The term ‘artists’ books’ has been used since about 1970 to denote inexpensive booklets produced by artists in ‘unlimited’ editions, but can legitimately embrace a variety of artefacts; the word ‘bookwork’, coined in 1975, carries the more specific meaning of a work of art in book form. Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, published in 1963, was a pioneering bookwork; it was followed by more bookworks from the same artist through the next ten years; however, Ruscha’s innovatory productions had been preceded by a number of experiments with the book format, by Bruno Munari, Åke Hodell, and others, during the 1950s and early 1960s. Bookworks flourished in the 1970s as a means of making actual works of art available to a wide audience, but in the 1980s this ideal was gradually overtaken by a growing tendency towards making bookworks as precious, costly collectables, in limited editions, while some of the earlier, once cheap bookworks began to sell for inflated prices on the secondhand market. Nonetheless, many artists are continuing to produce relatively inexpensive bookworks, sometimes using photocopiers, or to publish artists’ magazines. The work of Telfer Stokes demonstrates that the multiple book format remains an exciting and accessible medium in the hands of a committed artist.

An overview of the author’s research into the collection management of artists’ books in UK and Eire libraries, dealing with their selection, acquisition, processing, cataloguing, storage, conservation, and exploitation. Much of the information derives from a questionnaire distributed to 127 art and design libraries in the UK and Eire during 1992. Various policies are compared and the case of the National Art Library, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is examined in detail. Artists’ books are seen to illuminate fundamental issues concerning both contemporary art and contemporary librarianship. Future prospects are discussed and recommendations for better use, management, promotion and understanding of the material are offered. A selection of 25 definitions of artists’ books is appended.

The Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago started collecting, or rather, receiving artists’ books more than fifteen years ago. Access by author and title having proved inadequate, an automated catalog has been used to access the collection through a range of descriptors (including physical characteristics) since 1988. A prototype of a revised version of this automated system, version 3, is in the process of being developed. Of particular significance, this version, written using FoxPro2 software, will include a file of images of the artists’ books.

Picture lending has, at different times and in different places, been championed by individuals who have regarded it — with some difference of emphasis and interpretation — as a means both of helping artists and of bringing art into people’s lives. Ten such individuals are profiled: Heinrich Schulz; the more radical Otto Nagel, and Rudolf Bosselt, who were active in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; Franz Roh and Eva Pietzsch, whose work continued into the post-War period in West Germany; Pieter Kooistra, founder of the SBK network in the Netherlands; Knud Pedersen in Denmark; Karl-Heinz Bolay, who became a leading librarian in Sweden; and Heinz Werner and Isolde PreiBler, who championed the cause of picture lending in East Germany, in circumstances which imposed severe limitations on what could be achieved until German unification opened up new possibilities. (An English version follows the German original).

From 1973 until early 1992, the Creswell Library of Islamic Art and Architecture, first established at the American University in Cairo (AUC) in 1957, evolved from a restricted research library dominated by its original owner, K. A. C. Creswell, into a teaching and research branch library integrated within the university’s library system. International politics and university-wide library needs delayed improvements, but the Creswell collection was fully catalogued and interfiled when the new Main Library opened in 1982. As use of the Creswell Library accelerated, stacks nominally closed were opened to faculty and trusted students until standard procedures resumed after a 1989 budget and staff increase, anticipating the library’s 1992 incorporation in AUC’s new Rare Book and Special Collections Library.

A marked increase in MA degrees awarded in the discipline and in use by visiting researchers during the library’s final years testifies to its effectiveness in supporting the study of Islamic art. Assessments of the library’s overall contribution, however, must balance the value of a core collection of beautiful books, little used, against an incalculable loss: the records of Cairo buildings no longer extant that would have resulted from the larger student group a more accessible library would have encouraged.