Join us in the garden of Margaret English

Date: Friday June 25, 2010

Time: drop in between 5 and 7 p.m.

Location: 42 Billings Avenue, Toronto, Ontario

Cost: $10 to cover food and drink

Please RSVP by Monday June 21 to arlisna.on@gmail.com

There will be silent auction items, plants for sale, and a raffle.

ALL Proceeds go to support the chapter and the 2012 ARLIS Conference.

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Directions to Margaret English’s House via TTC:

1. Take subway eastbound and get off at Greenwood.
   Take the Greenwood bus south bound and get off at Dundas.
   [there is only one bus at the station and it only goes south - so it's very easy. Plus. buses run every 10 minutes during rush hour]
   Walk east on Dundas for a few steps.

1. Margaret’s house is on the southwest corner of Dundas and Billings.
   Take Carlton Streetcar eastbound until Greenwood.
   Walk south on Greenwood to Dundas.
   Walk east on Dundas for a few steps.
   My house is on the southwest corner of Dundas and Billings.

1. Take Queen Streetcar eastbound until Greenwood.
   Walk north on Greenwood to Dundas.
   Walk east on Dundas for a few steps.
   My house is on the southwest corner of Dundas and Billings.

___________________________________________________________

ITEMS UP FOR AUCTION:

Roadside Wildflowers, Fenelon, 2010
By Randall Speller 8 x 8 inches, plus frame.

Gauguin’s Room, 1994

Beaded Necklace, 2010
By Margaret English

Beaded Bracelet, 2010
By Margaret English

Be prepared to get involved in the planning for the 2012 ARLIS/NA conference.

And, join us for some presentations on the topic of ephemera.

• Business meeting to start at 10 am
• Ephemera presentations to start at 1 pm.

Hope you can join us.

For details click here.

Download the AGENDA for the spring meeting (click here)

Download the minutes from the Fall meeting (click here)

Download the update from the Chairs of the 2012 conference (click here)

Please join your colleagues and friends for a glass of Christmas cheer and an

ARLIS ONTARIO FUNDRAISER

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17TH   6-8PM
Department of Art Library, University of Toronto
100 St. George St. – 6th floor

As always, we will hold a silent auction of great new art books, funky jewelry and other neat stuff.  You are more than welcome to donate an item or two to the cause.

(Please contact Margaret for details – margaret.english@utoronto.ca)

Please bring a plate of your favourite nibbles to share.

RSVP to Margaret

Download (PDF, 62.29KB)

We hope to see you there!

Royal Ontario Museum

April 24, 2009

Toronto, Ontario

After a lengthy winter we were again blessed with lovely weather for our visit to the spectacular and recently-designed Royal Ontario Museum.

Attendance was high for this day, with a particularly large student contingency from the Faculty of Information, thanks to the efforts of our student representative Laine Gabel.  ARLIS/NA Canadian Representative Liv Valmestad  (University of Manitoba) was able to join us as well. It’s been a long time since the Chapter paid a visit to the ROM, and everyone was anxious to see the controversial landmark building.

ROM Exterior - Architects' rendering

Our hosts, Arthur Smith, Head, Main Library and Archives and Jack Howard, Librarian, H.H. Mu Far Eastern Library arranged a warm welcome for us – complete with coffee and breakfast nibbles.  We relocated to a new electronic classroom for our business meeting.  Geoff Piersol has done an amazing job on the Chapter website using WordPress and he continues to make improvements and design it so that there will be various levels of access and participation from other chapter members.  Suggestions for content and resources are always welcome.

The Chapter is starting to gear-up for the 2012 Annual ARLIS/NA Conference in Toronto and we are fortunate in having members with a great deal of experience in the planning and execution of past events.  For the upcoming Fall meeting, we will need members to sign up for general activities related to the conference.

ROM Painting Conservator Heidi Sobol gave a fascinating lecture on her efforts in the preservation of an important oil-on-canvas painting by Edward Taylor Dartnell titled Panoramic View of The City of Toronto, c1850.

Panoramic View of The City of Toronto, c1850 by Edward Taylor Dartnell. Click image for more information.

Heidi Sobol

Members then lunched at the Museum’s airy and bright Food Studio which sources organic seasonal ingredients from local Ontario food producers.

Arthur Smith gave a riveting talk about the Collection Development Policy of the Main Library and Archives and its role in supporting the information needs of the curators and documenting the Museum’s collection.  Some of the library’s treasures were brought out for us to view.

Viewing treasures from the Main Library, ROM

After the Library tour, we were armed with our vistors’ badges and released into the entire museum to browse whichever displays struck our fancy.   Many attendees stayed well past the allotted time.

Currelly Gallery, ROM

Visit https://fiq.ischool.utoronto.ca/index.php/fiq/article/view/58 to read “Flickr as a Visual Resource Centre: Lessons for the Library World”.

You can also download the article as a .pdf: Flickr as a Visual Resource Centre: Lessons for the Library World.

Meet at 9:30 am at the south side staff entrance near the former McLaughlin Planetarium

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

The Royal Ontario Museum including the Main and Far Eastern Libraries
We are very pleased to be able to offer our membership a wonderful day at the
spectacular and recently redesigned Royal Ontario Museum.

ROM Far Eastern Library Entrance

ROM Far Eastern Library Reading Room

Our hosts will be Arthur Smith, Head, Main Library and Archives and
Jack Howard, Librarian, H.H. Mu Far Eastern Library.

Our ROM colleagues will lead us through a tour of both library facilities and regale us with some juicy details of their ordeal through the “Renaissance”.

After the tours, our visitors’ badges will permit our general release into the entire Museum to browse whichever displays strike our fancy.

We can have lunch at the Museum’s Food Studio which sources organic seasonal ingredients from local Ontario food producers.
http://www.rom.on.ca/dining_shopping/dining/foodstudio.php

Picture a perfect late fall day. Early morning was cool. We gathered for our business meeting in the Department of Art Library at the U of T. We were fortified, of course, with coffee and fresh sticky buns courtesy of Vice Chair Margaret English’s favourite sticky bun bakery. At the meeting’s conclusion we went outside to find that the weather had turned quite balmy. It was ideal walking weather, and we enjoyed making our way to each destination. Margaret organized three tours for our Chapter members. She focused on the book as vehicle for art, as a craft form, as an artistic expression. It was refreshing to spend a day with analog – and downright traditional – materials.

Coach House Books
bp nicol Lane

Tucked in a lane behind Huron St., Coach House has been producing fine small edition books by Canadian authors and poets for decades. Our tour started in the attic, a space under the old coach house eaves crammed with pictures, books, ephemera accumulated over the history of the press and its employees. In the corner sits a venerable large purple-upholstered Magic Sleeping Chair purported to have the ability to put its occupant to sleep. None of us tried its powers!

Christina Palassio, Managing Editor, displayed recent publications and related anecdotes about the company’s history and its illustrious authors. She led us through the production areas of Coach House, showing the process of typesetting and printing, to folding and gluing the final publication.

Massey College
Robertson Davies Library

19th cent. hand press

Massey College owns a spectacular study collection that focuses on the art and history of the book form. Librarian Marie Korey led our group through a collection of impressive and wonderfully ornate 19th century iron hand presses accumulated by the library between 1953 and 1971. To complement the presses, cases of type were also collected from printing shops such as Cooper & Beatty, divesting their stock as newer methods of printing developed.

This is a collection for the purpose of research and teaching traditional methods of paper-making, typesetting, printing and book construction. Indeed, this resource gives a very good sense of how a printing shop might operate.

We enjoyed the chance to closely examine samples of 18th and 19th century printing. The library also collects manuscripts and manuals about printing and book publication, fine printing and production printing, part of the Ruari McLean collection.

Librarian Marie Korey gives a tour of the study collection.

Ondaatje Hall at Massey College

On our exit from the College, Ms. Correy took us to the Ondaatje Hall, the dining hall for residents. A cautionary quote from George Santayana encircles the light-filled room.

“Happiness is impossible and even inconceivable to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, and fear.” G. Santayana.

University of Toronto
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

It is an amazing experience to leave the street and enter the Fisher. One leaves the bright noisy St. George Street and enters a silent vaulted nave of the Library with five glowing galleries of books overhead.

We were met by the Fisher Library’s Director, Robert Landon who led us through a special exhibition of photographs and artifacts from the Fisher’s archive, on the subject of Canada and the First World War. The exhibition was fascinating for its variety of ephemera that portrayed the human realm of war: cookbooks, letters home, war posters, and popular novels about war heroes. The University of Toronto’s war effort was also described with photographs of a training camp of tents pitched in rows on Hart House Circle. Poignantly, trench-digging practice was part of the regimen for trainees on the grounds of the University.

Our sincere thanks go to those who took time to meet with us and show us these fascinating collections related to the art of fine publishing! Time spent as we meandered from site to site of each collection offered a terrific way to socialize with our colleagues in the Chapter, too.

Submitted by Lesley Bell, December 2008.

The Librarians at Ryerson University welcomed us for a business meeting followed by special events that they graciously organized for us. After lunch we enjoyed presentations and tours that focused on current ambitions for the University as well as the features of Special Collections managed by the Library. It was a perspective on the University that was both wide and specialized: a great combination for a program.

Dr. George Kapelos, a professor in the School of Architectural Science, spoke passionately about the team he has worked with to devise a Master Plan for Ryerson University. The land-locked University has taken an honest appraisal of its place in Toronto and has created a vision for how it can proceed, how it can grow for its community of students and faculty and how it can function within the urban fabric.

Dr. Kapelos’ illustrated lecture touched on ideas that indicate that his visionary team, which includes KPMB Architects – is based on the human scale. As he says it, this vision ‘engages the public realm, a core for people’ and takes the University’s urban setting as an advantage, with its opportunities for commerce, social, transportation, housing, parks, entertainment and public places. As the University grows and transforms, the Master Plan can ensure that each change resonates with the whole.

Ryerson is buying up land as it becomes free in its intended plan for growth as well as following the lead of institutions like Concordia by constructing a vertically oriented campus. A prized acquisition is the former location of Sam the Record Man. This is the intended location for an expanded Ryerson Library. The iconic sign for the former retail business featuring double discs is designated and comes with the property. Envision a future Ryerson Library with the neon sign blaring, ‘This is Sam the Record Man!’ pulsing on the wall that faces Yonge Street. Dr. Kapelos hopes that details like this will inspire people to say, “If you’re visiting Toronto, make sure you see X [and] Y and don’t forget to go to Ryerson.”

After Dr. Kapelos’ lecture, Beth Knazook, the Photographic Curatorial Specialist for the Library’s Special Collections presented – visually – numerous highlights. Ryerson offers an M.A. in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, which seems to be a timely course of study for a world desiring expertise for its aging photo collections.

Ms. Knazook described the evolution of her collections that includes the Kodak Canada Archives (est 2005) and the Heritage Camera Collection. This facility grew out of a practice of hands-on learning and traditional photography, and the Masters students of this new and innovative program carry this intent forward with explorations into experiential learning based on the collections.

Alana West, the Media Collections Assistant of the Mira Godard Study Centre, described the impetus for this resource center, which provides access to an incredible 250,000 slides. A faculty photo collection initiated in 1969 was significantly advanced with a gift of 57 historic photographs in 1995 by Mira Godard, for whom this centre is named. This collection is now comprised of 2224 objects, and continues to grow. It also houses artist files (comprised of clippings, videos, DVD’s and other ephemera) as well as other photo archives. Ms. West impressed on us the importance of viewing the original photograph. She is so right: we always view photos in reproduction.

Ultimately, a gallery on campus will house the the April 2005 donation of 291,049 black and white photographs from the Black Star Agency in New York. The Black Star Historical Black and White Photography Collection (that does include a few colour NASA photographs) is a significant resource for faculty and students in Ryerson’s School of Image Arts. From its roots in Europe during World War I to 1980’s photojournalist works, this collection holds great promise for Ryerson. While original works in the collection are stored offsite until optimum conditions for preservation are met by new construction at Ryerson, large-scale scans from the Black Star Collection are periodically exhibited in public settings. For example, gripping images that focus on people who have experienced World War I and II are currently displayed in the nave of BCE Place, Toronto until May 27th, 2008.

We would like to thank Librarians Barb Parsons, Zita Murphy and Susan Patrick for their teamwork in putting this day together for our Chapter!