From the point of view of a student of art history in the 1980s re-entering the discipline as a graduate student, the ‘new’ art history represents a dramatically wider field of enquiry involving new methodologies, although ‘old’ art history is still pursued by some academics. The ‘new’ art history employs an interdisciplinary approach which embraces materials far beyond ‘traditional’ art historical sources, and so information has to be sought outside the art library and via the Internet. Librarians responsible for supporting art history studies need to keep in touch with teachers, with curriculum developments, and with the discipline itself; it may also be helpful to get involved in staff/student use of the Web, and to collaborate with other Humanities librarians. The way in which the ‘new’ art history branches out in all directions parallels the hypertext linkages of the Web and the complexity of our globally-connected world.

Although the idea of lending works of art originated in Germany in 1885, the first library to actually do so was that of Newark, U.S.A., through the initiative of John Cotton Dana in 1903-4. Other countries followed suit - Britain before the end of the Second World War, Scandinavia by the late 1950s, and France, where in recent years over 30 picture libraries have been established with state support under Mitterand’s Minister for Culture, Jack Lang.

While in East Germany there are over 100 picture libraries lending mainly reproductions, in West Germany there are 61, lending exclusively original works. The Graphotek in Bremen Public Library is the third largest of these, and all citizens over 16 can borrow from its collection of over 2,200 works for eight weeks at a time, choosing either directly or, at any of the six branch libraries, from colour slides and catalogues.

The Bremen Graphotek has set out to build up a representative collection of German and international art from all periods, with special emphasis on contemporary art; prints make up the greater part of the collection, and reproductions are excluded. 720 artists are represented; 50% of funding is reserved for Bremen artists. Over 33,000 loans have been made in the Graphotek’s first ten years, with 75%-80% of the collection being out on loan at any given time. There has been a gradual trend towards more borrowing by schools, hospitals, etc.

The Graphotek has promoted 88 exhibitions. The last of these, on the occasion of the Graphotek’s 10th anniversary, displayed work by 70 artists illustrative of new directions in art since 1970.

The Graphotek also functions as a centre for information on art, artists, art galleries, etc., with reference books and art journals available for consultation.

ARLIS Norge was conceived at the IFLA Conference at Munich in August, 1983, and held its first annual meeting in Oslo on 25th January 1984. Its membership includes all art librarians and art libraries in Norway. Meetings are held regularly, and courses and study visits are also organised from time to time. The newsletter ARLIS Nytt is published four times a year. ARLIS Norge participates in ARLIS Norden and in the IFLA Section of Art Libraries, and actively fosters international relations. During the last five years, ARLIS Norge has established a bibliographic database on Norwegian art history, KUNSTBIB. Current and future concerns include art resources in public libraries, education for art librarianship, and the need for a Norwegian thesaurus of art terms. (This is an English translation of an article which was published in Norwegian in ARLIS Nytt 1993 no. 3/4 p. 1-4).

During the last fifteen years, Japanese museums and institutions, which previously kept art historical information very much to themselves, have begun to take steps to make information and research materials more accessible. In several cases, museums have founded their own research and information centres. At the same time, the use of computers has been introduced in the humanities, and the potential of the computer as a means of organising, exchanging, and providing access to art historical and bibliographical data is being explored. These “new trends” are being spearheaded by art historians and museums; art librarians are now contributing to the dialogue, and although the concept of the “art library” remains relatively undeveloped in Japan, the time is ripe for art librarianship to flourish.

From its position at the heart of the Cinémathèque française in Paris, the Bibliothèque du film provides all sorts of users with a unique documentary collection on the cinema: monographs, journals, posters, drawings, photographs, archives and videos. The reading rooms, the vidéothèque, the image library and the archive search room allow users to consult all these documents.

ARLIS/Norden was founded in 1986 to bring together art libraries and art librarians of all kinds in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The association has maintained close links with the IFLA Section of Art Libraries, and it hosted the Section’s meetings at Stockholm in 1989. ARLIS/Norden has received guests from other countries, while Nordic colleagues have participated in events in other countries. Its own annual meetings are the key events in ARLIS/Norden’s own programme.

The loan of works of art to the public was initiated in the Netherlands in 1955 through a scheme set up by a group of artists to encourage people to purchase contemporary art. The success of this scheme attracted support from the government, which was itself acquiring works in the process of assisting artists. Works thus acquired were lent to public institutions and government bodies, but from the 1970s they were also made available for loan to the public via artotheques. These two schemes gave rise to over a hundred art lending centres including hybrid establishments owing something to both; however, direct government support of artists has recently been phased out, and as a result artotheques no longer obtain works via the government and must evolve alternative methods of acquisition.

The Centre des livres d’artistes (cdla), which has been based in S aint-Yrieix-la-Perche since 1994, is the culmination of a project initiated at the end of the 1980s by the association Pays-paysage. After many years during which it lacked anywhere to develop its activities fully, the cdla has at last been installed in a refurbished building and opened early in 2005 with a new exhibition of books and publications by herman de vries. The two principal activities of the cdla are the creation and management of a collection of artists’ books (currently nearly 3000 items), and the organisation of exhibitions in France and also abroad.

The Art and Design School Libraries (ADSL) Division of ARLIS/NA was tasked with preparing a report on the state of ADSLs across North America. The report team offered preliminary results at the ADSL Division Annual Meeting in May 2021. At the ARLIS/UK & Ireland conference in July 2021, they described Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) activities in ADSLs and some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sector. Feedback from both events was incorporated into the report, which is now complete and available on the “Publications” page of the ARLIS/NA website. This article, in addition to summarizing some of the findings, discusses the collaborative process of writing and editing the report and the importance of this process as a model for advancing other essential work in this field.

During 2016, after overcoming many obstacles, the library of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (National Institute of Art History - INHA), Jacques-Doucet collection, was established in an exceptional space designed during the Second Empire by the French architect Henri Labrouste (1801–1875). The reopening of this reading room is the fruit of a large-scale renovation project involving several French institutions. It is also the culmination of a long-standing plan to create an illustrious library of art history for France.

Gustavo Grandal Montero (ALJ):Could you give an overview of the main aims and context of the project?

Ami Clarke (AC): The Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing (DAAP) is an interactive, user-driven, searchable database of artists’ books and publications, that acts as a hub to engage with others, built by artists, publishers and a community of creative practitioners in contemporary artists’ publishing, developed via an ethically-driven design process, and supported by Wikimedia UK and Arts Council England. The project is inspired by the site of Banner Repeater's public Archive of Artists’ Publishing on Hackney Downs train station, with 11,000 people passing a day, in response to the need for a similarly dynamic approach to archiving in an online context.

Although reading lists are an important part of curricula and play an essential role in decolonizing education, the work to diversify them can often neglect intersectional approaches that consider both racialized and gendered dimensions of knowledge construction. The consequence can be an additive approach in which black authors and authors of colour are included to diversify reading lists, reproducing racist and sexist biases. This paper examines how reading lists are constructed in curricula and presents an alternative decolonial feminist approach to creating a reading list in fashion design. The value of decolonial feminism lies in addressing the gaps in thinking by using a racialized and gendered framework. The Decolonizing the Curriculum Toolkit project at Westminster University, UK is introduced to which the author contributed a Decolonising Fashion Design Reading List, as an example of counter-hegemonic curricula which aimed to reveal the unequal power dynamics that support colonial logics in fashion design education. Exposing hegemonic distinctions in fashion that represent Western fashion as modern and non-Western fashion as traditional can then allow marginalized and excluded fashion narratives to become centred. Such an approach can then provide a key tool towards building a more pluralised and de-hierarchised set of fashion design resources.

Librarians and graphic designers have a lot in common. Both are information professionals that offer means or cues to help users navigate, understand and solve a problem within a certain space. Without the librarian, the library space itself becomes the interface where users are offered signage to problem-solve intuitively. Because of this, effective communication via signage and wayfinding becomes imperative to the library user experience. By empathizing with our patrons and clearly articulating what the problem is, it is possible to anticipate user needs, address them by utilizing the design-thinking process, and prototype solutions like a graphic designer. However, this is not a permanent, one-time process, and it will need to be repeated whenever the needs of the patrons evolve and new problems emerge.

Although it began as the personal library of one of the most influential art historians and connoisseurs of the last century, the Biblioteca Berenson now has a broad interdisciplinary scope that goes far beyond art and art history. As the library of Harvard University’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies since the 1960s, it has become a major resource for research into all aspects of the society, culture and thought of Italy between about 1200 and 1650. Nonetheless the Berenson Library offers rich and often unique resources for art historical research, both on the Renaissance and on the 20th century.

Response to a plethora of historical forces that devalue comics, including hostile cataloging standards, led to the creation of the Best practices for cataloging comics and graphic novels using RDA and MARC21. The guide supports comics cataloging using current standards, recognizing the great diversity in this sequential art medium, as well as needs particular to public, academic and special libraries. With this, and related current and future projects, the Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table (GNCRT) hopes to promote equity in comics cataloging, and improve patron access to comics.

As producers and mediators of digital resources, art librarians frequently interact with the digital humanities in a broad sense. In the following brief overview of recent DH work undertaken in US art libraries, engagement with digital humanities is evidenced by the development of open access projects, the creation of linked data sets and the innovative sharing of art and archive collections to support digital pedagogy. Related activities of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), its Digital Humanities SIG and the ARLIS/NA in the Humanities Commons are also discussed.