The ongoing economic recession together with redirection of dwindling educational resources towards the sciences, with less and less for culture, appears to some Canadian art librarians to be marginalizing art library collections and art librarianship. In any case, the current cultural climate invites a broader definition of ‘art’ that encompasses multiculturalism. Another source of concern is the increasing emphasis in our library schools on training information generalists, although the schools are simply addressing workplace preoccupations with technical and administrative skills. It can be more satisfying to teach art librarianship to practising librarians than to students of librarianship with differing backgrounds, expectations and motivation. In Canada, there is a need for art library associations to be instruments of positive change, by offering courses and workshops, and especially by taking advantage of teleconferencing methods to extend educational programs to librarians and students across the country.

Although its replacement has not yet been fully developed, the traditional book is likely to be largely superseded in the foreseeable future by electronic publishing. Libraries will become book museums; with librarians as curators; many other librarians will find themselves dealing with unlimited and unpackaged information rather than with pre-packaged artefacts, in a role which will include facilitating and championing public access to information. The electronic ‘virtual library’ will encompass visual as well as verbal information; it will subsume art libraries except insofar as art libraries will become museums, but both the ‘virtual library’ and art libraries will continue to require the skills and vision of art librarians. Finally, in the short term, and perhaps indefinitely, the ‘virtual library’ and the ‘book library’ may not diverge to the extent of parting company altogether: the latter may continue to function as one gateway providing access to the latter.

The research project Digital Archive of Belgian Neo-Avant-garde Periodicals (DABNAP) aims to digitize and analyse a large number of artists’ periodicals from the period 1950–1990. The artistic renewal in Belgium since the 1950s, sustained by small groups of artists (such as G58 or De Nevelvlek), led to a first generation of post-war artist periodicals. Such titles proved decisive for the formation of the Belgian neo-avant-garde in literature and the visual arts. During the sixties and the seventies, happening and socially-engaged art took over and gave a new orientation to artist periodicals. In this article, I wish to highlight the challenges and difficulties of this project, for example, in dealing with non-standard formats, types of paper, typography, and non-paper inserts. A fully searchable archive of neo-avant-garde periodicals allows researchers to analyse in much more detail than before how influences from foreign literature and arts took root in the Belgian context.

In part one of this article, published in vol. 39, no. 3 2014, I described how the History and Theory of Art and Design Slide Library at Cardiff is to be reinvented as a visual resources collection by being put to new and creative uses. Here in part two I consider possible arguments for safeguarding at least one exemplar slide library to be preserved intact and exactly as it was when used for art school lectures. The arguments put forward are derived from the Florence Declaration to which ARLIS/UK & Ireland is a recent signatory. Were the arguments successful in persuading the art and design and library communities that such a collection should be preserved? I end by profiling the set of circumstances I believe would need to co-exist before any institution would find such a project to be practically, financially, culturally and intellectually viable.

The Cabell Screen, a 400 square foot media display installed on the façade of James Branch Cabell Library is a recent venue for artistic and scholarly expression at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. Spanning two floors of the main academic library building, the Cabell Screen displays curated electronic exhibitions of still and moving images to thousands of people who walk by the building each day. With no additional budget or staffing, a committee of librarians developed a mission statement, content strategy, and workflows to program and promote content. While the Cabell Screen uses a specific type of technology, the practices established at VCU Libraries can be applied to a range of budgets and media, including projections and monitors, to create a dedicated electronic exhibition space.

The Centre for Fashion Studies was established at Stockholm University in Sweden, in July 2006 through a generous donation from the Erling Persson Family Foundation, connected to clothing manufacturer H&M.

Fashion Studies at Stockholm University is an independent, theoretical discipline with an interdisciplinary approach looking at the past, present and future, and it includes different areas of critical discourse within the humanities and social sciences. Stockholm University Library plays a key role in research and education conducted at the university, and the library works in close collaboration with all disciplines to provide adequate support to researchers and students in a rapidly changing information society. In this article I will focus on and describe the process of acquiring fashion literature at Stockholm University Library from 2006–2013.

The concept of artistic knowledge is considered, that which is unique to the artist and that which can be acquired by other means, particularly from the storehouse of a library’s collections. The problem of art being at a remove in a library can be countered by collections of ‘real’ art e.g. artists’ books, and by outgoing, generous art librarianship. The art library can also make its own contribution to the maintenance of traditional artistic knowledge by concentrating at least a part of its collections on whatever is unique in its own area, thus counterbalancing the tendency to uniform, ‘monochrome’ coverage.

William Hunter’s bequest of 1783 forms the nucleus of the University of Glasgow’s Art Collections. It included a Rembrandt, a Koninck, three Chardins and three Stubbs. Hunter’s gift was unmatched in importance until this century which brought the gifts and bequest of 1935,1954 and 1958 respectively by Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip of the large part of James McNeill Whistler’s estate consisting of 80 oils, 100 pastels, c. 150 drawings and watercolours, 500 etchings and 140 lithographs, and the Davidson family gift and bequest of 1945 of work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh which included over 500 designs and watercolours and about 70 pieces of furniture. The general collection of c. 800 oils and 850 drawings and watercolours includes good holdings of 17th century Dutch and Flemish work, 18th century British portraits and 19th and 20th century French and Scottish painting. The print collection of over 15,000 items provides a representative selection from the late 15th century to the present day.

The papers of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust are one result of the passion of Harvard University Professor Emeritus Eduard F. Sekler. In the 1960s he witnessed the encroachments of progress and the associated threat to buildings in the royal and religious centers of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, and co-founded the Trust in 1990 with others interested in documenting the sites and restoring the buildings. The Trust has restored numerous temples, guesthouses, townhouses and shrines in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, and in the process has generated vital documentation including measured drawings, photographs, contextual materials, planning reports and feasibility studies. Threats to this material from the natural environment and political turmoil, as well as longstanding ties to Harvard of several of its members, led the Trust to approach the Frances Loeb Library at the University’s Graduate School of Design, where as a result the archive will be housed. The infrastructure developed by Harvard University Library will be used to create a virtual archive available worldwide on the web, as well as a parallel paper archive to be maintained by the Trust in Nepal.

This article describes some unusual ways of working with the special collections in the University of Southampton Library of Winchester School of Art. Two of these collections have proved particularly fruitful: numerous successful activities centred on the Knitting Reference Library have aroused great interest, and there is now a strategic aim of making it the primary research resource for knitting for artists, students, and researchers in the University, and also for the wider community locally, nationally and globally. The contents of the Artists’ Books Collection too are being shared with a new audience, through exhibitions, events and participation at artists’ books fairs.

Art ephemera are an evocative resource that can document innovative art and convey diverse histories. This article looks at the relationship between such ephemera and contemporary art practices, and at the relative values given to ephemera by artists, curators and librarians and, in this context, considers integrated catalogues and online guides as methods of re-contextualising art ephemera in the library. Recent collaborative initiatives, and projects that identify and locate artists’ files are reviewed here and three themes are identified: the biographical approach, interfaces for distributed catalogues and the integration of art and its documentation.

A survey of the English, European, and American magazines which might have influenced 19th century architecture in Australia and other places distant from the centres of urban industrial civilisation, and of Australian architectural magazines of the same period.

From a cultural point of view as well as politically and geographically, Hungary is very much part of Eastern Europe; although the “Iron Curtain” appears less formidable than hitherto, opportunities for people to encounter works of art are relatively few. In these circumstances, public libraries have a vital role to play in organising art exhibitions; their exhibition activities have been surveyed, and could in future be coordinated, by the National Széchényi Library. With some notable exceptions, the scope of exhibitions has tended to be unadventurous, focussing especially on the graphic and book arts because of their obvious relevance in a library environment. There is a particular need for exhibitions for children which would encourage uninhibited experiences of works of art and design.

This study evaluates the content coverage of Google Scholar, as it compares to three bibliographic databases – Arts & humanities citation index, Bibliography of the history of art and Art full text/Art index retrospective – on the subject of art history. The comparison reveals that it indexes roughly one-third of the 470 tested articles, dwarfed by the Arts & humanities citation index’s 73% coverage. Additionally, 64% of the 157 articles retrieved in Google Scholar are ‘citation-only’ records that contain incomplete bibliographic data and lack direct links to the abstracts or full text of the articles.

It is undoubtedly an appropriate time to promote discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of traditional library cataloguing policies and practices, and to identify some potential improvements for the future. Four major recent reports on the future of library catalogues, produced by some of the key international players in the library world, have come up with remarkably similar conclusions and could provide libraries with some practical guidelines for improvement which enjoy a broad measure of international support in the library world.

The British Film Institute (BFI) has been collecting documentation and ephemera relating to the cinema since its own inception in 1933. These collections have grown into a valuable resource for the researcher into cinema and television history, as well as reflecting artistic trends prevailing at the time of production. Although modest when set beside the posters, stills, designs and museum objects held at the BFI, the collections of press or campaign books and general ephemera should not be overlooked.

The most important bibliography for Dutch art is the Bibliography of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie). This bibliography, first published in 1943, is in fact a continuation in another form of H. van Hall, Repertorium voor de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche schilder - en graveerkunst sedert het begin van de 12de eeuw tot het eind van 1932 (Repertory for the history of Dutch painting and engraving since the beginning of the 12th century up till the end of 1932), The Hague 1936 (Vol.2: 1933-1946 appeared in 1949). The last volume published, Vol.16, Part 1: Old Art, comprises the years 1971-1972; Vol.17, Part 1: Old Art, for the years 1973-1974, is in the course of publication. The material for the years after 1974, however, is put on fiches, and can be consulted at the Institute. The last volume published that included material on Dutch 19th-20th century art was Vol. 9 (1957-1958). Material for the years thereafter also can be consulted at the Institute. Address: Prins Willem Alexanderhof 5 (entrance at the fifth floor of the Royal Library), 2595 BE The Hague; tel. 070-471514. Postal address: Post box 90418, 2509 LK The Hague.

Interest in, and information on, Irish architecture has increased greatly in recent years. Information providers are faced with the problem of tracking down relevant material, much of it grey literature, and then making it widely available. The problem is exacerbated since such material rarely appears in national and international bibliographies and databases. The solution described here has been to establish a joint database (PADDI: Planning Architecture Design Database Ireland), produced collaboratively by Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin.