The ACRL Framework for information literacy for higher education, the guiding document for academic instruction librarians in North America, encourages a deep connection between information literacy and discipline-specific teaching practices. In the context of art librarianship, one means of attaining this connection is via librarian participation in studio critiques. Critiques enable librarians to identify the similarities between the research process and the creative process, making information literacy relevant for art students. In two different institutional examples, the ACRL Framework provides a conceptual grounding for studio critiques as a collaborative space between librarians and faculty, where students learn lifelong information literacy and critical thinking skills that enrich their artistic work.

As the number of digital images available to art historians grows apace, it is perhaps an opportune moment to consider what impact digital images have had on the discipline and on the work methods of art historians. This paper revisits the findings of a research project – Compare and contrast – focusing on the attitudes of art historians towards digital image technologies, the role of the technologies in the different phases and activities of the research process, the tools and their potential, and barriers to the use of digital images.

Arts students access information and find inspiration through a cornucopia of resources both within and outside of the library. Informed by creativity theory and information needs studies, this case study set out to identify the needs and behaviours of first year undergraduate students at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury. The use of multiple collection techniques captured rich data and provided an insight into ways of enhancing outreach both in the physical environment and online.

Art libraries are in many instances particularly well placed to operate international exchanges of publications, especially when (as in the case of museum libraries) they serve institutions which publish art documentation. It is nevertheless necessary to be aware of the hidden costs which can exist, and to examine the reasons for and the cost-effectiveness of exchange programmes. Guidelines for efficient and effective exchange are suggested.

‘Universal Availability of Publications’ (UAP) and the universal availability of art publications should be considered in the context of ‘one world’, a world in which we all share responsibility for our fellow human beings. In this context both librarianship and art, and thus art librarianship also, should be seen as services rendered to humankind at large. IFLA’s UAP programme has been conceived as a service, intended to supply genuine human needs, and art librarians, who are constantly frustrated in their efforts to serve users of art libraries by the limitations to the availability of art documentation, can readily identify a need for ‘Universal Availability of Art Publications’. Nevertheless, a worldwide programme of this nature is in danger, first, of being pursued for its own sake (or for the sake of ‘needs’ which are imagined, over-emphasised, or misconceived), and second, of reinforcing cultural imperialism. Safeguards include acceptance of the necessity to proceed step by step in pursuit of a success which can never be complete; the fact that UAP is founded on local collections developed to meet local needs; recognition of the imbalance in the production of publications in different parts of the world; and recognition of the importance of unpublished documentation and of ‘publications’ which do not as yet exist. A greater emphasis on increasing the availability, and generating the production, of publications from countries which publish relatively little, is proposed. A fourth safeguard ought to derive from the professional ethics and grass-roots experience of librarians, who serve and identify with library users, actual and potential. The pursuit of universal availability of art publications should be based on realistic assessment of what is feasible, and on local, regional, and national resources, with all possible encouragement being given to developing countries to document their own arts. Art librarians may be paying too little attention to the needs of users and, especially, of non-users of art libraries, and should be aware of the barriers to availability which can result from the prevalence of a narrow, elitist conception of ‘Art’ and from the provision of library services primarily for an elite. Without neglecting the service of scholarship, the art library profession should try to shift the balance of its commitment towards the provision of a service for everyone, everywhere, so that our interpretation and pursuit of the ‘Universal Availability of Art Publications’ truly reflects a vision of our whole world’s heritage and practice ‘of divers arts’.

This is the text of a paper presented to the Section of Art Libraries, at the 1985 IFLA Council in Chicago.

Libraries can easily be integrated into a museum’s activities, since museums too have functions that require the processing of information, such as preservation, research and communication. However museums in Turkey were not notable for developing efficient art libraries until Istanbul Museum of Modern Art opened. The distinctiveness of this museum’s library results from a change in the museum environment in Turkey, and the introduction of a number of features that are new in art libraries in this country.

The Fine Arts Library at Harvard University has served the needs of teaching faculty, art museum staff, art and architectural students, researchers and historians since the founding of the Fogg Art Museum in 1895. Library collections have been enhanced by gifts from faculty, museum publications received on exchange, and by the transfer of arts-related materials from other Harvard libraries. Although founded in the spirit of a museum library, the Fine Arts Library has increasingly developed its collections and services for a wide community of users in fields across the academic spectrum.

The traditional subject category ‘visual arts’ is based on a value judgment, but aesthetic criteria no longer suffice to define this category. Art is increasingly permissive in its range. The subjects of art history, archaeology, social anthropology, and history of technology tend more and more to overlap. Almost any material artefact can now be viewed aesthetically, and any work of visual art may be considered as an artefact. Libraries should aim to bring together all the material culture of human societies, whether tools or works of art, in their bibliographic classifications instead of scattering it as at present.

(Slightly revised version of a paper given at the Art Libraries Round Table, 45th IFLA Congress, Copenhagen, 1979.)

Exhibition catalogs and related ‘ephemera’ frequently include statements by artists which can be regarded as primary documents. Artists’ statements which are included in catalogs of group exhibitions tend to be relatively difficult to access and so are easily overlooked, while statements included in ephemeral publications associated with group exhibitions are virtually irretrievable even when such material is retained by libraries. Some help is available from published bibliographies and online databases; more thorough cataloging procedures are also available.

Aquarelle is a flagship project developing the Information Network on Cultural Heritage, funded under the European Commission’s Telematics Applications Programme. It has created a distributed multimedia information system, offering access to interrelated multimedia reference documents and primary data that describe the cultural heritage of Europe. It aims to create the technology to enable a service which would provide uniform access to the varied collections of data held by museums, art galleries and other cultural organisations throughout Europe.

The European Union-funded Vektor project has focused on the opportunities for documenting contemporary art material in European archives and making it accessible on the Internet. After three years of research Vektor is now publishing the results, amongst which is European Artnet, a website connecting a number of different archival collections and giving information on contemporary art in Europe.

AACR2 encourages specialist and archival libraries to “use the rules as the basis of their cataloguing and augment their provisions as necessary.” Is this relevant to the needs of an image collection? What are the implications? The Science Museum has evolved a supplement to AACR2 to cope with visual materials of all kinds retained primarily for their documentary value, and the special needs of its users. A case study suggests how traditional descriptions of art works may metamorphese into computer-based systems such as those of the MDA and AACR2.

This article has developed from a contribution to the ARLIS/UK and LA course “The Image Library” at the Library Association on 20 February 1981. The views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Science Museum.

Although art librarians began to join together in North America in the 1920s, they did so in two distinct strands — museum librarians and public librarians. Art librarians of all kinds, including, significantly, art librarians in higher education, formed national associations from the late 1960s, and almost immediately began to establish the international links which culminated in the coming into being of the IFLA Section of Art Libraries. International cooperation, including networking of resources, is helping art libraries to serve users worldwide. Art librarianship is now so well established as an international enterprise that it can afford to admit other arts information professionals; nonetheless it needs to continue to work towards becoming a genuinely multi-cultural professional community which does not privilege any country, region, language, culture, gender, or point of view.

This overview of the London Institute Library and Learning Resources website, the i page, focuses in particular on issues involved in selecting and evaluating high quality resources in an academic context. The article begins by detailing the philosophy, design and initial construction of the site, and gives an outline of the structure. The most heavily used section of the i page is the web guides and the evaluation criteria applied to web resources selected for inclusion are examined, with reference to the digital art web guide. The main criteria of content, structure, authority and subjectivity are looked at in detail. The process of user feedback is highlighted and, as the site is now over two years old, pertinent issues relating to its future growth and development are also discussed.

Slides present problems of retrieval which have not always been solved by those responsible for their organisation. Each image can be seen, sought, and labelled in a variety of ways. Organisation of the slides themselves according to subject is essential to facilitate browsing, which is the normal method of selection on the part of borrowers, and which generates ideas and reveals new or alternative material. The borrowing of slides is a major problem which tends to be solved most effectively by relatively informal systems. The slide collection should be conveniently located so far as the user is concerned; even when this can be achieved the development of private collections by individuals or teaching departments should be regarded as complementing the central collection. An ‘ideal’ organisation is proposed, based on conclusions drawn from a survey of slide collections which included interviews with curators, users, and non-users (British Library R.&D. Report no. 5309, 1976)

Due not least to its inter-disciplinary breadth of scope, design history has not developed an adequate methodology for identifying (or cataloguing) artefacts or for placing them in their context (classification). Yet design history is essential to design scholarship and to design itself because these are its tasks. (A paper presented to the ARLIS Annual General Meeting on April 1st, from A Framework for Design Scholarship by Bruce Archer, to be published in 1978).

In an era of economic stringency it is necessary to ‘sell’ the art library, in order to win support as an investment for survival. To do this a new style of reference librarianship has been implemented in the Fine Arts Department of Birmingham Public Libraries, including the provision of services to branch libraries and to art teachers; the creation of publications, exhibitions, and the Art Pack; and the involvement of staff in appropriate committees. (The text of a paper presented to the course on ‘Managing the Arts’ organised by ARLIS and the Polytechnic of North London in December, 1976).