can make your search relatively easy or as difficult as finding diamonds on the beach. This can also be true of overseas libraries as well. For instance, several years ago I was looking for 19th century pamphlet in the National Library in London. Fortunately, a friend of mine in Detroit had a good friend who worked there. He found the item in twenty minutes; it would have taken me an hour.

Bakewell (1988) discovered that the scholars participating in her study had reservations about libraries at home and the difficulties of grey literature. One scholar thought that specialized subject libraries limited an art historian’s research. As an undergraduate she thought that:

The [art library] was a wonderful resource…but it cut you off, in a way, from other possible resources…I was more and more encouraged to be involved in the art library. [As a result] it took me a long time to learn about Clement Greenberg, who had written quite important criticism but never published it in art magazines. (Bakewell, 1988, p. 37)

Images

The art historian’s most important teaching tool, of course, are images and if one is very fortunate, access to actual works of art. As the art historian I interviewed commented, figuring out how to compile a comprehensive database of high quality affordable images is still beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest institutions. Digital images are slowly replacing the film slide. For now, every art history department maintains a separate slide library. I imagine that the slide library will be absorbed by the art library as librarians realize the potential in internal collection development strategies. Art librarians will have to be competent in the purchase, maintenance, arrangement, and retrieval of digital images.

Discussion and Conclusions

There are one or two resources that I could not access for this paper. Ironically, all of them were too early to be available through the main research databases (e.g. JSTOR, ERIC, Wilson Web), demonstrating that the best resource is often the library stacks themselves.

The scholarship of art historians is frequently a solitary process, with the occasional exchange of information at annual conferences or scholarly residences during a sabbatical (e.g., the Getty, the American Academy at Rome, or the Berenson Villa outside Florence). The one other source I surveyed, a report on art historians’ use of information databases, suggests the same thing: they are comfortable with what they know, and if the process is confusing, they are not likely to use it (Bates, 1995). Bates documented scholars’ usage of DIALOG for a two year period. The DIALOG databases included RILA, Arts and Humanities Search, and Historical Abstracts—all databases of interests to art historians. Half of the subject pool used computers in some form; art historians were more likely to do unassisted searches even though some had trouble manipulating DIALOG and even though there were librarians eager to help (Bates, 1995, pp. 12-13).

Of the materials I consulted, very few if any addressed teaching strategies, rather focused on research which is only one component of academic scholars. In the case of research strategies, it is difficult to connect art historians with constructivist methodologies. On the other hand, Bakewell (1988) showed that it happens all the time, just not on a pluralistic level. I know as a student (undergraduate and graduate) and as a teacher that constructivist learning happens all the time. Librarians can contribute to this process by recognizing this common strategy for learning and emulate the technique when designing and implementing effective services. For example, instructional librarians can design and teach short courses to faculty and student on how to make the best uses of the libraries printed and database resources.

As for library services, the librarians must be engaged with the faculty and students by becoming familiar with the curriculum, asking the faculty for input (pester them if necessary), and engaging graduate students. In short, facilitate in every way possible the transfer of information between library resources, faculty, and student.