THE FLORIDA COLLECTION

I really really really love the Main Library's Florida Collection.
David Gonzalez, fiction writer, blogger, Cabinet Beer Baseball Club

A resource I used as a photographer is [the Florida Department’s] collection of photography books by local artists, friends and colleagues.  These books I cannot find anywhere else.  
Randi Sidman-Moore, photojournalist

The Florida Collection is pretty fantastic. We borrow or do research in it all the time over here at HistoryMiami. Recently for a personal project I did some census and genealogical research in the Florida Room and was surprised how easy and accessible everything was. 
Joanne Hyppolite, writer, Chief Curator, HistoryMiami

The Vasari Project, [a growing archive documenting the visual arts in Miami since 1945].
Domingo Castillo, artist, organizer, the end/spring break

Before I started working for the Friends of the Library, I discovered the Vasari Project archive [and Permanent Art Collection] while I was completing a thesis for my Women in Latin American Arts course. I was looking for information about Ana Mendieta and was overjoyed to find that the library had one of her Sketches for Gunpowder Works in their possession. Being able to speak to a library staff member who walked me up personally to view the piece made all the difference in my experience. I wish that more art history students and artists were aware of this resource.
Nicole Chipi, assistant, Friends of the Miami-Dade Public Library; art history student

I mostly use the Library’s altered books collection [the artists’ books in the permanent art collection] for techniques and ideas in my own work.  It also assists me in teaching others techniques during crafts. The variety of programming such as art exhibits, poetry open mics, poetry workshops and bookmaking workshops have also been helpful to me in my exposure as an artist.
Sky King, librarian, artist, writer

INTERLIBRARY LOAN

The most underutilized resource has always been Interlibrary Loan. Many times people give up looking for a text because it may not be in the local collections, and this is the way to solve that problem. I've been using Interlibrary Loan since the 70s, wherever I've lived.
Onajide Shabaka, artist, designer, entrepreneur, writer

The service I've got the most use out of has been the [Interlibrary Loan]. When you request stuff from other libraries and they send you crazy stuff that you didn't know existed. I once went through a hardcore American folklore phase and I was able to get these really cool books from southern area libraries and even once got sheet music for steel-driving songs. Kinda awesome.
David Gonzalez, fiction writer, blogger, Cabinet Beer Baseball Club, FIU instructor

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

I love the Spanish/Latin American literature (in Spanish) section in the Main Library.  I was never “educated” in this area and every now and then I go find something that I feel I need to read.  Often, there is a very helpful librarian around. 
Chipi Morales, Curator of Education, Miami Art Museum

FINE ARTS AND FILM COLLECTION

As far as the library system, in the past, the collection of art books has always been a great resource. In the present, free wireless access to the internet has been the most helpful as a research tool.
Marlon Zuniga, artist, art teacher, Carver Elementary School

The Main Library’s 16mm Film Collection [part of the Fine Arts Department] has been an enormous influence on me as an artist and human being.

During the late 80s and 90s I used to check out films on a weekly basis. The film [collection] is a rare and wonderful resource.

The 16mm reel of Harry Smith's Early Abstractions is immensely important and influential, as are the films by Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger, and Jordan Belson. This resource is Miami's best kept secret!
Kevin Arrow, artist, registrar, Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami

BOOK SALE

I take advantage of the [Friends of the Miami-Dade Public Library] Book Sale, which is held every year in December.
Nick Vagnoni, poet, instructor, Florida International University

BOOKS

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad.  It's the story about how the members of the underground rock movement literally built their own infrastructure in order to spread their music and art.  It's supremely inspiring to anyone who wants to make something or make something happen but is unsure of the audience or the means - you can create your own!
Lauren Reskin, DJ, Founder/Manager, Sweat Records

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. This is one of the best books about art ever written. Ueland had two mottoes: Never do anything you don't want to do, and always tell the truth. A wealth of courageous yet sensible advice about the creative life flows forth from those premises. All along she exhorts the reader to discern the truth and tell it. Remain true to your subject and to yourself. Look at things like a microscope if you must, but love them. Be idle, go for aimless walks, and do not strive but do not shrink either. I read this book every other year to check on my progress and refresh my will.
Franklin Einspruch, artist, writer, art critic

The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture by Michael D. Hall (Editor) and Eugene W. Metcalf (Editor)
Gary L. Moore, artist, curator

Book? I'd say the entire 811.5 range makes me happy. But Boves, el Urogalloby Francisco J. Herrera Luque [ILL] fills me with a sense of rebellion that I enjoy and find necessary in literature. It's also a fabulized historical fiction with long dashes of artistic liberty and caudillismo.
Abel Folgar, poet, artist, librarian

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, because it showed that the part isn't necessarily the whole, and that perspective/relativity is the underlying rudder to the human condition. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. Don't fully understand how or why yet, but I am certain that at least in part it made it permissible to create worlds...
Raul J. Mendez, artist, pilot

The book that has made a big impact on my work as a photographer is Frédéric Brenner’s Diaspora: Homelands in Exile--a book of photographs and voices.  For 20 years, Brenner photographed Jews all over the world, both portraits and candid moments, all black and white. It has inspired me that a project can be executed so consistently after all that time (I also love the photographs!!).
Randi Sidman-Moore, photojournalist

Anything by Calvin Tomkins--his biography of Marcel Duchamp [Duchamp: A Biography], The Bride and the Bachelors [ILL]. And poetry by Mina Loy [which you can find at MDPLS in The Oxford Book of American Poetry].
Michelle Weinberg, artist, writer, educator, organizer

On the Road, Jack Kerouac 
Memorias del subdesarrollo, Edmundo Desnoes
Mickey Garrote, poet, activist, library assistant, Main Library

Robert Penn Warren’s All the King's Men made me want to be a writer.
P. Scott Cunningham, poet, director, O, MIAMI and University of Wynwood

Definitely Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions  and Slaughterhouse Five, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Nabokov’s Lolita, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (the first time I saw metaphor for myself without being 'taught' it), both Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Marjory Stoneman Douglas (I didn't know people cared about Florida before them) and really…Stephen King. Reading Stephen King was the first time I was like, wait, I think I can do this.
David Gonzalez, fiction writer, blogger, Cabinet Beer Baseball Club, FIU instructor

It may be boring, trite and totally passé but when I read H. W. Janson’s History of Art (the original one) way back then as a college freshman, I fell in love with art history. I’ve read countless books that have been meaningful to me since but I wonder if I would have gotten there without Janson.
Chipi Morales, Curator of Education, Miami Art Museum

Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men which is a collection of her experiences gathering folklore in Florida—[my] favorite quote from the book:

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of negroism. From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what Squinch Owl says from the house top. But it was fitting like a tight chemise. I couldn't see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spyglass of Anthropology to look through at that.

It captures Hurston as writer, cultural-worker/interpreter, academic and much more.
Joanne Hyppolite, writer, Chief Curator, HistoryMiami

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat is a powerful book. I am in the library almost every week, reading as much as I have time each week. It all has an effect of what I do. I feel that much of my work is essentially research based.
Tom Virgin, artist, printmaker, teacher, Hialeah Public High School

EXHIBITIONS AND PROGRAMS

The library’s exhibition program has had a big impact on my artistic life in Miami, both as a viewer and as a participating artist.
Carol Todaro, artist, poet, printmaker, educator

The collabo between Richard Blanco and John Bailly [Place of Mind, a 2007 exhibition of prints, drawings, paintings and poems] was pretty cool. I'd say that seeing them in action [at an art and poetry workshop] at West Kendall Branch Library and then seeing the works up at Main Library was a highlight of being employed by the system.
Abel Folgar, poet, artist, librarian

I would say the occasional lunchtime gatherings the Library hosted last year [The Reading Room: A Temporary Space for Artists’ Books, Publications and Multiples at Main Library], with a bunch of local artists and writers in that one little room. I always value such salons as a way for a creative community to come together and talk about what we do and why.
Pete Borrebach, poet, assistant director, University of Wynwood

A resource I used on a personal level was the kids’ [arts and crafts] program on the weekends.  When my children were very young and it was hot outside, those Saturday morning art groups were great!
Randi Sidman-Moore, photojournalist

Participating in the exhibition program of the library has been the most important for me. After that, I've used visits to the library consistently as a resource for mentoring high school students learning about art.
Michelle Weinberg, artist, writer, educator, organizer