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Return to topHowdy Doody and Greta Garbo’s famed Matahari character gleam proudly in Darlene Tong’s home. The two faces are original works by Andy Warhol from his “American Myth” series. Tong, head of information, research and instructional services at the J. Paul Leonard Library, owns these works by one of her favorite artists thanks to her expertise in avant-garde art.
A co-editor of the oft-referenced 1980 book “Performance Anthology: Source Book of California Performance Art,” Tong was looking forward to meeting hot-shot New York art dealer Ron Feldman at an audio art exhibit nearly 20 years ago. As it turned out, Feldman was a big fan of Tong’s book.
“He was so amazed to meet me and said, ‘God, I use that book as a bible. I keep it behind my desk,’” she recalls. “Then he said, ‘Oh you want to look at Warhol’s latest series?’ I ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the silkscreens.”
Tong immediately bought the two Warhol works for less than wholesale price.
Her appreciation for art — both classical and contemporary — shines in her work at SFSU as liaison for a handful of departments in the colleges of Creative Arts and Humanities as well as her work with art history students on their master’s theses.
Her wide range of activities also include helping develop the Basic Information Competence Requirement, answering student questions behind the information desk, planning a $100 million renovation and expansion of the Library, and serving as a member of The Poetry Center/American Poetry Archives’ advisory board since 1986.
Her own scholarly research keeps her busy as well, publishing many articles in journals and books on avant-garde art and archiving arts.
Inspired by SFSU’s 1995 exhibition “With New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West,” she is now involved in a book project on Asian American artists before 1965. Working with Mark Johnson, Fine Arts Gallery director; Irene Poon Andersen, slide curator for the Art Department; and faculty from Stanford and UCLA, Tong is compiling the chronology and bibliography for the book. It will be published in several years.
For 20 years Tong was an active member of La Mamelle/Art Com, a San Francisco nonprofit artist organization that supported and promoted avant-garde art. When the organization became inactive in 1997, she arranged for its archives to be transferred to Stanford University and the Pacific Film Archives.
“She’s such an outstanding faculty member in every way,” University Librarian Deborah Masters says. “Darlene truly exemplifies the multifaceted role of a Library faculty member through her liaison work with academic departments and programs, her leadership roles within the Library, her own scholarly research, and her campus and community service activities. She is widely respected by her Library colleagues and appreciated by the faculty and student constituencies she serves.”
Tong first roamed the Library in 1975 when she joined SFSU as an assistant librarian. She was fresh out of UC Berkeley, where she earned a master’s degree in library science one year after earning a master’s degree in art history from University of Washington, Seattle.
“When I first got the job, I was very grateful, and still am, as there weren’t many jobs that I could get where my family lived and that was in my field,” says Tong, who grew up in Newark, Calif., and now lives in the Mission District.
Throughout her years on campus, she has noticed many changes. She notes that the faculty continues to get younger and more diverse, and advances in technology have revamped how the Library functions and the ways students conduct research. Though the Internet allows students to research with a click of a mouse, Tong believes it’s still critical for them to know their way around a Library.
“Information is difficult to find, and it’s become more complex — and you don’t find it all on the Web,” she says.
To that end, she helped develop the innovative Basic Information Competence Requirement (BICR). Formerly known as the Library Requirement, it teaches SFSU students to locate, retrieve, organize and evaluate information effectively and understand ethical, legal and sociopolitical issues associated with using information.
Universities from around the world inquire about the BICR to see how they can implement something similar, Tong says.
As SFSU moves forward with a project to renovate and expand the Library, Tong will play a lead role in the new Library’s design. She will aid in selecting an architect and help plan the Library’s schematic design in the next 15 months before construction begins. With her expertise in so many facets of the Library and her extensive knowledge in art, Tong is poised to do her part in creating a new, improved facility that will prove beneficial for decades to come.
“It is important to create a building that is not only beautiful but also functional,” she says. “This gives us an opportunity to rethink how we provide services to make them as user-friendly as possible for students, faculty and other library users.”
—Matt Itelson
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Last modified September 9, 2002, by the Office of Public Affairs
