Category: affiliations

These are groups, organizations and projects with which LeMasney Consulting is proudly affiliated with through work or other connections. We stand for the same things as the organizations featured in these posts.

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“Art and Craft”, from the PPL Film Series, “The Artist in Society”

Mark Landis
Mark Landis
Mark Landis (http://artandcraftfilm.com)
Mark Landis (http://artandcraftfilm.com)

On the Artist in Society

Tonight, I had the opportunity to see the first of 8 films offered as a series on the artist in society at Princeton Public Library, and I enjoyed the first immensely. I’m not sure if one can describe the following discussion of the film as spoilery, but be warned that I discuss the entirety of the film’s impact on me below, no holds barred.

Art and Craft is a documentary about Mark Landis, a schizophrenic, compulsive art forger and philanthropy addict. He’s a fascinating figure, but only one of a few fascinating figures in the film. The site for the film synopsizes as follows (emphasis mine):

“Mark Landis has been called one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. His impressive body of work spans thirty years, covering a wide range of painting styles and periods that includes 15th Century Icons, Picasso, and even Walt Disney. And while the copies could fetch impressive sums on the open market, Landis isn’t in it for money. Posing as a philanthropic donor, a grieving executor of a family member’s will, and most recently as a Jesuit priest, Landis has given away hundreds of works over the years to a staggering list of institutions across the United States. But after duping Matthew Leininger, a tenacious registrar who ultimately discovers the decades-long ruse and sets out to expose his philanthropic escapades to the art world, Landis must confront his own legacy and a chorus of museum professionals clamoring for him to stop.“

On art and originality

The film explores the question, subtly, of whether a forged copy of a piece of art is art itself. I believe that the film’s stance is that it is very much so, and I believe I agree. Mark is an amazing draftsman, a master forger, and both a recluse and a social butterfly. He is certainly an artist of the highest caliber, even if the work is not original. In one portion of the movie when he faces his fans and critics, he is repeatedly asked why he does not do original work with his masterful skills, but the film shows the obviously missed point: The reason for the bit of fame he has is in the deception of it. His original work, such as the rendering of his beloved mother, has very little to offer in terms of originality or insight. It’s just a nice picture. Art gains value because of persona. Major questions also arise about the ethics of what he does: He donates, rather than sells, the forged works. In the final part of the film, we learn that Mark is looking to forge stolen works and use his priest persona (one of many) to give the masterfully forged works to the owners as though from penitent thieves, and my own question is what is the harm in that? If it returned some joy to the robbed, then what is at loss? If the owner who lost the work wants the work back (and not the monetary value of it) then are they not made whole?

On sickness and madness

Mark is an alcoholic, has several illnesses including schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and related ills. And yet, I personally felt that Matthew, who is obsessed with Mark’s forgeries is not only derailing his life with his focus on Mark, but also passing on his illness to his daughter. I asked in the Q & A after the film which of the figures, Mark or Matt, was more tragic, and the answer from co-director Jennifer Grausman was that they were both kind friends, fine people, who both felt very good about their role in this effort. In my opinion, Mark is heroic (Quixotic?), and Matt is tragic. The sad reality of the film is that Mark has triumphant, funny moments throughout, and Matt is just sad, obsessed to the point of job dismissal, and a bit toxic, due to his anger. Still, the framing and editing of film paints a picture that may not exist in reality. This is the plot of this film though. A question was raised in the Q&A after the film about the potential effect of the film on Mark, and it was said that the filmmakers were “concerned for his health”, but that he came to showings, and enjoyed the reaction of the audiences.

On the irony of a curated show on Landis’ forgery

In about the middle of the film, it’s revealed that there is going to be a show of Landis’ forgeries. Matt celebrates the show as a revelation of a sham, but everyone else seems to treat it as fascination and celebration of Mark’s genius. Mark agrees to appear at the opening for the show, and Matt sees it as an opportunity to confront him. It is an electric, uncomfortable moment in the movie that seems to be lost on Mark, and a disappointment for Matt. Matt is critical and overbearing in the reception, and Mark asks Matt at one point “Are there any nice people here?” It is fun, cringeworthy stuff. The gentle way in which the curators treat the forgeries is delicious. They use all of the care that they might handle the Mona Lisa with in arranging and examining the work. There are UV lights, white gloves, and care given in equal measure to pieces that Mark throws about with no care at all. The juxtaposition of those ideas shows the genius of the film’s editing.

On the state of mental health care

Part of the documentary is Mark’s madness. His working through his mother’s 2 year-old death, his father’s dismissal, his creation and manipulative use of a non-existent sister, his role-playing as a priest to manipulate the kindness of others, and his deceptive puppetry of Matt and others. In the film, he visits with case workers and nurses who seem to be adverse to his care, ignoring his state, and pushing him through a system that is clearly uncaring and not working.

On the film itself, and the series

The film is beautifully directed, edited, and told. The interspersion of classic film clips that explain Mark’s thinking, the painful way in which Matt’s madness is exposed, and the tale of the difference between art and craft are all done in a spectacular way. Anyone remotely interested in mental health, the “art world”, or craftsmanship should run to see this movie. I especially appreciate the series being offered on the next seven Mondays at 7pm at Princeton Public Library on the Artist in Society. The discussion is necessary, the films are brilliantly curated, and the work of a contemporary library is to expand the minds of its patrons. PPL is doing that. Special thanks to Janie Hermann and Susan Conlon for their curation and arrangement to bring this work, and its creators, to our attention.

 

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67 of 365: Dance by Antoinette Marchfelder & John LeMasney

67 of 365 Dance by Antoinette Marchfelder & John LeMasney via lemasney.com
67 of 365 Dance by Antoinette Marchfelder & John LeMasney via lemasney.com
67 of 365 Dance by Antoinette Marchfelder & John LeMasney via lemasney.com
67 of 365 Dance by Antoinette Marchfelder & John LeMasney via lemasney.com

This is a collaboration between Antoinette and I. Antoinette has a lovely drafting ability, and makes the most beautiful, colorful, jungle-inspired work. We’ve worked together in Inkscape, to help her expand her digital working style. In this case. I asked her if she had ever used a Wacom tablet, and she said that she had one, a small one. I brought out my lovely 24 inch Wacom, handed her the stylus, and she made this inspiring dancing figure you see above. I added the text below her illustration. We used an image of a lit match as the palette, and applied a range of tones from the very bright parts of the flame, to the darker smoky background. Fun work, and thanks Antoinette!

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65 of 365: A library design problem solved, perhaps.

nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

I was alerted to Toby Greenwalt’s great blog theanalogdivide by Sophie Brookover of Library Link NJ, in which Toby just proposed a series of design problems as they relate to libraries. I love a good design problem. Here he introduces the first problem, and below I answer it in my own way.

“Your first challenge? Create a online library card signup.   You could say that signing up for a library card is our equivalent of what websites refer to as onboarding – the process with which a user becomes part of that site. Sites invest significant work-hours and enormous sums of money to make this process as appealing as possible?

Libraries? Not so much. Whether through requiring in-person visits, confusing policy, or resorting to PDFs, libraries tend to get in their own way when it comes to attracting new users. We can do better than this. I’d like to use this inaugural Challenge to prove it.

Your criteria:

  • Design a workflow that a hypothetical user would use to sign up for your hypothetical library. You’ll need to use this design to address the issue of proving residency.
  • If there’s a policy that needs to be set in order to make your design work, you’ll need to explain that policy.
  • Any medium is OK. Pencil-and-paper. Google Form. Flowchart. Photoshop mockup. Working prototype.
  • If you draw inspiration from somewhere, cite your sources. I’d love to hear a bit about your process.
  • You must have your design published by Monday, May 5th. Remember to email me (toby at theanalogdivide dot com) with the link. If you don’t have your own web space, feel free to send me the design and I’ll publish it here.”

~ theanalogdivide » Blog Archive » The Librarian Design Challenge –

So my answer is as follows:

  1. Advertise a shortened URL (via whatever advertising channels you wish) to a Google Form in which you allow a new patron to fill out a form. Form logic should require all required fields, such as full name, address, email, and phone number, etc. If payment is required, payment information can also be collected, but should occur later in the process, after address is verified.
  2. As you may or may not know, all google forms publish results to a spreadsheet, which can be exported to a CSV for use in a mail merge.
  3. Daily or weekly, a mail merge can be used to create mailable postcards with a unique code (autogenerated) that is sent to the address of the new patron.
  4. A patron who receives the postcard at the indicated address will submit the code and payment information to a second URL (encrypted) if any payment is required. The code validation reasonably proves residence to the degree that this is possible through electronic means.
  5. Upon code submission and or payment processing, the patron’s new card is mailed out, or made available for pickup, depending on the patron’s preference.

This mimics Google’s own location verification process for business registration listing in Google Places service https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en&visit_id=637299706572194876-2550561397&rd=1).

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64 of 365: Using Pinterest to Gain a Visual Following (Book Chapter as Serial Post part 5)

fig 08 - successful pin
fig 08 - successful pin

Please see the entire chapter by reading part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. This is the conclusion:

What can I do to mashup Pinterest and my Library?

1. Pin, repin and comment. Be a part of the community.

It is not enough to passively look at other’s pins. By actively engaging other users, you will gain new followers, develop an audience, and establish an extension of your brand. Go into Pinterest in the main page and look at what interests you and your library, and repin it. If things show up on your home page that you do not like, unfollow those boards. Search out new great pins by visiting the popular category or do a search on an important topic to your library. Find pins, boards, and users that matter and follow them to make your home page more interesting. When you find an interesting pin, repin or like it. When you find an interesting pin that you do not have a board for, like it, or if it is particularly related to your library, make a new board. Make boards that represent your library’s core interests, keywords, metadata, and mission. If you are an academic library, focus on the subjects and expertise at your institution. If you are a public library, focus on your most well developed collections and programming. Then, comment, comment, comment. The point of most social media endeavors is to establish a voice for your institution and to exercise that voice in lots of forums, including social media platforms like Pinterest. The conversation you have may convert to an in-person visit by a patron who did not know that you had that great collection of 17th century glassware monographs.

fig 08 - successful pin in Pinterest
fig 08 – successful pin in Pinterest

2. Respond and interact with followers, repinners, and commenters.

Consider other pinners potential patrons, even if there is no chance that they would regularly visit your library. They may have 40, 400, or 4,000 friends that are potential patrons, and they can help you to convert those users to visitors, friends, or followers. There is also the possibility that libraries will engage with virtual patronage more in the future. Pinterest is a way of engaging those virtual patrons. Pinterest has an amazing and customizable email system that can alert you to every interaction with your pins: every follow, every repin, and every comment. You should see each of those interactions as potential new starts of relationships between your library, its collection, and their interests. By taking the time to thank, comment, repin, or otherwise interact with pinners who have done the same with you, you dramatically increase a kind of Pinterest kharma that results in great returns in effort and investment in the areas of awareness, followership, and patronage.

3. Match your brand, culture, and vision

Hopefully, you have some sense of your library’s brand and culture. Your library might be one that is especially dedicated to the history of your community, or perhaps you focus on teen engagement and culture, or perhaps your library is part of a long academic tradition of greatness. The art on the walls and the sounds in the halls are clues to who you are. The ease of navigation and the presence of technology, or not, indicate what is valued in your culture. All of these things can be extended in Pinterest, either by curating pins related to those ideals, or pinning the ideals themselves in the form of art, photos, videos and graphics on those topics. Maybe more importantly, don’t present yourself as something you are not. If you are more classic than cool, then emphasize that strength. If you are more adult contemporary than punk rock, then make that clear in your pins. Make sure that there is a sense of continuity between the boards you have on Pinterest and the experience one has when using your library in person.

4. Find sources of great pins and bookmark them.

fig 09 - pin source query in Pinterest
fig 09 – pin source query in Pinterest

When you examine a pin, one of the things that Pinterest shares about the pin is the site where it was found and other pins that were pinned from that site. In the lower right hand side of the pin, you’ll see “other pins from (URL)” If you click on that link to see the other pins from that site, you may find a lot of related curated content that makes sense for your collections. While there is no way in Pinterest to follow that source directly, I created a folder in my bookmarks on my browser where I keep these source sites. An example is http://pinterest.com/source/lemasney.com/ in which lemasney.com is the source. You can replace lemasney.com in this example in order to see if there are already pins from your favorite site. You can also bookmark those pinterest source URLs so that you can quickly visit and see the latest pins and repins related to that site. Most importantly, there should be a rich set of pins on the source page for your ILS.

A great example of this is Princeton Public Library’s pins from the Bibliocommons site: http://www.pinterest.com/source/princetonlibrary.bibliocommons.com/

5. Be more than books.

For people who have not visited thriving, forward thinking, contemporary libraries, there is still sometimes a perception that libraries are simply warehouses for books, or bookstores without a register or cafe. If you use Pinterest simply to share latest asset acquisitions, with links through to your ILS, it’s a good start, but only a start. Remember that you have programming and events, cultural phenomena and news, staff who have useful and delightful opinions, art and music and games in and around the library, and a community that is both an influence and influenced by your institution. Make all of that quite evident in your boards, pins, and discussions. Carnegie-Stout Public Library, (cspl) on Pinterest, (http://goo.gl/O6BjNl) doe s agood job of this. They include boards on local issues in Dubuque, IA, staff picks, national poetry month, Star Wars, banned books, library produced video, and more.

6. Teach, learn, and discuss.

Each pin has a description field that allows for 500 characters of text. Use it to go beyond the title, ISBN, and author of the subject of the pin. Talk about the reason that you included the pin, and what the subject means in the context of the brand of your library. Include a quote or little known fact about the subject. Ask a question and request a response. Incite an intellectual riot. Start a mental fire. Engage the mind.

7. Cultivate a visual culture to clarify your library’s brand.

One of the most impressive things for me when looking at someone’s pins or boards for the first time is how quickly I am able to assess whether I have alignment with that pinner. The idea of a picture being worth a thousand words is especially apropos here, in that I am able to see with some immediacy the color, shape, tone, interests, and ideas that a pinner finds important in barely a glance. Make sure that your library boards and pins are making the impression that you want them to, and more specifically, that they adequately represent the actual brand and culture of your library or organization. If your library is academic, make boatds and pins that show that. If your library is active and fun, show that in your boards and pins.

8. Setup your email settings, external links, and profile properly.

Visit https://pinterest.com/settings/ and pay special attention to the email settings section about halfway down the page. By getting emails when someone likes, repins, or follows you, you get indications of interest, potential new patrons, opportunities for new follows, introductions to important discussions, and a certain kind of karmic insight. When you see those notifications, you should take some time to click on the profiles of the pinners that liked, followed, or repinned you to see whether you can be of further value to them and in what other ways they may be of value to you. Sometimes, you may find your next great supporter, evangelist, or advocate with a lot of influence in their boards and followers. Note that only one email address is associated with the account, and as a result, you may want to use a canonical account (tech@yourlibrary.org) or even a specific Pinterest account (pinterest@yourlibrary.org) to manage the communication with Pinterest.

9. Get clicks through to your ILS, blog, and other library destinations.

This is perhaps the most straightforward way to mashup your library with Pinterest. A link is a link is a link, and every pin has one. As we saw in the exemplar sites above, Pinterest can be a great way to visually advertise your other online destinations. While there are some sites that refuse pinning content, most notably Facebook, your ILS’ public facing pages, your Content Management System, and other publicly accessible sites will likely not refuse the sharing of visual content on Pinterest. If someone likes what you are pinning, they may very possibly click on your pin to learn more, find a lot of related content on your ILS or CMS, and click through to read more or borrow an asset. Once they are on your ILS, they can act as a normal patron. Pinterest simply acts in this case as a marketing, discussion, and social tool for getting people to your assets.

10. Make your boards your library’s brand keywords.

I am a graphic designer, teacher, technologist, library lover, media specialist, philosopher, whole food advocate, and open source software supporter. When you visit my Pinterest profile at http://pinterest.com/lemasney those things become self-evident because those are amongst my most populated boards’ names. What kind of library are you? Are you academic with a focus on music history, compositional manuscripts, and early recordings? Maybe you are a public library with an emphasis on teen programming, games, and graphic novels? Perhaps you are a special collections library for a specific industry, with an amazing collection of historical artifacts related to that industry. Whatever the case, it should be the first thing that meets the eye when someone sees your boards.

In conclusion

As curators, collectors, classifiers, enablers and educators, libraries should see Pinterest as a uniquely aligned platform for those activities. Use it to make a visually oriented catalog to your services, collections, interests and culture. Use it to engage and promote. Use it to market and inform. Use it to discuss and challenge. Use it as a way to find a new set of patrons, supporters, and advocates. Many new follows await you.

 

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62 of 365: Using Pinterest to Gain a Visual Audience (book chapter as serial post, part 4)

fig 07 - architecture search results
fig 07 - architecture search results

Please visit part 1, part 2 and part 3 to read the rest of the chapter so far.

How does one use Pinterest?

fig 07 - architecture search results
fig 07 – architecture search results

Searching – the search engine in Pinterest is a fantastic starting point to help build a board. If you are looking to develop conversations about your vast bicycling historical artifacts collection, maybe start with a search on vintage bicycles. By searching on topics, keywords, and tags from your ILS collection in Pinterest, you’ll be able to find pinners with like minds, boards related to your topics, individual pins that speak to your collection, and sources to gather more visual information for new pins.

Research – Once you add a pin and it is part of your curation in a board, the pin gives you other resources such as the person who pinned it (who may be a source of other related pins and worth following), other pins from the domain where it was pinned from (which you can bookmark in your browser), and other boards containing the pin (which may be existing collections similar to the one you are building). Finding like-minded pinners and organizations on Pinterest is a large part of the power of Pinterest as a social network. You connect, share, and learn through imagery.

Discussions – the point of social media is to engage, and discussion is a great way to do that. Great pins spark great discussions, and can be a place for you to develop deeper or different relationships with real or virtual patrons. If you are followed by and follow patrons on Pinterest, you may even get to the point where you share pins individually between them and the library, which strengthens that relationship, but also potentially grows the understanding of your brand and theirs.

Collaboration – Pinterest makes it easy to invite people to curate together. If you’ve ever wanted a low-threshold way to bring staff together around a topic, invite patrons to develop programming in a low-risk way, or invite an untapped demographic to engage with your library, Pinterest’s group boards may be a great way to do that. Create a board about Children’s Services, Emerging Technologies, Technology Programming, Learning Resources, or other topics to begin to show your interest in those topics.

Curation – Pinterest is a platform for curation, collection, organization, citation, classification, and review. That should all make perfect sense to a librarian.  You can use Pinterest as a second catalog, but one that catalogs everything that your library does and cares about, not just the assets.

fig 07.5 - more from lemasney.com
fig 07.5 – more from lemasney.com

Campaigns and Programming – if the main way that you are marketing your events and programming is via paper fliers inside your library, consider just pinning those fliers (in digital form) to a programming board or boards as a way of seeing if it increases awareness and participation. If discussions, repins, likes, and follows happen, that would be great too.

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61 of 365: Using Pinterest to Gain a Visual Following (book chapter as serial post, part 3)

fig 06 - lemasney 01
fig 06 - lemasney 01

Please take a look at part 1 and part 2 of this serial chapter on Pinterest as well.

Who is using Pinterest?

fig 06 - lemasney 01
fig 06 – lemasney 01

According to a Pew study on social media user demographics in 2013, Pinterest is 5 times as likely to be used by females as males. 15% of all Internet users used Pinterest. The typical Pinterest user is white and well-educated. The system was equally popular amongst users in the 18-29 and 30-49 age groups, both making up about 19% of users each. ) As a result, you may be able to engage more successfully with this demographic using Pinterest than other social media platforms, as other systems have different demographics. I personally feel that if more diverse groups could see other ways that the system can be used that the demographic would change dramatically. I do not feel particularly feminine, have no interest in flower arrangements, and am not getting married anytime soon. Despite this, I feel like I have a great visual thinking and sharing tool in Pinterest.

What are some examples of libraries who are making good use of Pinterest?

New York Public Library Art and Picture Collection

With pins that lead to its blogs, others that focus on its elaborate art collections and media, and some that create a playlist of music and other media to check out, this amazing library shares and extends its culture using Pinterest.

UNLV Architecture Studies Library

This library takes its intense focus on the very visual topic of architecture and offers a feast of images related to the topic, organized in sensible ways. With boards that focus on things like landscape, tiny spaces, bridges, furniture, and restaurants, it quickly makes you aware of the limitless ways in which we can begin to think about architecture.

American Libraries Magazine – ALA

With boards that explore the great libraries of the world, others that focus on ALA’s presidents, and some that request that you engage in a discussion (Ask ALA), this is a great example of how larger umbrella organizations related to libraries can celebrate and incorporate all libraries while cheering themselves on.

10 Inspiring Pinterest Collections Created by Libraries and Librarians
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