Makerspaces: Aotearoa New Zealand: Art(work) in the 21st Century Library

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Art(work) in the 21st Century Library

Screenshot: Capital City’s discovery platform, created with MUSICat

by Kelly Hiser and Lisa Hollenbach

It’s no secret to readers of the Library as Incubator Project that libraries today are engaging with art and artists in new and exciting ways. Indeed, LAIP and The Artist’s Library: A Field Guide are influential sources in this space, promoting projects and recommending best practices. We’ve seen libraries become publishers (like the Provincetown Public Press) and art galleries (like Edmonton Public Library’s Milner Gallery), host artists-in-residence (like the Bubbler at Madison Public Library), and put on concert series (like Nashville Public Library’s Courtyard Concerts). And of course at Rabble, we’re especially excited about our work empowering libraries to license and share local music through our open-source software MUSICat.

But in the age of shrinking library budgets and cuts to public funding, how do librarians make these projects sustainable and successful?

But in the age of shrinking library budgets and cuts to public funding, how do librarians make these projects sustainable and successful? Do new arts initiatives require that librarians and libraries do more with less? And–from our perspective as a partner in these projects–how can we help?

In our experience with Madison PL’s Yahara Music Library and Edmonton PL’s Capital City Records, a few factors are critical to success. For one, buy-in from library management and local government is essential. As Guy Hankel explains about his experience managing the Yahara Music Library, the project relies on the support of “forward-thinking management that see value in [Yahara], and understand how it fits in not only with the library’s purpose and mission, but also with the city’s cultural plan.” Staff needs to be on board too, as they help integrate digital collections with existing library technology and teach communities about new resources. Alex Carruthers, who manages Capital City Records at EPL, notes that CCR is “included in the yearly goals of a number of different departments and everyone is excited about it and excited to help.” The success of these projects also rests on support from their communities, which, according to Alex and Guy, has been easy to secure. “Once people discover [Yahara],” Guy says, “they immediately recognize the value and connections it affords.”

Once people discover [Yahara], they immediately recognize the value and connections it affords.

Enthusiasm, though, is not enough. It takes work to build and sustain these projects. Alex’s role at EPL as the Digital Public Spaces Librarian is a great example of sustainable support in the form of a dedicated staff position. Yet as Rabble moves forward on projects with new partner libraries, we’re finding that many institutions face significant challenges in allocating ongoing staff time and funding.

…we’re working hard to give librarians tools that make project management easier.

So, what are we doing to help? For starters, we’re working hard to give librarians tools that make project management easier. All of our development work happens in conversation with librarians to ensure that the tools we build are both useful and usable. MUSICat admin tools support every aspect of library collection development, from submission calls and jurying, to collection of media, metadata, and site content, to licensing and publishing. When we build those tools right, they save librarians a significant amount of time; it’s much, much easier, for example, to get fifty musicians to sign licenses online than to get fifty signatures down on paper.

Screenshot: the admin side of Capital City’s local music platform

But technology has its limits, and MUSICat can’t magically replace librarian labor. Nor should it.

But technology has its limits, and MUSICat can’t magically replace librarian labor. Nor should it. New digital art initiatives like Yahara and Capital City Records are exciting because of the connections they form between virtual and physical spaces and among musicians, libraries, and communities. Technology is certainly important to these projects. Websites that are easy and fun to use go a long way toward encouraging folks to engage in these new collections. But technology itself is not the point—the music is.

The Balweg Gallery at Madison Public Library.

Perhaps most importantly, we can help by being vocal advocates for public libraries themselves. In particular for a tech startup like Rabble, we need to acknowledge that online collections cannot, and should not, replace brick-and-mortar libraries that bring communities together and work towards narrowing the digital divide. Nor can projects like the Yahara Music Library and Capital City Records succeed outside of institutions with robust public funding. As librarians in the twenty-first century continue to re-imagine the scope of services they provide to their communities, those of us who partner and work with libraries owe it to them to state these things, and state them often.

Want more?

For more posts from the Rabble team on their projects, philosophy, and software-as-service model for MUSICat, check out our ongoing series HERE.

Lisa Hollenbach is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a 2015-2016 Public Humanities Fellow at Rabble, she loves finding ways to make libraries noisier. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and recently completed a dissertation about the poets, independent record labels, FM radio networks, and readers and listeners that made poetry central to the sound of dissent in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kelly Hiser is co-founder and CEO of Rabble, a startup dedicated to empowering libraries to support and sustain their local creative communities. Kelly holds a Ph.D. in music history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and embraces work at the intersections of arts, humanities, and the public good.