Both the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives and the University of Utah have recently received three-year grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support collections-based research and engagement. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives, the planning grant involves an organization-wide audit of the Museum's collections-related data, assessing the needs of the collections' internal and external users, and establishing consistent practices, standards, and vocabularies for departmental integration within and without the institution. The grant awarded to the University of Utah has enabled the simultaneous appointments of an Art and Archives Metadata Librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library and a Collections Research Curator at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to create a collaborative culture that facilitates collections-based scholarship by digitally integrating resources that will enhance their collections' discovery and creating a re-granting program to drive scholarship that directly engages with both the Library's and Museum's respective collections.
This panel will discuss these institutions' ongoing efforts to integrate departmental silos, create collections access points, and establish meaningful connections to further collections-based scholarship.
Learning Objectives- Inform the wider art libraries community about the projects and inspire new ideas and avenues of leadership for art, library, archives, and special collections practitioners.
- Attendees will gain insight on what libraries and museums can learn from each other and come away with ideas on how to build inter-institutional alliances.
