My master's dissertation – about how sketchbooks are collected and accessed in UK institutions – is now published online, and free to download, read, share and use.
Thursday 7 December 2017
Digital and tangible: sketchbook research now online
My master's dissertation – about how sketchbooks are collected and accessed in UK institutions – is now published online, and free to download, read, share and use.
Monday 27 November 2017
The close of my master's year
With my dissertation now submitted and my university library card now out of date, my year of study at City, University of London is behind me. It seems a good point to look back at the experience and recall points along the way.
It was when I was visiting potential universities for my elder daughter a few years ago that it hit me again what inspiring places they are. I admit I felt a pang of envy seeing students and lecturers going about their business. I had done an undergraduate degree in a small art school in my twenties, so the atmosphere wasn't entirely new to me, but it hadn't felt like a time of academic rigour. When this chance came for me to go to City, I knew it was one I must grab.
Starting my master's in library science coincided with the election of Donald Trump in the US. Truth seemed to have become merely something that you could persuade somebody was true. Libraries, on the other hand, continue to stand as places of research, study and truth; they are broadminded, welcoming and even radical, and more vital than ever.
We were a wonderfully diverse cohort – and it was great to go through this year with them. Lots of them have travelled back to their homes and jobs around the world now. I am accustomed to working with deadlines and word counts, but I was less sure about writing in an academic way, which I'd never done. This went better than I had expected. I particularly enjoyed the extracurricular events, the talks at the British Library, the visits to the National Archives, the symposiums. If you are doing the same course, I'd encourage you to get involved with them. But the lectures each week were totally engaging, too.
Many on the course came from roles within libraries and other information environments: as someone changing tack in my working career, it was for me a new realm with a new vocabulary. My background in fine art still fitted well with it, but I was reading (and reading and reading) about subjects that were new, challenging and sometimes exciting. I am very happy to be volunteering now at Iniva's Stuart Hall Library, a fine art library with a focus on contemporary art from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.
My dissertation, about how sketchbooks are collected and accessed, was the subject I knew I had to write about. My thanks go to my interview subjects and all those institutions that found time to complete the survey. But I had not envisaged having to ask for an extension following the death of my mother-in-law at the end of the summer. This put things into perspective. I'm grateful to the university and my supervisor, Lyn Robinson, for allowing me the extension on the submission date.
As I write, I am sending out my CV to potential employers and planning the next stage. It is a year that has led me to think in a more critical way, and feel differently about my abilities and my future career. My daughter is still a student at a university in the north of England, now in her second year of doing mathematics, and the odd thing is, I'm still envious of what she's doing. And that's because this year has been such a good one for me.
It was when I was visiting potential universities for my elder daughter a few years ago that it hit me again what inspiring places they are. I admit I felt a pang of envy seeing students and lecturers going about their business. I had done an undergraduate degree in a small art school in my twenties, so the atmosphere wasn't entirely new to me, but it hadn't felt like a time of academic rigour. When this chance came for me to go to City, I knew it was one I must grab.
Starting my master's in library science coincided with the election of Donald Trump in the US. Truth seemed to have become merely something that you could persuade somebody was true. Libraries, on the other hand, continue to stand as places of research, study and truth; they are broadminded, welcoming and even radical, and more vital than ever.
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| Northampton Square Library at City, University of London |
We were a wonderfully diverse cohort – and it was great to go through this year with them. Lots of them have travelled back to their homes and jobs around the world now. I am accustomed to working with deadlines and word counts, but I was less sure about writing in an academic way, which I'd never done. This went better than I had expected. I particularly enjoyed the extracurricular events, the talks at the British Library, the visits to the National Archives, the symposiums. If you are doing the same course, I'd encourage you to get involved with them. But the lectures each week were totally engaging, too.
Many on the course came from roles within libraries and other information environments: as someone changing tack in my working career, it was for me a new realm with a new vocabulary. My background in fine art still fitted well with it, but I was reading (and reading and reading) about subjects that were new, challenging and sometimes exciting. I am very happy to be volunteering now at Iniva's Stuart Hall Library, a fine art library with a focus on contemporary art from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.
My dissertation, about how sketchbooks are collected and accessed, was the subject I knew I had to write about. My thanks go to my interview subjects and all those institutions that found time to complete the survey. But I had not envisaged having to ask for an extension following the death of my mother-in-law at the end of the summer. This put things into perspective. I'm grateful to the university and my supervisor, Lyn Robinson, for allowing me the extension on the submission date.
As I write, I am sending out my CV to potential employers and planning the next stage. It is a year that has led me to think in a more critical way, and feel differently about my abilities and my future career. My daughter is still a student at a university in the north of England, now in her second year of doing mathematics, and the odd thing is, I'm still envious of what she's doing. And that's because this year has been such a good one for me.
Wednesday 12 July 2017
Sketchbooks in the archives
My dissertation, which explores how sketchbooks are collected and accessed, is, perhaps, at the midpoint – I have discovered much already and yet the real findings are still to come. But I have known for a long time how a sketchbook can be a revealing insight into the world of its creator.
Until now, though, this knowledge has come through being allowed to hold and look through the books of my peers, usually other friends who are artists. What is in a sketchbook can be intensely personal (the private/public element of them is an interesting area) and so we only get to see what its creator is prepared to reveal. And there is always the hint that what may be most enlightening is what isn't being shared.
But when the artist dies and the books find their way into an archive, what then? In the past few weeks I have been visiting institutions to see sketchbooks in their final home. From being the object left in dirty corners of the studio and stuffed into rucksacks for journeys around the globe, here they are, wrapped, supported and cared for, and viewed with lashings of hindsight.
The entry to the Prints and Drawings study room at the British Museum, the home of the nation's drawing collection, is hidden behind a big Michelangelo in Room 90. I have been reading Richard Knott's The Sketchbook War: Saving the Nation's Artists in World War II (The History Press, 2013), which tells the story of nine war artists, including the illustrator Edward Ardizzone. A sketchbook of his from the post-war years is in the museum's collection. Its pages, instead of containing drawings of bomb sites and Blitz scenes, includes pages of sunbathers from Ardizzone's more peaceful travels to the sun in south of France in the 1950s.
In this environment, the books are tangible – they can be held, and the pages turned – but they are fragile, worn in places, and there are signs of restoration in places. They have passed into another state from the time when they were live and incomplete and still in the hands of the artist. While Ardizzone's book contains little written content, another, by the British painter Roger Hilton, has. It starts in January 1946 with diary entries and new year resolutions alongside the drawings, and so the personal comes even more alive. In later years, when he was bedridden and alcoholic, the notes and drawings he left for his wife, the painter Rose Hilton, were published (Night Letters, Newlyn Orion Galleries, 1980) and make a sometimes painful read. The 1946 sketchbook is equally opinionated and direct, yet more sober, mercifully. And his drawings in biro reveal an informal attitude to capturing ideas.
Neither of the artists who filled these books appear to have had posterity in mind at the time of their making. Another visit, to the British Film Institute's archive, to see the filmmaker Derek Jarman's sketchbooks suggest that he recognised that he was making beautiful objects that would be of interest long after what turned into his much-too-early death. The books of notes, plans, sketches, collages and photographs are mainly the same brand and 30x30cm format so that they sit and look well together, and follow themes that relate to the projects he was working at any one time. (A surprising number of artists simply grab the sketchbook with blank pages that is nearest to them to draw in, so that eventually they may contain drawings that span decades.) Jarman's books were no doubt central to his work – he had them with him as filming proceeded – but he appears to have made them as beautiful objects that would be appreciated long after he had gone, and that isn't always the case with sketchbook users.
Meanwhile my survey, sent to UK institutions that hold sketchbooks to find out more about the way they are collected and accessed, is getting responses. It's hard to describe the satisfaction of getting each new completed questionnaire. Thanks to everyone who has responded to it.
Until now, though, this knowledge has come through being allowed to hold and look through the books of my peers, usually other friends who are artists. What is in a sketchbook can be intensely personal (the private/public element of them is an interesting area) and so we only get to see what its creator is prepared to reveal. And there is always the hint that what may be most enlightening is what isn't being shared.
But when the artist dies and the books find their way into an archive, what then? In the past few weeks I have been visiting institutions to see sketchbooks in their final home. From being the object left in dirty corners of the studio and stuffed into rucksacks for journeys around the globe, here they are, wrapped, supported and cared for, and viewed with lashings of hindsight.
The entry to the Prints and Drawings study room at the British Museum, the home of the nation's drawing collection, is hidden behind a big Michelangelo in Room 90. I have been reading Richard Knott's The Sketchbook War: Saving the Nation's Artists in World War II (The History Press, 2013), which tells the story of nine war artists, including the illustrator Edward Ardizzone. A sketchbook of his from the post-war years is in the museum's collection. Its pages, instead of containing drawings of bomb sites and Blitz scenes, includes pages of sunbathers from Ardizzone's more peaceful travels to the sun in south of France in the 1950s.
In this environment, the books are tangible – they can be held, and the pages turned – but they are fragile, worn in places, and there are signs of restoration in places. They have passed into another state from the time when they were live and incomplete and still in the hands of the artist. While Ardizzone's book contains little written content, another, by the British painter Roger Hilton, has. It starts in January 1946 with diary entries and new year resolutions alongside the drawings, and so the personal comes even more alive. In later years, when he was bedridden and alcoholic, the notes and drawings he left for his wife, the painter Rose Hilton, were published (Night Letters, Newlyn Orion Galleries, 1980) and make a sometimes painful read. The 1946 sketchbook is equally opinionated and direct, yet more sober, mercifully. And his drawings in biro reveal an informal attitude to capturing ideas.
Neither of the artists who filled these books appear to have had posterity in mind at the time of their making. Another visit, to the British Film Institute's archive, to see the filmmaker Derek Jarman's sketchbooks suggest that he recognised that he was making beautiful objects that would be of interest long after what turned into his much-too-early death. The books of notes, plans, sketches, collages and photographs are mainly the same brand and 30x30cm format so that they sit and look well together, and follow themes that relate to the projects he was working at any one time. (A surprising number of artists simply grab the sketchbook with blank pages that is nearest to them to draw in, so that eventually they may contain drawings that span decades.) Jarman's books were no doubt central to his work – he had them with him as filming proceeded – but he appears to have made them as beautiful objects that would be appreciated long after he had gone, and that isn't always the case with sketchbook users.
Meanwhile my survey, sent to UK institutions that hold sketchbooks to find out more about the way they are collected and accessed, is getting responses. It's hard to describe the satisfaction of getting each new completed questionnaire. Thanks to everyone who has responded to it.
Friday 19 May 2017
Sketchbook research begins
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| Inside the British Library: pencils only in the reading rooms |
Term 2 has ended, and the second set of assignments has been handed in, graded and (nearly all) returned. Things are going well. Attention turns to the dissertation, which first calls for a 2,000-3,000 word proposal. I mentioned in my last post about a moment of realisation I experienced midway through the Radical Collections conference in March. Hearing Siobhan Britton (University of Brighton) talking about her research into zine collections made me think about the idea of a dissertation on a document type that means a lot to me: the sketchbook.
Sketchbooks have been a constant for me since I was at art school. I've sold drawings and paintings over time, but all the sketchbooks are still with me now, because that is the usual story of sketchbooks: they aren't for sale and are still in the corner of the studio when the artist drops dead. The sketchbooks often end up in an archive as a group, bequeathed, or perhaps donated by the artist's family. What happens then? How are they collected, found and accessed? They fall somewhere between book and work of art, demanding to have their pages tangibly turned. How easy is it, or is it even possible, to actually hold them in your hands at different archives? How often are they accessible digitally?
So research is now underway. Lyn, my supervisor, has read and OKed the proposal. There isn't much previous research into this aspect of sketchbooks and I'm not sure where it will take me. Tomorrow I'm heading to meet other artists who use sketchbooks at the Rabley Drawing Centre in Wiltshire, where I have had a couple of books selected for the Sketch 2017 group exhibition.
If you have experience of accessing sketchbooks in galleries, libraries, archives or museums, either physically or digitally, I'd be very happy for you to get in touch. Or follow me @jameshobbsart.
Sunday 5 March 2017
When librarians and archivists get radical
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| senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/radicalvoices #radicalvoices |
Across four panels, the themes tackled included how collections are being developed, catalogued and organised, and who works in them and uses them. These were interspersed with not one, but two fire alarms to keep us on our toes, which led to impromptu networking sessions on the street outside, resumed at the end of the day with wine and nibbles in the Institute of Historical Research common room.
Starting out, Wendy Russell from the British Film Institute archive explored the barriers faced by the director Ken Loach in the 1980s when his TV series for the new Channel 4 about trade unionism, Questions of Leadership, was commissioned and then scrapped, and considered the archive's significance beyond the fields of TV and film. Lisa Redlinski and John Wrighton of the University of Brighton spoke about the remit of HE libraries with particular relation to the library's digitisation of Brighton's rich history of underground and alternative press. And historian Lucas Richert (University of Strathclyde), in his paper about radical psychiatry, LSD and MDMA, raised issues (among others) about how funding from private and public sources can affect the consumption and "selling" of archives.
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| Panel 1: Chair Richard Espley, Lucas Richert, Lisa Redlinski, John Wrighton and Wendy Russell |
After a lunch interrupted by the fire alarm, Mairéad Mooney (University College Cork) looked at British imperialist influences on libraries in the early days of the Irish Free State, and Amy Todman (National Library of Scotland) spoke about the archiving of Engender, the Scottish feminist organisation, since the 1990s. Siobhan Britton (University of Brighton) explored issues surrounding the collection, preservation and accessibility of zines in libraries. (My thanks to her about a lightbulb moment I had midway through her talk when I had an idea regarding my own dissertation.)
Tamsin Bookey (Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives), who navigated the rude interruption mid-presentation by the second fire alarm, described moves in Tower Hamlets to widen participation and attract hard-to-reach potential users (respect people who are hostile, use marketing, get non-gender specific toilets). Katherine Quinn (University of Warwick) spoke about the challenge of radical librarianship in the HE context (the audit culture, and how LIS is drawing on management culture), and, finally, Kirsty Fife (National Media Museum) and Hannah Henthorn (University of Dundee) described the issues they, as marginalised people, faced as they negotiated their way into the archive sector and how the expense of qualifications restrict diversification.
Just how radical some of the ideas discussed really are is debatable. In a point raised by our own Thomas Ash, the non-discriminatory nature of classification terminology, for instance, is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It's simply how things should be. A theme running through the day, it seems to me, was that obstacles put in the way of opening up access and information to all – and that really does mean people who currently wouldn't dream of setting foot in a library or archive – need dismantling, and that means they won't be the quiet, safe places they are generally perceived to be now. White western patriarchy has had its day. That change seems more sensible and representative of the UK as it is than radical. But the conference provided a great variety of voices that asked questions and offered solutions that deserve deeper and longer consideration – and action.You can track Radical Voices on Storify for much more insight and detail on the day's events than I can manage here. And for more about the Radical Voices series of events at the Senate House Library, see www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/radicalvoices.
Saturday 3 December 2016
Attention, not quality
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| A Wordle word cloud from the article below |
Altmetrics picks up on the impact of scholarly communication through social media and blogs long before citation counts take effect, perhaps years later. Altmetrics is, perhaps, like the thermometer in the mouth of research, picking up on just how hot (or not) open-source published material is. But altmetrics is an indication of attention, not quality, as I seem to have written in my notes more than once. Attention, not quality.
With the rise of digital come opportunities to analyse and explore, to corral datasets into useful ways of finding insights and unearthing what has been overlooked or unrecognised. Coding with Python is an area for me yet to explore fully. Word clouds, while simple and engaging to experiment with, do not analyse text in a way that is particularly revealing. (The one above has been created from this blog post, and reflects the way that I keep repeating the words attention, not quality.) Digital humanities, although typically unwilling to be precisely defined, is an interesting arena where digital media and scholarly research meet.
And should we be afraid of AI? Am I a Singularatarian or AItheist? It is hard to come to a categorical decision with Floridi's argument without oversimplifying the argument. Much of AI seems to me to be promising and romanticised, or as prosaic as Amazon's recommendations and fraud detection. Useful and largely unrecognised by most of perhaps, but yet to really find its greatest moments.
Saturday 12 November 2016
The hunt for data
Our most recent sessions in the always intriguing Digital Information and Technologies (DITA) module have continued our study of how the outpouring of digital information in our society today is stored, described, structured, managed and shared. What is usually the natural, unthinking act of hunting for that simple something online – presidential election coverage, latest cricket scores, the location of that particular book – has been taken apart piece by piece.
Our look under the bonnet of information retrieval is taking us places one step (or more) back from what the average user in the modern digital environment would confront. Even this simple blog post, as I write it now, has a different interface from the one in which you are reading it. I can add the metadata through labels (listed below), see the coding around italicised fonts, and add details about location. In DITA we have looked at the ways data can be organised and made accessible online, and the rise of linked data and the semantic web through RDF, the resource description framework.
It is, it must be said, a world of many initialisms. The data file formats CSV (comma separated value) and TSV (tab separated value), DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, a vocabulary of terms used to describe web resources making them easier to find), URIs (unique resource identifiers, which identify the name of a web resource), SQL (Structured Query Language, the standard language for relational database management systems), and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces, which hide the complexities of a system so that third parties can build on and develop applications). QEI: quite enough initialisms.
In the circular way that this course often throws up (the problems of getting information about getting information, to put it crudely), the session Searching for the Data was of immediate practical interest. Instead of the default course of action of resorting immediately to a simple Google search, it armed us with more focused and nuanced ways of revealing the data that we are looking for, and even what we didn't know we were looking for. With December approaching and four assessments to be completed by early in the new year, these are practical information retrieval skills that will be tried and tested in the weeks to come as we hunt for the books and journal articles that will help us on our way.
Our look under the bonnet of information retrieval is taking us places one step (or more) back from what the average user in the modern digital environment would confront. Even this simple blog post, as I write it now, has a different interface from the one in which you are reading it. I can add the metadata through labels (listed below), see the coding around italicised fonts, and add details about location. In DITA we have looked at the ways data can be organised and made accessible online, and the rise of linked data and the semantic web through RDF, the resource description framework.
It is, it must be said, a world of many initialisms. The data file formats CSV (comma separated value) and TSV (tab separated value), DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, a vocabulary of terms used to describe web resources making them easier to find), URIs (unique resource identifiers, which identify the name of a web resource), SQL (Structured Query Language, the standard language for relational database management systems), and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces, which hide the complexities of a system so that third parties can build on and develop applications). QEI: quite enough initialisms.
In the circular way that this course often throws up (the problems of getting information about getting information, to put it crudely), the session Searching for the Data was of immediate practical interest. Instead of the default course of action of resorting immediately to a simple Google search, it armed us with more focused and nuanced ways of revealing the data that we are looking for, and even what we didn't know we were looking for. With December approaching and four assessments to be completed by early in the new year, these are practical information retrieval skills that will be tried and tested in the weeks to come as we hunt for the books and journal articles that will help us on our way.
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