The Rise and Fall of Art Research: The Library vs. the Web and Social Media

As a student for many years without the use of the internet, I found myself at libraries thumbing through card catalogs hoping to find the text that would give me insight to my homework,  to my thesis, and to my dissertation.  In finding my much needed book(s), I would trudge up stairs or onto elevators hoping, with crossed-fingers, that it would be on the stacks.  I'd fumble through small pieces of paper, almost memorizing the letters and numbers of the book's call codes, only to be much of the time, disappointed that it was checked out.  Trying and hoping again, I'd move on to the next scrap of paper to start my book search again.  Finally, with books stashed in knapsack, I'd hope for an empty desk or table to begin my work.  Later, as a doctoral student at New York University, I was pleased to have a study carrel and created my own micro library (after of course, I trudged down with the book weight again on my back to the check out desk and then back to the carrel)  Fondly remembering NYU's Philip Johnson designed Bobst Library (and that the art books were on the seventeen floor), I definitely got my share of exercise.

NYU's Bobst Library Courtesy tarynmcpherson via Flickr

Years later, as I continue to spend my time teaching art in northern California, I look at the piles of slides in my office and wonder what to do with them, as I haven't used them in years.  I am seemingly married to my personal laptop, where I research still images of art from databases of museums and libraries and compose PowerPoint projection lectures.  New to using either Vista or Blackboard programs, I stumble as a self-taught professor in learning the exciting and sometimes frustrating tools of teaching online.  I have never taught a sole online course in studio art, which I think would be a bit distancing in my ability to analyze works of art, but I do enjoy the ability to find available to all readers scholarly articles, images as well as artist's videos that enrich my contact teaching.  The below video about the painter Elizabeth Murray on Art21 is an example.

Out of all the social media that I have explored, the mirco-blogger of Twitter seems the most potentially helpful to to disseminate information to students, on a regular newsfeed prototype of information.  Seemless amounts of information with links from professional artists, museums, art institutions and businesses flutter down the computer screen in appears to be overwhelming. Yet, in the process of choosing to follow this person or that institution, you create, if you will, a card catalog of information in a stylized library.  Clicking on links that lead to more links of info and even blogs, creates a maze of information. It's up to the student to single out what is pertinent to his or her research.   Yet, for the sake of nostalgia and the book as an art form, there's nothing like the look, feel and intimacy of a book. The convenience of the web serves present and future students well, yet, I pre-grieve the loss of the solemn library as a kind of religious space...filled with the physical presence of human intellectualism.