The Research Library Takes Shape!

Volunteers and staff have been busy preparing and organizing the new research library at the Judith & Norman ALIX Art Gallery. Named the The Visual Art Research Room, the facility will provide an opportunity for the public to research and engage with a wide-range of artistic writings and cultural material.    This space was generously supported by County of Lambton councillors and employees as they donated approximately $102,000.00 to the capital campaign.

The stacks in the reference library are filling up quickly 

      The brand new rolling stacks in the library were supplied by Montreal-based, internationally operating company Montel, and will hold a broad range of reference materials including monographs of artists, general interest art books,  and series of periodicals that the gallery has maintained subscriptions for, some over the course of decades. 

      Part of the facility will feature exhibition  catalogues from approximately 65 Canadian cultural institutions, which are the result of an informal, national catalogue exchange. When the gallery produces new catalogues, we send them free of charge to galleries across the country for their reference and collections; and likewise, they do the same. This will the first time that these materials will be made truly accessible to the public. The library will also hold a number of artist files, featuring newspaper and magazine clippings and other materials  related directly to works in our Permanent Collection. 

Examples of some of the materials found in the research centre include very old and rare copies of Canadian Art magazine ranging from 1943 to the present. 

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           With the help of volunteers Jean Smithen and Sandra Leverton-Jones, as well as summer student Nakita McInnis, the library is really taking shape. While Jean and Nakita organize the materials, Sandra has been researching ways to utilize our database for the physical cataloguing of the material, a process that we expect to take approximately 2-3 years before it is fully complete. After this, the material will be searchable digitally through our new website, as well as on site from a computer terminal located directly in the library. 

Volunteer Jean Smithen and summer student Nakita McInnis work on organizing 

the new reference library

The Visual Art Research Room was a named component of the new gallery and the capital campaign. Members of the Lambton County family, from across all divisions and levels of employment, contributed to this family campaign via lump sums or long-term pay deductions, enabling us to reach our $102,000 family campaign target successfully.

The Research Library will be available for basic reference by November 2012, by appointment. 

For more information, or to stay up to date visit www.artgallerylambton.ca