Dear Members,

Last Friday the Ohio Valley Chapter of ARLIS had the fall meeting at the Ekstrom Library of the University of Louisville and the Speed Art Museum.  I would like to thank our hosts, Meg Shaw and Gail Gilbert for coordinating a wonderful conference that those of us who were able to attend enjoyed very much.  For those of you who were unable to attend, we enjoyed a presentation on the public art in Louisville, a demonstration of the Ekstrom Library’s robotic retrieval system, an update on the ARLIS Artists’ Files Project, given by our own Pam Eyerdam who has been involved with this project from the start and a presentation on the University of Kentucky’s Second Life program.  We enjoyed a gallery talk by Scott Erbes, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Speed Museum about the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness exhibition.

We also conducted the fall business meeting and accomplished a few new things for the chapter.  We voted to put Collage online only to take advantage of our website as well as paring down costs on paper and postage.  We want to thank Ellen Rohmiller for her last five years of service as editor of Collage, as she will be retiring as editor and letting someone new take the helm.  We decided to be more proactive in trying to increase our membership by posting announcements and invitations to the three library schools in our area and by inviting colleagues to join in membership and activities who either used to be active or have never been active in the chapter.  We voted to hire someone to facilitate the website to keep it up to date without putting the burden on one or two members to do all the work.  And we will be planning a “fun” trip to the Toledo Museum of Art early this summer hosted by Anne Morris.  I will keep you posted on these events, but please check the website in the near future for current information.

All in all it was a great meeting and I want to thank Meg and Gail again for their hard work and hospitality to all of us.  Congratulations on a job well done!

Ellie Ward

ARLIS-OV website:

Please take a moment to check out some of the new features of our site.  We’ve added an events calendar as well as employment resources (under the Resources link).  

If you’re new to the ARLIS-OV Web site, please check out our About Us page.  We are the premiere resource for individuals and institutions interested in art librarianship located in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania.  We offer networking opportunities at our regional meetings, and we provide ARLIS-OV members travel awards in order to help defray the cost of attending the Art Libraries Society of North America’s annual conference.

If you are interested in becoming a member of ARLIS-OV, you can learn more on our Membership page.

Thank you.