The Hirsch Library is located inside the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. It provides reference materials and assistance to museum staff, students, and the general public. The library was founded in 1927 and named the Hirsch Library in 1981 in honor of benefactors Maurice and Winifred Hirsch. It houses over 140,000 volumes focused on art and has additional collections located off-site. The library staff provides services like reference assistance, instruction, and displays to support research and museum operations.

1. A G R O U P P R O J EC T BY:
CHRISTY DUHON
DEBORAH LEBEAU
DA N I E L L E M C G AVO C K
BRANDON SHOUMAKER
M I C H A E L S TAT O N

2. About The Hirsch Library
The Hirsch Library is located inside of the Museum of
Fine Arts in Houston, Texas and provides reference
assistance and bibliographic instruction to Museum
professional staff, docents, and members, as well as to
college and university art history students, teachers,
and the general public.

3. About The Hirsch Library
Founded in 1927, the library was introduced by then Museum director James Chillman to give
patrons the ability to “judge the arts.” The original library was then settled in the basement of the
west wing of the Museum. The collection was started with a public fund and thereafter a budget
for the library itself was implemented with the museums budget. By the 1970’s the library had
outgrown itself and a new facility was needed and in 1974 the library was relocated to the Mies van
der Rohe addition inside of the Museum.

4. About The Hirsch Library
In September of 1981, an endowment for the library was established by General Maurice
and Winifred Busby Hirsch, two longtime museum and library patrons.
Maurice became a trustee of the Museum in
1960 and his wife, Winifred, played an active
role in the volunteer groups. General Hirsch
passed away in 1983 and Mrs. Hirsch followed
him in 1990, leaving her jewelry collection to
the Hirsch Library, and its proceeds from their
sale at Christie's, New York, which were then
used as endowments funds. This endowment
was designated to be used for, "the
maintenance, repair, embellishment of the
present or subsequently substituted premises
of the Museum Library and for the purchase of
fixtures, furnishings, books, manuscripts, book
illustrations, periodicals, appropriate art
objects and any other use pertinent to a
museum library.”
The Library was then named the Hirsch Library that year, as a lasting tribute to these two
Museum patrons.

5. About The Hirsch Library
As was the case in the 1970’s, by 1989 the library found itself again outgrowing itself. High density
compact shelving was then added, and the number of periodicals was reduced, which enabled the
library to double in size. In 2000, renovation to the Library took hold and the physical size was
increased from 3,900 to 8,400 square feet. The main floor contains the reading room overlooking the
Alice Pratt Brown Garden, and the downstairs portion housing the main stacks, vertical files, rare book
collection, and cataloging offices.

6. Users of the Hirsch Library
More than 7,000 individuals visit the Hirsch Library annually, with library staff
providing reference assistance and bibliographic instruction to students,
instructors, the public, and Museum staff.
The Hirsch Library provides access and assistance for anyone interested in art and art history, and while the library’s
mission is to support the museum and its operations, the library services the art community of the greater Houston
area.

7. Users of the Hirsch Library
Benedetti defines the main goal of any art museum library:
“The primary purpose of the museum library, therefore, is to support research concerning the
museum’s objects, as well as those it may not own but exhibits, by providing information on
those and related objects as well as pertinent information on their cultural context, and the
creators of those objects.”
Joan M. Benedetti, "Managing the Small Art Museum Library," Journal of Library Administration 39, no. 1
With this definition in mind, the library serves three tiers of clientele with a
descending level of importance towards satisfying the parent organization’s
mission:
•Museum Staff
•Researchers
•The General Public

8. Users of the Hirsch Library
Museum Staff:
The library’s first and highest tier of clientele is the museum staff, from the curators and
docents, to the administrators and volunteers.
This first tier of users form the focus for the library as an institution; supporting the museum
and its staff is the main goal of the library and most of the funding and energy is directed
towards this goal. Museum curators often begin preliminary research for future exhibits
many years in advance of the actual opening of the exhibit. The library provides the
foundation for this research, often gathering the material for the eventual exhibit catalogs
that are produced in conjunction with the exhibits. The library also provided the docents
with the needed information to enhance their presentations during tours and presentations
once the exhibits have arrived in the museum. The library also serves as an area of quiet
workspace for museum staff wishing to work uninterrupted, away from their respective
offices.

9. Users of the Hirsch Library
Researchers:
The second tier of clientele is the researcher.
The library provides research assistance to all of the local universities and high schools. In
depth art research for local university students nearly always requires the use of the Hirsch
Library for the completion of the assignment, and the library staff is extremely helpful in
this type of endeavor. For the local area high school students, the library provides a treasure
trove of materials unavailable to high school students in smaller communities. Another
focus of research in the art community is from appraisers and collectors researching the
provenance of certain pieces or the value of upcoming auction pieces. The library’s
numerous copies of auction house catalogs from over a century ago provide a definitive
history of many works of art from which researchers can draw.

10. Users of the Hirsch Library
The Public:
Finally, the last tier is the general public.
The library remains open to the general public, but only to those interested in art and art
research. While the general public is allowed access to the library, it is not openly
encouraged among the staff to promote the library to the average museum patron. This is
reinforced by signs on library computers stating that they are only for use in art research.

11. Services and Products
The services and products provided by the Hirsch Library include reference assistance,
bibliographic instruction, tours, orientations, and presentations. These services are
provided to the museum staff, curatorial staff, docents, students, faculty, appraisers, art
collectors and the general public.

12. Services and Products
Reference books are located in the public space.
Ready reference materials are interfiled with the
reference collection. This encourages the staff to be
on the floor with the patrons and provides
opportunity for further research engagement. The
library also provides access to subscribed databases.
The library offers tours, orientations, and presentations, and it has
hosted members of museum associations, art societies, and historical
organizations. Workshops with a focus on basic research skills, and
object-focused and online research are available, as well. Eight public
computers are available on the first floor. The primary use of the
computers is for art research. Docents and interns are active users. Also,
the docents and interns are allowed to access webmail from one of the
computers. Patrons sometimes use the computer to print museum
tickets.

13. Services and Products
•Displays that complement the current, forthcoming, and past exhibits are provided.
Materials on the exhibit subject area are displayed for quick reference. Other display
themes include highlights of the previous month, and also, displays with information of
deceased artists. As with many other areas of the library’s collection, the library collection
complements the museum’s collection.
•An interlibrary loan service is offered, but it is strictly used for staff purposes only, with the
exception of special patrons who may be working on dissertations and such.
•There is a self-service copier and a microform reader. Photocopying is allowed with a
charge of .25 cents for a black and white copy, and $1.00 for a color copy. The prices are
set high, as to protect the books, keeping with the philosophy that if the public finds it
expensive then they will think twice about making a copy.
•Clients who are working on a dissertation are allowed to hold all the books they are using
in a special storage area, so that the books will always be available when they come in to
work on their paper.

14. Services and Products
In addition to the services listed, the library has resources located in the stacks
on the bottom floor, as well as off-site storage. The off-site storage facility is
located three miles from the Hirsch Library. The storage facility is visited once a
week for pick-up and drop-off.

15. Staffing
An art museum library is ultimately responsible for supporting the
museum to which it is attached, and this affects the library’s
staffing requirements.
The library is staffed by trained professionals with a considerable knowledge about art and subjects
relating to art. This idea was expressed in the Staffing Standards for Art Libraries and Visual
Resources Collections, “The professional and paraprofessional staff in an art museum library must
have subject knowledge in the collecting areas of the museum. The librarians must have parity with
the curatorial and research staffs.”
This level of parity requires that the staff utilize trained, motivated professionals, along with the use of
volunteers to keep up the standards set for art museum libraries.

16. Staffing
Between the Hirsch Library and
the Kitty King Powell Library at
Bayou Bend, fifteen employees
and several volunteers staff the
various departments.
They have their own cataloging department and a dedicated technical services librarian.
The technical services department employs a full-time technical services librarian, and
she is assisted by two full-time catalog librarians, a part-time catalog librarian and several
volunteers. While most of the cataloging for the library is copy cataloging, the original
cataloging that is performed on-site necessitates the full-time librarians. A department
head and two full time reference assistants staff the reference department. Other staff
members filling staffing shortages when necessary also serve in this department.

17. Staffing
The final components, and possibly the most important, are the volunteers. The
volunteers staff numerous areas of the library. Several volunteers serve as pages, while
others take care of the vertical file collections.

18. The Collection
The entire collection is a non-circulating collection
and consists of over 140,000 volumes of work
dedicated to the arts.
These items range from books, periodicals, online
resources, artists’ books, worldwide museum
collection catalogs, and artist files covering more
than 25,000 artists.

19. The Collection
Their rare collection, which is viewable by the public by appointment, is searchable on
their online catalog. This collection dates back to the 15th century and contains works by
Giorgio Vasari with his early edition of Lives of the Artists (1647), which many consider to
be the first work of art history.

20. The Collection
The collection also
contains roughly
30,000 auction
catalogs, used by
collectors and
appraisers who
frequent them often.
The most recent, up
to five years, is kept
in the library itself,
with the remainder
kept in storage and is
available upon
request. The auction
catalogs are not
searchable, but are
available in the access
database.

21. The Collection
The collection is ever increasing its online databases as well as providing free online resources devoted
to art research. These are extremely beneficial to appraisers and collectors as well as the curators and
art students. The MFAH libraries currently provide free access while in the library to numerous
specialized art databases or collections such as the Archives of American Art, Art Inventories of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino art, The
Getty Provenance Index Databases, art.net, jstor.org and the Wilson art abstracts and index.

22. The Collection
Periodicals are also an important part of the collection.
There are 250 periodical titles in the collection with the most current on view, and the past few issues
stored on a shelf underneath the new issue. As with the auction catalogs, most are in storage and can
be retrieved as needed by a patron or staff member. Complete years of periodicals are bound.

23. The Collection
When a special showing is taking place at the museum or is scheduled, special
books pertaining to that show will be purchased for the collection as a
supplement to the show. These are used for displays while the show is
available in the museum.

24. The Collection
Each month hundreds of new
book titles are added to the
collection and are available in
the library’s reading room.
These new titles include
exhibition catalogs,
monographs, biographies,
collection catalogs, artists’
books, and the latest issues of
the periodicals.

25. The Collection
A special element to the library’s
collection is the ephemera files which
consist of three large, motorized and
rotating filing cabinets. These
cabinets house files on over 25,000
artists and each file contains
anything printed about the artist,
ranging from newspaper clippings to
gallery openings. Many artists or the
representatives send in such matters,
and it is a great treasure for
individuals doing research on a
particular art and their works. These
files are added to on a daily basis as
new information is found in
newspapers or received in the mail.
Some little known artists may only
have a few items in their files while
well known artists can have multiple
files filled with information.

26. The Collection
The collection is housed in three separate buildings. The majority of the collection is located in the
Hirsch Library on the main campus of the Museum of Fine Art. A smaller collection is housed in the
newly established Kitty King Powell Library and Study Center at Bayou Bend. A third building is
used for storage of older items or items that are rarely needed.
The Hirsch Library and the Kitty King Powell Library buildings are open to the public for research. The entire
collection is a non-circulating collection. The storage facility is only open to staff. A staff member visits the storage
facility once a week to retrieve items that have been requested.
Virtually the entire collection of the Hirsch and Powell Libraries can be searched through the Hirsch
Library’s catalog. Books, online resources, periodicals, theses and dissertations, and artist files can be searched
from home, work, or school via the internet.
The individual issues of the serials are not searchable using the ILS system yet. You may locate the titles of the
serials using the catalog but not the complete record of the holdings. The Hirsch Library currently uses an internal
searching system, but they are working on getting the Serials function up and running. A phone call or visit to the
Hirsch Library will be necessary to gather information about items that are not included in the catalog such as the
auction catalogs, museum files, and commercial gallery catalogs.

27. The Collection
An Acquisitions Librarian is in charge of the selection and purchasing of the
items and databases in the collection.
The curators also play a suggestive role in collection decisions since the
collection reflects the exhibits.
The auction catalogs are sent to the
library free of charge and automatically,
so there is no decision to be made and
they are an important part of the
collection. The items and databases are
purchased from individual vendors and
companies located throughout the world.
The endowment money is budgeted once
a year and collection decisions stay
within the budget.

28. Organizational Structure
The library is led by a Director.
The Director supervises fourteen full time positions.
The positions fall into three tiers below the Director.

29. Organizational Structure
The first tier contains two positions which fall directly beneath
the Director position:
•One position is a Library Assistant/Acquisitons Librarian
• The other position is a Library Association Librarian

30. Organizational Structure
Directly under these two positions fall three more positions which
supervise the majority of the staff:
• The position of Technical Services Librarian supervises the Technical Services
Department and staff and the volunteers whom assist with work in the
Technical Services area.
• The position of Reference Librarian supervises the Reference Department and
staff and the volunteers whom assist with tasks in the Reference Department.
•The position of Director of the Kitty King Powell Library supervises the staff at
that location and the volunteers whom assist with work at the Powell Library
location.

31. Organizational Structure

32. Facilities
The Museum of Fine Arts actually contains two special libraries:
The Hirsch Library and The Kitty King Powell Library and
Study Center.

33. Facilities
The Kitty King Powell Library and Study Center specializes in American Decorative Arts
from the 17th to 19th centuries and its facility resides on the second floor of Bayou
Bend's Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center in Houston.

34. Facilities
The Kitty King Powell Library and Study Center
The library offers research and reference assistance and the books can be transferred to
the Hirsch Library free of charge to any patron who desires them for research. The
collection housed here consists of more than 6,000 books, periodical volumes, and
auction catalogues and assists those interested in the history of American material
culture, including furniture, ceramics, metals, glass, and textiles. Also contained are the
Hogg Family Collection, consisting of information relating to the history of Texas and rare
books dating back to the 18th and 19th century and include English design guides, and
books for cabinet makers and architects.

35. Facilities
The Hirsch Library contains the main, core collection that coincides with the art
collections housed at the Museum of Fine Arts and is housed at the Museum itself.

36. Facilities
The Hirsch Library
In 2000, renovation to the library
took hold and the physical size was
increased from 3,900 to 8,400 square
feet. The main floor contains the
reading room overlooking the Alice
Pratt Brown Garden, and the
downstairs portion houses the main
stacks, vertical files, rare book
collection, and cataloging offices.

37. Facilities
The museum libraries also have one offsite storage facility that contains journals, auction
catalogs, and other books. This staff only facility is visited once a week, where holds are
picked up and brought to the library for patrons.

38. Approximate Budget
The Hirsch Library operates on a budget supplied strictly by its endowment in
addition to donations from benefactors.
While we were denied insight by Hirsch officials into the library’s annual budget because of the
nature of the library’s funding (i.e. endowment), we were given a couple of small windows through
which an idea of what goes into the library’s budgetary concerns can be discerned.

39. Approximate Budget
Endowment money is funneled
directly into the library’s
operating budget and is not
shared in any way with the
Museum of Fine Art, eliminating
any potential squabbles over
money between the museum
and library. This endowment
pays for staff salary, professional
development, collection
development, and conservation.

40. Approximate Budget
In addition, we were told the library receives a large amount of donated books from
members of the community. These books are vetted for potential inclusion in the library’s
collection and, if they are not accepted for inclusion, the library places the rejected
materials in a book sale. The proceeds of this book sale are then used to purchase more
appropriate materials for the library. Approximately 300 to 600 books are retained and
catalogued into the collection each month.

41. Approximate Budget
This is important given the recent
rise in the cost of art books
published in the United States.
According to the Library and Book
Trade Almanac 2009, the price of trade
paperback art books has risen in price
from, on average, $30.78 in 2005 to
$38.20 in 2008, a roughly 24% increase
in three years, while the average price
of hardcover art books increased from
$62.51 to $80.55, a 28% jump.

42. Approximate Budget
To get some idea of what an art library like Hirsch must budget for
collection development, we must look at an example from
another art library.
The collection development librarian for art and art history at University of South
Florida determined that, in order to expand the library’s collection to match
those of its peers, the library needed to purchase at least 7,000 titles. At an
average cost of $68.77 per fine art book, the library determined it needed to
spend about $481,390.00 (Powers).
From this, it can be inferred that the Hirsch Library is likely spending an
amount comparable to the amount being spent by the USF library.

43. Approximate Budget
This dollar amount is likely larger in the case of Hirsch
because, as a museum library, it must collect materials for both
its permanent collection as well as any traveling exhibitions that
come into the museum.
Because of this, “museum libraries that are non-circulating can have a more focused
collecting policy, but rarely does this relieve any budget constraints. Their main priorities
must be to collect actively in fields tied to their permanent collection and to collect very
wisely on subjects related to traveling exhibitions.”

44. Approximate Budget
Furthermore, although Hirsch patrons
cannot check out books from the library
some exceptions can order books not
available at Hirsch from other institutions
through interlibrary loan.
The patron can then view the material at
Hirsch at the patron’s leisure. However,
because Hirsch has to “establish
relationships with other institutions or
consortiums in order to take advantage of
the interlibrary loan option for their
patrons,” this arrangement “usually does
carry some budget repercussions.”

45. Marketing and Public Relations
As discussed in the article, Marketing-A Critical Policy for Today’s Information
Centre by S. Ganguly and Debal C. Kar, there are three marketing targets to consider:
•Initially, the client base needs to be identified.
•Once the client base is known, the “needs”, “wants”, and “satisfaction levels”
of the clients should be established.
•Products and services should be suitable to fulfilling the client’s requests.

46. Marketing and Public Relations
The Hirsch Library does not have a public
information officer or public relations staff
position, however, one of the staff
members did work in a public relations
position in her previous career.
The library would like to devote more attention
to the marketing area. Currently, all of the
marketing is done in house at the Hirsch Library.
Programs, e-blasts, and blogging are some of the
non-print resources used. They do implement
printing information sheets on their own, as well
as oversized bookmarks. Their web site has
been up for one year and has seen many visitors.

47. Marketing and Public Relations
One of the marketing challenges for the Hirsch Library is to market specifically to user
groups that would benefit from this specialized library. The promotion of computer use
would be primarily for art research and database access, not for general use of by the
public.
Another avenue of marketing or promotion for the library is the library tours, orientations,
and presentations. Docents, staff, outside groups and classes are able to participate.

48. Problems or Difficulties
The largest problem expressed by Ms. Wexler
at Hirsch was a lack of space for the storage of
art books and materials.
The very nature of art libraries, functioning as a research
facility, mandates the collection of numerous print materials,
such as catalogs and other ephemera.

49. Marketing and Public Relations
The collection of auction catalogs and exhibition catalogs is a standard practice
“for patrons to use while researching provenance, conducting appraisals, or
simply locating color images of artists’ works.”
The use of off-site storage is a common practice to address storage issues in art libraries. However,
space issues are not unique to art libraries like Hirsch. According to Payne, “College and university
libraries in North America hold a billion books, and add approximately 25 million more each year…and
libraries face great pressure to find efficient and cost-effective ways to house their existing holdings
and to make room for new materials.”

50. Marketing and Public Relations
The Hirsch has one main off-site storage location,
three miles from the library itself, but also shares
collection space with the Kitty King Powell Library
at the Bayou Bend House museum.
Storage at Hirsch’s off-site facility is done on a
high-density model.
Hirsch’s off-site facility, as well as most high-
density facilities, uses a modified version of
what is known as the “Harvard Model” of
storage. According to Payne, “Harvard-model
facilities are designed to achieve maximum
space efficiency at the lowest cost of
construction.”

51. Marketing and Public Relations
The Harvard Model consists of high-fixed shelving with volumes stored by size, rather than
Library of Congress Number, inside cardboard trays. A mechanical picker operated by a
human worker retrieves the volume from the stacks and delivers it for shipping.
Delivery to the requesting library is usually the next day.
In Hirsch’s case, a library staffer visits the off-site facility once a week to retrieve
requests for materials and return materials that are no longer needed on-site at
the library. The cost to build a Harvard model high-density storage facility
compared to another popular model, the Automated Storage and Retrieval
System (ASRS), is $3 per volume for Harvard compared to $10 per volume for
ASRS.

52. Marketing and Public Relations
In relation to the problem of storing materials, Hirsch is also working toward
digitizing its large collection of serials and magazines. One of the largest
collections of materials the library holds is a collection of auction and exhibition
catalogs and library staff would like to digitize these catalogs and make them
searchable for patrons.
However, because Hirsch’s integrated library system is not fully realized, the serials component is not
yet ready for public use. The progress toward digitizing Hirsch’s serials is slow because there are many
considerations to be made. The library must determine whether the serials are in the public domain
and whether they have already been digitized elsewhere (OCLC has a registry for this). In addition,
consideration must be made to presentation and accessibility).

53. Marketing and Public Relations
Another one of the problems the Hirsch Library has encountered is the use of their
computers by the general public who aren’t necessarily there for art research.
Approximately two years ago, library staff found that many children would come into the
library after school to simply “hang out” and play games or use social networking on the
library computers. Since then, the library staff has had to “re-claim” their space by asking
the computers be used strictly for art research. Since their revenue is not generated from
public funding, rather from endowments and donations, the library can limit computer
usage as such.

54. Marketing and Public Relations
Ms. Wexler also expressed an issue with the lack of Internet filtering software on the public
computers.
It must be mentioned that, because Hirsch does not receive federal funding, it
does not have to filter its Internet access in accordance with the Children’s
Internet Protection Act of 2000.
Because many works of art depict the nude human form, this causes problems with
filtering software. For example, a high school student in Maine doing research on Renoir for
an art project was unable to access pictures of Renoir’s nude works on the school’s Internet
servers. However, if she desired, she could have gone to an art library and seen the exact
same Renoir nudes in many different books.
The problem Hirsch runs into is that, because, due to the nature of certain art works and forms, the
library cannot filter their Internet on public computers, the facility runs the risk of a patron using the
public computers with more a prurient agenda. Hirsch staff has mitigated this problem by restricting
public computer access to patrons conducting only art research.

55. Marketing and Public Relations
Finally, Ms. Wexler also mentioned that the library suffers from a lack of marketing and
advertising; many members of the public do not know of the existence of Hirsch, or are
surprised to learn that there exists such a facility when visiting the museum.
On one hand, Ms. Wexler stated that the staff would like to advertise to let more users
know that they do exist, but, at the same time, the library wants to limit their marketing
because of the desire to avoid crowds and kids coming in to simply “hang out.”

56. Thank You!
A G R O U P P R O J EC T BY:
CHRISTY DUHON
DEBORAH LEBEAU
DA N I E L L E M C G AVO C K
BRANDON SHOUMAKER
M I C H A E L S TAT O N
T H E P H O T O S I N T H I S P R E S E N T AT I O N W E R E T A K E N F R O M
T H E M U S E U M O F F I N E A R T – H O U S T O N ’ S W E B PA G E A N D A R E C O P Y R I G H T M F A H .