”I feel about art librarianship as I feel about ghosts”. There is simply no other way to start once you've read Antony Croghan's viewpoint on the state of art librarianship published in the spring 1977 edition of the Art Libraries Journal. But perhaps almost 40 years on I have a more positive outlook than Mr. Croghan as I do believe in both and I'm not afraid of either!

Ffotogallery's photographic survey and archive The Valleys Project was initiated at a time of significant social and economic upheaval in south east Wales. This article explores the contexts for the establishment of the project in the early 1980s and how it was subsequently shaped by political and institutional advocacy as well as the emerging importance of creative photographic practice as a recognized independent activity in the UK and beyond.

In 2011, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales embarked on a project to digitize a selection of its historic photography holdings. It was the first time that the collections were looked at holistically. The project brought together curators from all collecting areas, encouraging cross departmental engagement, and brought to light collections that spanned numerous departments. How were collections chosen for digitization? What lessons were learned? The issues of incomplete metadata, the use of multiple numerical references and the varied way in which departments recorded data were just some of the issues faced by the project team. After three years, the rich historic photography collections are not only better understood, but there is now a legacy for further research and public dissemination.

The London Centre for Book Arts (LCBA) www.londonbookarts.org is an artist-run studio providing education programmes for a wide community of users and access to resources for artists and designers. Its mission is to foster and promote book arts and artist-led publishing in the UK through collaboration, education, and by providing open-access to printing and bindery facilities.

Established at Britannia Works, Fish Island (London E3) in October 2012, LCBA was founded and is run by artists Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura. We met them in 2015 and early 2016 to talk about their experiences over the last three years, current projects and future plans. They are an example of purposeful, pragmatic idealism.

The Library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been an institution of record for artists' publications for the last forty years. Through its artists' books collection, the library has traced the various ways in which artists have used printed matter as an integral aspect of their practice. In the present context, as publishing now takes place in digital spheres of social media, personal websites and email correspondence as well as in print, the library must constantly reconsider how it “collects” across these media. The surprise of our current context is the degree that digital networks, image exchange, etc. are feeding into an increased output of printed artists’ books, magazines and little architecture and design publications. Such web-to-print artists’ books can be considered ‘hybrid’ publications that exist between online and offline spaces. Following Paul Soulellis, we argue that these artists ‘perform publishing’ by investigating multiple materialities and design possibilities as their works travel through the network. We situate web-to-print artists’ publishing in a historical context while offering a vocabulary for the new ways that artists are activating and appropriating, screen-grabbing and searching, the mass of verbal and visual information on the Internet. Notable web-to-print publications by Dexter Sinister, Paul Soulellis, Sabrina Fernandez Casas, David Horvitz and others illuminate the aesthetics and tactics of this genre. Finally, we propose that collaborations between art librarians and web archivists might adequately preserve these hybrid works.