Incorporating Research in the Studio: A Case Study of Faculty/Librarian Collaboration

This poster presents a pedagogical case study involving the collaboration of an art faculty member and a librarian subject specialist to incorporate research in a studio art class in order to accomplish specific information literacy goals. Information literacy instruction in the arts has typically been delivered via single occurrence library instruction sessions. Little has been written on the subject of embedded information literacy instruction in the studio.

Using guidelines set forth in Information Competencies for Students in Design Disciplines (Brown et al. [Calgary, Alberta: Art Libraries Society of North America, 2007], 23), Shari Salisbury, research services librarian and Jane Lawrence, senior lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio collaborated to create a semester-length research project for upper division studio art students culminating in a 15-source annotated bibliography, a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation and a large-scale artwork. Scholarly research tools and methods were introduced early in the semester through two assignments that allowed students to gradually master the skills necessary to identify appropriate sources and locate and evaluate information in preparation for the annotated bibliography.

The project, Journey: The Road to Discovery, provided students with a unique opportunity to identify and explore an abstract idea directly related to their artwork, i.e. romantic love, the grotesque, the scientific body, female beauty, etc.; to locate historic and contemporary artists whose ideas, styles, genres and oeuvres have provided the foundations for art produced today; and finally to collect, correlate, analyze and compare the information in a 20-minute presentation and a large-scale informed drawing.