Back

Attendees: Judie Harren (VOOR), Debbie Shoup (EGRN), Susan Gorman (BETH), Meryl Norek (BETH), Jo-Ann Benedetti (UHLS), notes.

Topic: Tour of the Albany Institute of History and Art Library

http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/library.htm

The Institute is located at 125 Washington Avenue in Albany, just down the street from the Albany Public Library. The librarian, Jennifer Benedetto, gave us a tour of the library’s reading room and also the areas of the facility that are not open to the public. Jennifer is moving to Tennessee - her last day at the library is July 19, 2002. As far as she knows, there is no replacement for her. She is the only paid library staff member.

Library materials are non-circulating, so the Institute is not on the CDLC courier route because it does not participate in resource sharing. The building and the library itself are high security areas, with limited access. Visiting the library is by appointment only in 3-hour blocks (call 463-4478 to arrange), but special requests for information or photocopies can sometimes be handled over the phone. Their records are on OCLC.

Some of the materials, all related in some way to Albany City or County, that the library has include:

• Family bibles, many in Dutch
• 85,000 photographs, such as the Gerber collection
• Clippings, vertical file materials and ephemera
• Scrapbooks and autograph albums
• Manuscript collections
• Maps and architectural drawings
• Postcards and broadsides
• New York State agricultural records

Jennifer suggested that librarians use http://www.askart.com/ when patrons ask for art appraisals, and http://www.bookfinder.com/ for books.

Next meeting: Thursday, September 19, 2002. The topic is "epixtech for Reference Librarians." This may change depending upon the migration schedule.