Office: W320 Pattee Library
Phone: 814-865-6778
Fax: 814-863-7502
E-Mail: henryp@psu.edu
I specialize in the library collections and services related to architecture, art, art history, and landscape architecture. You can usually find me in Pattee Library, but I also spend time in the Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library in Stuckeman (usually Thursdays.) I am happy to help with any type of information question in these disciplines, or with suggestions for the library collections in these areas. Feel free to contact me at any time. If you fail to reach me with an urgent question, try the web pages we have posted with information about art and art history or architecture and landscape architecture. Or check with the other staff at the Arts and Humanities Library or the Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library. I often talk to classes for one or two sessions to help with research assignments.
Within the arts my areas of specialty include American art and architectural history, early modern (Renaissance) art, and digital image database services. I also try to stay sharp on contemporary art, architecture, and landscape as well as the history of art education. The history of Pittsburgh is also an interest.
I've been an art librarian since 1980 -- at the University of Minnesota and Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Penn State in 2000. The Art Libraries Society of North America and the Visual Resources Association have been important organizations for my work and I have presented frequently at their conferences and others.
Doctoral coursework in the History of Art, University of Pittsburgh, 67 of 72 credits hours completed
MA in Art History, University of Minnesota, 1982
MA in Library Science, University of Minnesota, 1981
BFA, with honors, in Fine Arts/Theatre, Drake University, 1973
I read slowly in Italian, German, French, and perhaps Spanish.
“Understanding the Picture User” Advances in Librarianship, vol. 29 (2005) pp. 223-245.
“Penn State's Visual Image User Study” (with Michael J. Dooris, James Frost, and Michael Halm) portal: Libraries and the Academy, vol 5, #1 (January, 2005) pp. 33-58.
“Image Delivery and the Critical Masses” Journal of Library Administration, vol. 39, #2/3 (2003) pp. 123-138. Published simultaneously as Digital Images and Art Libraries in the Twenty-First Century , Susan Wyngaard (ed.), pp. 123-138. Binghamton: Haworth Information Press, 2003.
“The Avery Monument: the Elevation of Race in Public Sculpture and the Republican Party” in William A. Blair, Gary W. Gallagher, & William Pencak (eds.), Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War , Penn State Univ. Press, 2001, pp. 103-140, 283-294.
Editor for: Herbert Olds: Retrospective Drawings, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Butler Institute of American Art, May 4-June16, 1997.
Internship Award. Art Libraries Society of North America. I currently chair the committee that grants this annual award.
LionShare Advisory Board. I help with this Penn State Research Project to develop peer-to-peer software for academic uses.
Visual Image User Study. I coordinated this assessment research into digital image use at Penn State (2001-2003.)
