Robin Bergart, University of Guelph
Amanda Etches, University of Guelph
Jordan Pedersen, University of Guelph
“[A]esthetics are important to librarians. We seek to satisfy our aesthetic sense through harmony in architecture of library buildings, beauty in literature, music, and the arts, and even elegance in library systems.”1Gorman, M. (2000). Our enduring values : librarianship in the 21st century. American Library Association.
Over the course of our careers as academic librarians, we’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover colleagues with “secret” artistic talents. Sometimes we would only learn about their lives as accomplished painters, writers, dancers, and musicians when we got to know them better, or when we happened across their names on the cover of a book or attached to an exhibit or performance. We wondered why their artistic side wasn’t more widely known across the library and why they so often seemed to keep their artistic work hidden away, intentionally or otherwise. We were curious to learn more about the artistic lives of academic librarians. Can you lead a full artistic life while pursuing a career as an academic librarian? How do you balance a library career with an art practice?
This is an exploratory study whose aim is to define and describe the phenomenon of the “artistic academic librarian,” that is, academic librarians who are seriously committed to making art. We want to discover to what extent an academic librarian career is compatible with a serious art practice. The study is based on a survey and interviews with artistic academic librarians across Canada who generously shared their experiences with us.
Continue reading Leading an Artistic Life as an Academic Librarian