ART IS INFORMATION: A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER A. FERRETTI
With education largely going remote during the Coronavirus pandemic, navigating resources outside of academic institutions has become imperative for learners who want to continue their work. Jennifer A. Ferretti is an artist and librarian currently working at the Maryland Institute College of Art, whose practices lie at the intersections of art, knowledge formation, information technology, and the local history of Baltimore, Maryland, among other things. Keavy Handley-Byrne spoke with Jennifer about how research can benefit artists, how to use local resources, and the importance of being critical of accepted archive parameters. That conversation is provided below in video format, and a transcription is also available.
Jenny is an artist and Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Maryland Institute College of Art on Piscataway Land (Baltimore, Maryland). She is a first-generation American Latina/Mestiza whose librarianship is guided by critical perspectives, not neutrality. With a firm belief that art is information, she is interested in the research methodologies of artists and non-Western forms of knowledge making and sharing. Jennifer is a Library Journal 2018 Mover & Shaker and a founding member of We Here and Shades Collective.
KEY WORDS AND DEFINITIONS
Research Methodology
Research methodology is the specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select, process, and analyze information about a topic. In a research paper, the methodology section allows the reader to critically evaluate a study's overall validity and reliability.
Archivist
An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value.
Concept Map
A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. Concept maps may be used by instructional designers, engineers, technical writers, and others to organize and structure knowledge.
Interlibrary Loan service
Interlibrary loan (abbreviated ILL, and sometimes called interloan, interlending, document delivery, document supply, or interlibrary services, abbreviated ILS) is a service whereby a patron of one library can borrow books, DVDs, music, etc. and/or receive photocopies of documents that are owned by another library.
Learning Community
A learning community is a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education.
Circulating Collection
Circulation is a library term that means checking out library materials to users. It is used to designate the service desk where you check out and return materials, as well as the library staff that work at those desks.
Primary Source
In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic.
Secondary Source
In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere.
Tertiary Source
A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources can be used as an aid to find other sources. The exact definition of tertiary varies by academic field. Academic research standards generally do not accept tertiary sources as citations.
Library of Congress Classification System
The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a classification system that was first developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to organize and arrange the book collections of the Library of Congress. Proposals for additions and changes are reviewed regularly at staff meetings in the Policy and Standards Division and an approved list is published.
Research Resources
WorldCat
WorldCat is a database that includes over 10,000 library catalogs from all over the world.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.
Zotero
Zotero is a free tool for saving, organizing, and citing sources, with a free browser plugin.