The Exhibits Director and Exhibits Associate work with subject specialists and collection managers to develop and support exhibits across the Smathers Libraries, including the branch libraries, departmental libraries, and the Health Sciences Center Libraries as well as online and traveling exhibits.
Smathers Libraries Exhibits Policy
The George A. Smathers Libraries have an active exhibition program that shares, interprets, and promotes the collections. Exhibits support and enhance the Libraries’ role as an intellectual center of the university.
Challenging and innovative exhibits are to be carefully developed in order to support the mission of the Libraries and the University. Library exhibits are a scholarly endeavor. They promote interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching and stimulate intellectual curiosity. Items included in exhibits are primarily from the Libraries’ collections and supplemented, as appropriate, with materials from other sources.
Exhibits within the Libraries are managed by the Libraries and must have a Library faculty or staff member as primary curator. The curator(s) work(s) in consultation with the Exhibits Director and Exhibits Associate to plan, develop, install, and promote exhibits within the Libraries. Co-curating and collaboration within the Libraries’ various collections and with campus departments, the community, and other institutions is encouraged.
The Libraries do not develop or host exhibits with the sole or principal purpose of promoting agendas of organizations outside the Libraries, or to advocate for specific political, philosophical, or religious viewpoints. The Libraries do not display unsolicited exhibits.
The Libraries may elect to use exhibit materials prepared by other organizations not affiliated with the university, such as traveling exhibitions. They may also elect to create traveling exhibitions, which may be loaned to other institutions partially or in their entirety. The intellectual property and content of such exhibitions cannot be modified. The Libraries may also serve as the archive for traveling exhibitions produced in house or elsewhere.
Physical exhibitions created by the Libraries shall have complementary online component(s) as appropriate. All online material created for, or in conjunction with exhibitions shall be archived and publicly available in the University of Florida Digital Collections.
All exhibitions are open to the public and free of charge. Exhibits are open during the same hours as the building in which they are housed, unless otherwise specified and with occasional exceptions for maintenance requiring the opening of the cases.
The Director of Communications, together with the Exhibits Director, provides appropriate images and credit lines for distribution and use by the press.
Smathers Libraries Exhibit Procedure Guide
The exhibit curator(s) will write all exhibition text. The exhibit curator(s) should have colleagues read labels before submission to ensure they are easy to understand and convey the intended message. After reviews, the exhibit curator(s) submit the exhibition text to the Exhibits Department for peer review and editing. Before sending it for production, the Exhibits Department will review the text for content, word count, style, and typographical accuracy. The Exhibits Department will send curator(s) suggested edits before final submission.
Smathers Libraries Exhibit Style Guide
Write for your audience, not your colleagues.
Adhere to the word count.
Engage with the object as it relates to the exhibit theme.
Ask questions, admit unknowns.
Write as you would speak.
Write a story, not an annotated bibliography.
Smathers Libraries Exhibit Proposal Form
Exhibits within the Libraries are managed by the Libraries and must have a Library faculty or staff member as primary curator. After reviewing the Exhibits Policy, Procedure Guide, and Style Guide, prospective curators should fill out the proposal form and email it to the Exhibits Director.