My name is Arthur Kolat and I’m about midway through my MLIS journey. I live in Los Angeles with my wife, Alison, and dog, Beppe. My wife works at the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, raising money for the wonderful programs at the Los Angeles Public Library. I work as a part time, as-needed Library Assistant II at the Santa Monica Public Library. I’m interested in academic librarianship, especially music and art librarianship. I grew up playing music (piano, clarinet, saxophone) and went on to earn a BA in literature and an MA in art history. My master’s thesis was about David Hockney’s Wagner Drives and, amazingly, it was cited in a New Yorker article in 2021. For the longer story of my interests and journey to the MLIS, please check out this recent SJSU Community Profile that was written about me!
In addition to the Hyperlinked Library course and my job with SMPL, I have several projects this fall: I am running a bilingual camera obscura workshop as part of REFORMA LA’s family program at the Los Angeles Libros Festival in September. And in November I will copyedit an experimental novel by the author James Elkins, to be published in 2025. Jim was my thesis advisor and he runs an online reading group that I have been participating in for the last four years. In December the International Panorama Council will publish an essay that I co-authored with him and two others from our reading group. The essay is entitled “Panoramas as Projections of the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Fiction.” It will be my first peer-reviewed publication!
So far in my MLIS coursework I have been developing a survey study to better understand the information behaviors of professional classical musicians. I would like to know more about the information activities of this group because I think it stands to provide insight to music libraries about resources and services they might offer to students studying to become classical music performers. I am hoping to use the Hyperlinked Library as a way of exploring emerging trends and technology in music and art libraries.