Author: Getty Library

This year, the Research Library will be closed starting at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, December 21, 2018 and during the following holiday period:

December 22, 2018 -January 1, 2019

Library services and staff, including Circulation, Reference, Interlibrary Loan and the Special Collections Reading Room, will not be available.

Extended Readers may still use the library during the closure, with the exception of December 25 and 31, and January 1.

The library will resume regular service hours on Wednesday, January 2.

Happy Holidays!

The Research Library will close at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 21, and will reopen at 9:30 a.m. Monday, November 26.

While the library will be closed to all readers on Thursday, November 22, Extended Readers may still use the library until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 21, all day on Friday, November 23, and throughout the weekend. However, library services and staff, including Circulation, Reference, and the Special Collections Reading Room, will not be available.

Due to the ongoing fires in the area, Logistics will be suspending deliveries of materials to and from the Villa until Monday, November 19.

Note that this timeline could change. If you have any questions, please call the Reference Desk at (310) 440-7390.

Dear Members of the Research Library community,

I am very pleased to announce two new appointments in the management of the Library’s Research Services department, following the retirement of Lois White, former Head of Research Services, after 32 years. While we have lost an excellent steward and tremendous institutional knowledge with Lois’ departure, we have taken the opportunity presented by this moment for some internal reorganization and promotions.

Sally McKay has been appointed to the newly configured position of Head, Research Services. In this new configuration, Research Services will include the following sections: Reference, Circulation, Interlibrary Loan, and the Special Collections Reading Room. Sally is exceptionally well-equipped to lead the department into a new era–throughout her nearly 23 years of experience in various positions in Research Services ranging from reference assistant to reference librarian and Head of Special Collections Services, she has solved countless problems with innovative solutions, always keeping service and the safety of our collections at the forefront of her mind. Her extensive knowledge of library operations and collections is impressive, and she is by now a respected member in her field of expertise in provenance research circles both within and outside of the Getty community. Sally’s positive and generous approach to working with staff and researchers alike will doubtless continue to be a major asset to the GRI as she moves into her new role.

Sarah Sherman has been appointed to the newly created position of Manager of Reference and User Engagement within the Research Services department. In this role, Sarah will supervise and oversee reference activity, and coordinate among the various sections providing reference and related services to researchers from all over in person and virtually. Sarah, who has worked at the Library as a reference librarian for 11 years, has been a driving force behind some of the reference team’s recent ventures–often with a focus on user engagement–from conceiving and maintaining the library blog to working with the web team on library web page changes and developments and serving on GRI and Getty-wide social media committees. In both her internal and external professional spheres, Sarah is known among her colleagues for the thoughtful, proactive, and thorough manner in which she approaches all of her work, attributes which she will now apply to her new role as a manager.

I know that Sally and Sarah are committed to working with our Research Library community to consider what we do and what we could be doing, how we do things now and how we might do them in the future, and to develop new opportunities for further engagement in person and virtually.

Feel free to contact them, or me, with your ideas, at reference@getty.edu.

-Kathleen Salomon, Associate Director, Chief Librarian, Getty Research Institute

The Getty Research Institute Library will be closed to all readers on Monday, September 3, in observance of Labor Day.

The Getty Research Institute Library will be closed to all readers on Wednesday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day.

This year, the Special Collections Reading Room annual closure week is scheduled for July 9 – July 13, 2018.

During this period, the room will be closed while staff conduct a partial inventory and do some other housekeeping in the vaults.

The Reference Desk will be open during this week, and can assist with any reading room-related questions.

The Special Collections Reading Room will resume regular hours on Monday, July 16.

For scholars, researchers, and fans of architecture and design, a new research guide is now available that provides an introduction to and strategies for investigating the Getty’s substantial archival and secondary holdings on this topic.

The architecture and design collections include a vast array of diverse resources revealing the complex dimensions of the design process, from initial sketches and study models to evocative final renderings, detailed construction drawings, and published promotional photographs. The collection’s extensive archival materials include letters, notebooks, audiovisual materials, and ephemera that outline the evolving themes and issues of architectural discourse. International holdings date from 1500 to the present, with concentrations in 19th- and 20th-century avant-garde movements and mid-20th-century modernism.

Highlights of the collection include the archives of progressive Southern California architects Frank Gehry, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, Ray Kappe, Frank Israel, and William Krisel; international projects by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Peter Eisenman, Yona Friedman, Zaha Hadid, Philip Johnson, Daniel Libeskind, Aldo Rossi, Bernard Rudofsky, Lebbeus Woods, and Frank Lloyd Wright; the influential architectural photography of Julius Shulman and Lucien Hervé; and the papers of architecture critics Reyner Banham, Ada Louise Huxtable, and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner.

The research guide was created with the aim of assembling these resources in one place, making the breadth and depth of the holdings in these subject areas easier to grasp and research simpler to undertake. The research guide is a work in progress. Though it is not designed to be comprehensive, an attempt has been made to include all major archival collections as well as individual materials connected to important figures.

The guide is divided into the following sections:

• Welcome & Getting Started serves as an introduction to our library, our holdings, as well as key points regarding access.

• Papers of Architects & Designers is an alphabetical list of architects and designers represented in our archival collections, complete with holdings summaries and links to the Primo records.

• Papers of Architectural Critics & Historians is an alphabetical list of architectural critics and historians represented in our archival collections, complete with holdings summaries and links to the Primo records.

• Architectural Photography Archives is an alphabetical list of photographers of the built environment represented in our archival collections, complete with holdings summaries and links to the Primo records.

• Notable Southern California Modernism Collections gathers the Getty’s notable holdings in Southern California Modernism into one page, with links to both the Primo records and the full Finding Aids.

• California Architecture Collections Search Portal is a custom Online Archive of California search that only returns records with the terms “architect*” (architecture, architect, architectural, etc.) and “ca*” (California, Calif., CA, etc.) in subject headings, thereby streamlining the search process and bringing back only results that are highly relevant to the architects and architecture of California.

• Bauhaus Resources gathers the Getty’s important Bauhaus holdings into one page, complete with holdings summaries and links to the Primo records. As 2019 marks the centenary of the founding of the school, these resources are sure to be in great demand.

• Other Collections of Note include papers representing significant schools, movements, meetings, exhibitions, and competitions.

• Related Past Exhibitions provides links to past Getty exhibitions that focused on architecture and design themes.

• Researching an Architect and Researching a Building contain links to online guides, directories, encyclopedias, and databases that can be accessed from anywhere without a subscription as well as links to key Getty subscription databases that are particularly useful for those researching the built environment.

We hope you will make use of the guide and we welcome suggestions for how we can make it better.

-Aimee Lind, Reference Librarian

The Getty Research Institute Library will be closed to all readers on Monday, May 28, in observance of Memorial Day.

On Sunday, May 20th, the Getty Center will perform its annual Emergency Power and Lighting Test, as required by Los Angeles City and Fire Department.

All Extended Readers will need to leave the site by 6:30 p.m.