Heard Museum Library and Archives - Collections Preservation Assessment Project
FAIN: PG-271812-20
Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ 85004-1323)
Mario Nick Klimiades (Project Director: January 2020 to October 2022)
A preservation assessment of a library and archive collection dedicated to Native American art and cultures, covering topics such as Native American fine art, literature, anthropology, and museum studies. The library is home to 434,000 resources, consisting of books and journals, while the archives contain 300,000 photographs, 2,500 audiovisual recordings of Native music, lectures, interviews, and film-making, along with nearly 480 research collections. A cornerstone of the library is the Native American Artists Resource Collection, which brings together biographical information on 27,000 Native artists. The library and archives are used by scholars from around the world for public and educational programming, by students and faculty at local universities, and by the Heard Museum’s curatorial staff for exhibit development.
The Heard Museum’s Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives houses one of the world’s most unique and important collections of Native American materials, books, artist documentation, and archival collections. In the last decade, the Heard's Library and Archives have experienced rapid expansion and requires an assessment of current holdings and a long-range plan for the collections' preservation and accessibility. To achieve this goal, the Heard will retain the services of a preservation specialist to conduct a on-site visit to develop an assessment report with recommendations for future projects and planning.