If I'm being honest I still feel as though I am a bit of an imposter in the world of art librarianship. I often feel as though I have a very conservative, corporate and conformist approach to librarianship within the art library environments in which I work. I also often feel naïve when it comes to discussing and affirming ‘what makes art librarianship different?’ Acknowledging such naivety, I will also openly admit that until last year I had not heard of ‘critical librarianship’ as a concept, let alone ‘critical (art) librarianship’, which is how I was introduced to it at a day-long conference held by colleagues from the University of the Arts London in 2018 at Chelsea College of Arts.

In 1961 Elisabeth Jastrow retired from her position as Professor of Art at the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). That same year her friends and colleagues established a scholarship for advanced art history students in her name. Jastrow devoted 20 years of her life to teaching at Greensboro. These were both difficult and rewarding years, fraught with financial worries, lack of library facilities, personal losses and a constant struggle to obtain teaching materials for her classes. At the same time she immersed herself in providing a high quality education despite the limited resources at her disposal. Her career began far from North Carolina under very different circumstances and with plans for a considerably more active academic life.

Les bibliothèques des musées français possèdent un patrimoine considérable, divers, original qui doit sa spécificité à l’expertise de leurs conservateurs. Ils ont le souci constant de rassembler une documentation de haut niveau afin de mener leurs recherches. Ces trésors, et cette documentation, acquis sur des fonds publics, devraient-ils être mis à la disposition d’un plus large public, comme nous en avons de nombreux exemples en Europe, en Amérique du Nord? Malgré quelques réussites exemplaires, la plupart des bibliothèques et centres de documentation des musées français n’ont pas les équipements et le personnel nécessaires à cette mission plus large. Cet article suggère quelques pistes qui pourront leur permettre d’affirmer leur place essentielle dans le réseau des bibliothèques d’art, tout en restant des bibliothèques de recherche.

A little magazine is a magazine designed to print artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses … little magazines are willing to lose money, to court ridicule, to ignore public taste, willing to do almost anything steal, beg, or undress in public — rather than sacrifice their right to print good material.

Hoffman, Frederick J. The Little Magazine; a History and Bibliography. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947,2.

ARTstor (http://www.artstor.org) is a digital library consisting of images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities and social sciences, along with a set of tools to support use of those images in research and pedagogy. Originally conceived as a project of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001, ARTstor became an independent not-for-profit organization in January 2004 and launched the digital library in July of that year. ARTstor works closely with both providers and users of content from educational and cultural institutions around the world in creating a resource that meets the needs of the scholarly, educational and cultural communities. At present, the ARTstor Digital Library contains over 420,000 digital images and descriptive data; software to enable active use of the images in the digital library; and tools that allow users to access and use personal and/or institutional images along with ARTstor content for scholarship and teaching.

Folk art is widely supposed to have come to an end with the coming of urban, industrial society, but activities persist which may be termed ‘folk art’ and which include, for instance, ‘family art’ — the creating, by a family, of its own visual surroundings and traditions. Folk art is a people’s art; it affirms and renews personal, local, and community experience; it is a shared activity which does not elevate the role of the ‘artist’. But libraries by and large document fine art, and thus, at least by implication, are associated with its values and appear to have nothing to contribute to the kind of social change which may be necessary if people’s art is to flourish.

The text of a paper delivered to art librarian members of the Danish Library Association in November 1972, published in Bibliotek 70, no. 2, 1973, pp. 31-34, and now published for the first time in English.

In Spring 1999 the Art Libraries Society/The Netherlands (OKBN) plans to organize a conference on ‘Book & Image: Visual Resources and Art Libraries’, to discuss various aspects of the whereabouts, accessibility and use of visual resources in art libraries and other collections of art historical documentation. By doing this we hope to increase awareness amongst art librarians and visual resource librarians of the necessity of communicating questions and sharing their experiences. In particular we need to find new ways of co-operating in order to meet the challenges posed by new technological developments and future users. A small working group of ARLIS-NL members, joined by some colleagues from slide libraries and visual archives, already meets bi-monthly for brainstorming sessions aimed at preparing an attractive and challenging program for this event.

Art libraries in Denmark mostly fall into one of two categories: art departments’ in public libraries, and research libraries attached to colleges, universities, and museums. Librarians in research libraries are in many cases scholars in their own right, while library staff at the Kunstakademiets Bibliotek are responsible for the Bibliografi over dansk kunst (sadly not published since 1981) and for Danish contributions to the BHA. The Royal Library and some art libraries hold collections of visual resources and of archival materials; in addition, there is an autonomous national archive of Danish artists, Weilbachs arkiv. An art librarians’ section of Bibliotekarforbundet (the Union of Danish Librarians), Kunstfaggruppen, was initiated by art librarians in public libraries, but is open to other art librarians too; Danish art librarians also work together within ARLIS/Norden. Professional training in Denmark is largely confined to general librarianship; art librarians in public libraries tend to be trained librarians with a personal enthusiasm for art, whereas librarians in research libraries are in some cases graduates but are not necessarily trained librarians. While the public library system took advantage of standardization, automation, and networking, the research libraries could not so readily embrace change, but two recent initiatives are beginning to bring libraries of all kinds together — DanBib, the Danish online union catalogue, formed in 1995 by merging the two separate databases for public and research libraries which both originated in the 1980s, and Kulturnet Danmark, a government-sponsored scheme involving the Internet.

Although the library of the Fashion Museum of Province of Antwerp is only five years old, it already boasts an exciting history. Evolved from the collection of the national Vrieselhof Textiles and Costume Museum, the Fashion Museum Library opened its doors in 2002, in the heart of Antwerp, the Fashion City. This article relates the history of this library, with a look at both today and the future, attempting to pinpoint the uniqueness of what it means to manage a collection on the phenomenon of ‘contemporary fashion’.

Obwohl der Wunsch dazu schon länger bestand, kam es erst im Februar 1995 dazu, daß deutsche Kunst- und Museumsbibliotheken — zum ersten Mal über-haupt — ihren eigenen Verband, die AKMB, schufen. Die Ziele, Pläne und die allerersten Aktivitäten der neugegründeten AKMB sind weitreichend. Sie spiegeln auch die spezifischen Bedürfnisse in der Landschaft deutscher Kunst- und Museumsbibliotheken wider.

Even though the desire had existed for quite a while, it was not until February 1995 that, for the first time ever, German art and museum libraries created their own association, the AKMB. The aims, plans, and the very first activities of the new founded AKMB are very ambitious. They also reflect the specific needs of the German art and museum library scene.

The Delft University of Technology Library, the oldest technical library in the Netherlands, is the national focal point for collecting literature on the applied sciences and technology. A major part of this collection covers applied and visual arts, with works from the sixteenth and seventeenth century based on Vitruvius, others by Palladio, Serlio or Dutch architects like Hendrik de Keyser, and contextual material on architecture and the fine arts. The Treasury aims to be both a nationally and an internationally known collection of technological literature.

In recent years many museums and art galleries in Europe have remodelled their libraries, often funding the physical changes by means of sponsorship, while at the same time re-thinking access and the services to be provided. This article analyses some current examples in Paris, London and the Netherlands and describes a range of different approaches. But it finds most successful the British Museum’s Paul Hamlyn Library, housed in the famous circular Reading Room and open to all visitors: these will discover, that, alongside modern databases, the Library has kept its traditional links with the book.

The Library & Archives at Kew hold one of the world’s greatest collections of botanical illustration, assembled over the last 200 years. A resource well-known to the natural history community, it contains much to interest art historians. Using this historically rich heritage our forward thinking includes acquisition of more contemporary items and the formulation of a digital strategy for 21st-century access and exploitation.

Some reflections on the life and home of S.C. Hall, founder of the Art Journal, his wife Anna Maria, and their literary explorations of the Thames.

The Tate Library holds an extensive collection of print ephemera that includes private invitation cards, press releases, postcards, and promotional material from artists and galleries. In 2006, library staff began to notice a trend for an increasing amount of born-digital ephemera, circulated via email and vulnerable to loss, deletion and disintegration. In 2011, they undertook an internal research project to develop a strategy for collecting, storing and providing access to born-digital ephemera. As the creation and dissemination of electronic ephemera continues to grow rapidly, we need to ask how we can bridge the gap in our technical knowledge and apply current digital preservation research to our library collections. How can we establish a low-cost working best practice for collection, storage and access? And is there future potential to create external partnerships with other institutions facing the same issues?

In situations characterised by complex and ambiguous economic conditions, it becomes necessary to structure organisations in ways that will meet the challenges. This paper introduces the innovative strategic plan currently being implemented at the Centro de Documentación y Biblioteca del Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. This is still in its early stages, but a contrast can already be drawn with the status quo five years ago when, despite being involved in various initiatives, the Library had no strategy of its own and no established reputation for contemporary art research.

History of Design is a very new discipline and there are many problems associated with defining the boundaries of the subject and developing the appropriate methodologies for research and teaching purposes. One of the major problems facing historians of design, and students, is the location and availability of source material, and it is in order to help librarians help those faced with this problem that this composite article has been written. The contributors are all members of the recently formed Design History Research Group.

Les Archives de la critique d’art sont une bibliothèque et un centre de recherche spécialisés en art contemporain et en critique et théorie de l’art. Elles se sont donné pour but de réunir les documents et les publications de tous ceux qui écrivent sur l’art contemporain.

Unique en son genre, cette institution créée en 1989 a une envergure internationale aussi bien par son fonds (écrits et archives) que par ses actions: développement de bases de données et d’un site Internet, organisation de conférences et de colloques. Son originalité consiste dans l’implication des critiques d’art dans son fonctionnement même. Par l’apport de leurs documents, écrits et/ou documentation personnelle, les critiques constituent la majeure partie des collections de la bibliothèque.