Welcome to the second issue of the Art Libraries Journal of 2024. We open with Althea Greenan discussing how the Women's Art Library fosters creativity through the artistic research practices it has hosted since the collection moved to Goldsmiths Library as a special collection in 2004. Her article, “We're in the Library!: welcoming creative practices, sharing responsibilities of access”, is based on the keynote lecture that Dr Greenan delivered at the 2023 ARLIS UK & Ireland conference, and we hope that its feminist ethics and creative vision will inspire our readers as it did the audience at Norwich.
Since 2019, librarians and curators at the V&A Museum, supported by dementia charity Resonate Arts and the NHS's Memory Service, have used the National Art Library's collections in Cognitive Stimulation Therapy sessions. Catriona Gourlay explores in her article, originally also an ARLIS conference presentation, how museums and libraries can play a role in improving people's health and wellbeing, specifically those living with dementia.
In “A kind of a ‘Huh?’ A conversation about artists' publications”, we interviewed artist Nico Dockx and art historian Johan Pas, who at the request of the Middelheim Museum, undertook a survey of the museum's library collection. Between March 2022 and December 2023, they examined the phenomenon of artists' publications from a range of perspectives, through a series of conversations with artists, designers, publishers and collectors, a symposium, and the book A kind of a ‘Huh?’ Artists' publications: (Not) a user’s manual.
Rachel Brett's viewpoint: “How critical can librarians be?”, offers a critique of some of the structural challenges that the implementation of critical librarianship has encountered as it becomes more widely adopted by practitioners within and outside art libraries. She asks how art and librarians reflect the society that created them, and what are the possibilities of systemic change.
Finally, closing the issue, Elizabeth James reviews A kind of a ‘Huh?' Artists' publications, (not) a user’s guide.
We wish our readers a happy summer, including stimulating conferences, and hope to see many of you at the ARLIS UK & Ireland 2024 conference in London.
