Art to Illustrate a Point - Power Users in the Library

Libraryjournal.com recently posted an article about the power users of the library. Basically, who utilizes the resources and what is being utilized. Here's a link to the article:

http://blog.libraryjournal.com/ljinsider/2011/10/17/identifying-and-cultivating-the-power-patron/

This has become an important part of justifying uses of the library: data. How can we prove people are using the resources? What kind of people are using the resources, and most importantly, what are they gaining from them? A lot of school libraries are struggling to prove user-ship and improvement through qualitative data. In Ewing High School, the librarian recently received a grant to purchase lower level reading books to improve literacy in the school. While she says the books are flying off the shelves, she now has to come up with a way to prove that these books are improving literacy and the quality of learning for those students and in the general classroom environment.

While this is not quite the qualitative data that they are thinking of, I could not help but call to mind an art project I stumbled upon over the summer. Wendy MacNaughton is an artist who publishes monthly documentary-like art collections in the online magazine The Rumpus. Her depictions of everyday people, places, and things aesthetically captures the mood of a community. In May, she published a collection of watercolors based on the "power users" of the San Francisco Public Library. This representation of the variety of users that walk in and out in search of information,as an art-minded person myself, is a great representation of data. What better way to prove user-ship than physical representations of the community that you will find in the library? Not only are they physical representations, but they are artistic and creative, fostering an even greater community by combining those seeking equal opportunity for information with those who are creating information through art.

Check out her beautiful watercolors based on what she saw in the San Francisco Library, and check out some of her other ones as well:
http://therumpus.net/2011/05/meanwhile-the-san-francisco-public-library/