My experience of the two-week intensive Museums and Libraries Research
course has been both enjoyable and enlightening. Simply being in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art daily would have been enough, but this
class was much more than that. The gallery talks and films added breadth
and depth to the course. It was a comprehensive experience of learning
about museum libraries, research, sources, and real-life experience
of working in a research library.
The meetings with the librarians were particularly beneficial. Each
librarian was articulate and knowledgeable on his or her area of expertise,
and provided useful materials on the resources available. They were
all willing to help with questions and were a pleasure to work with.
The visit to the Book Conservation department was an added bonus.
Becoming familiar with the reference sources through research was
more conducive to retention than simply memorizing a list of books.
Open stack access at the Watson Library was a wonderful benefit of
the class. Being able to explore the stacks not only facilitated browsing
the collection, but also gave some perspective on the size of the
collection and the kinds of materials that the librarians have to
manage (for instance, the large-size quartos and folios common among
art books).
One of the principle benefits of the class was learning about libraries
through the process of conducting research. This experience is helpful
in understanding the role of the librarian and how s/he is viewed
by the user. Also, working with the Central Catalog and Watsonline
was helpful in understanding the importance of cataloging. In essence,
it was like an internship in a library, but from the researcher's
point of view.
Finally, devoting time to researching a theme of personal interest
was exciting and fun. I've learned more about both meditation and
art through this project, and am glad to have gained skills to use
in further research.