When Sir Kyffin Williams, RA died in 2006 he bequeathed a large section of his estate to the National Library of Wales (NLW) – an institution with which the artist, most known for his landscape paintings of north-west Wales, had a long association. Combined with material already in the NLW’s collections, there are now over 200 works in oil, over 1200 works on paper and a comprehensive archive held at Aberystwyth. The collection’s presence in a library rather than museum or gallery raises questions of how the work can be displayed or exhibited. In this essay I will give some background to this collection and the wider art holdings of the National Library of Wales before discussing how geo-spatial approaches are being used to display this collection digitally. This work is being completed as a collaborative Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) PhD project between Aberystwyth University School of Art and the National Library of Wales. KESS is part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) through the European Union’s Convergence Programme (West Wales and the Valleys) administered by the Welsh Government.

Diaries, letters, commonplace books, marginal notes, visual and inventory evidence all speak to the possession of books by the middling sort in the 18th century and the presence of books in their homes. But how can this knowledge be translated into acquisitions for the museum and how should the stories of these books be told? How do museum displays and interpretation move beyond the fact of possession to uncover and represent the histories of readers, their engagement with texts, and the variety of historical reading habits?

This article illuminates the processes involved in curating exhibitions at the Saison Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre. The aim is to be of use to those exhibiting, or considering exhibiting artworks in public library or museum spaces. The article also considers the relationship between textual and visual art, drawing upon a number of exhibitions that have taken place at the Poetry Library since 2007.

Asia Art Archive was established in 2000 in Hong Kong to document and secure the multiple recent histories of contemporary art in the region. Built through a systematic programme of research and information gathering, it is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading public collections of primary and secondary source material about contemporary art in Asia, comprising hundreds of thousands of physical and digital items, searchable via its online catalogue. A growing selection of digitised material is now also available in the Collection Online.

How can an open access publishing and distribution model benefit research in contemporary art? In 2013 Artexte, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting contemporary art in Canada, launched the e-artexte open access digital repository to offer self-archiving services to publishers, authors and artists in Canadian contemporary art. Although the fine arts community has generally been slow to adopt open access, Canadian contemporary arts publishers, many of whom have small budgets and limited resources, are finding the open access e-artexte repository an effective means of increasing distribution of and access to their publications.

The research project Digital Archive of Belgian Neo-Avant-garde Periodicals (DABNAP) aims to digitize and analyse a large number of artists’ periodicals from the period 1950–1990. The artistic renewal in Belgium since the 1950s, sustained by small groups of artists (such as G58 or De Nevelvlek), led to a first generation of post-war artist periodicals. Such titles proved decisive for the formation of the Belgian neo-avant-garde in literature and the visual arts. During the sixties and the seventies, happening and socially-engaged art took over and gave a new orientation to artist periodicals. In this article, I wish to highlight the challenges and difficulties of this project, for example, in dealing with non-standard formats, types of paper, typography, and non-paper inserts. A fully searchable archive of neo-avant-garde periodicals allows researchers to analyse in much more detail than before how influences from foreign literature and arts took root in the Belgian context.

The historical importance of carpet design and manufacture to the West of Scotland is now largely forgotten, eclipsed by heavy industries such as shipbuilding for which Glasgow is justly famous. Yet, in their heyday, carpet manufacturers A. F. Stoddard of Elderslie, Renfrewshire and James Templeton of Glasgow Green provided employment for thousands of workers. Indeed, by the 1950s Templeton was Glasgow’s largest single employer. For decades the companies supplied carpets to the world’s ocean liners, heads of state, royalty, corporations and state institutions, yet in 2005 the combined companies filed for bankruptcy. This paper describes efforts to save and interpret the historical collections, principally concentrating on the design library now held at the Glasgow School of Art. It follows a recent research project, exhibition and publication that explored the development of the Library and its use within the design process.

In February 1992 a magazine called The Connoisseur died. Born in September 1901, it had lived a long life, and was the oldest of the once great triumvirate of British art periodicals, alongside The Burlington Magazine (1903) and Apollo (1925). While the latter two have survived into the 21st century, in 1982 The Connoisseur went into retirement and moved to America. This paper will tell the story of the last 15 years of the magazine’s life, from its happy 75th birthday through to an ignominious final eight months.

In part one of this article, published in vol. 39, no. 3 2014, I described how the History and Theory of Art and Design Slide Library at Cardiff is to be reinvented as a visual resources collection by being put to new and creative uses. Here in part two I consider possible arguments for safeguarding at least one exemplar slide library to be preserved intact and exactly as it was when used for art school lectures. The arguments put forward are derived from the Florence Declaration to which ARLIS/UK & Ireland is a recent signatory. Were the arguments successful in persuading the art and design and library communities that such a collection should be preserved? I end by profiling the set of circumstances I believe would need to co-exist before any institution would find such a project to be practically, financially, culturally and intellectually viable.

An understanding of the museum as an exhibiting space, rather than as a research-based organisation, has led to the current lack in China of institutions tasked with archiving and making art documentation public. A number of projects organised by the author in Shanghai and elsewhere, including History in the Making: Shanghai 1979-2009 and From a History of Exhibitions towards a Future of Exhibition-Making, have addressed the role of archives in exhibition making, while developing new documentary resources for curatorial and art historical research.

The greatest art library in the Netherlands returned to its original rooms inside the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. How can this library with its own rich history serve the demands of a 21st-century user? What might be the appropriate measures to counter the struggles of the first weeks after the grand re-opening? After more than a decade of reconstruction and renovation the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam was reopened on 13 April 2013. The inside of the museum has been completely transformed and the building itself has been restored to its original splendour. The largest art research library in the Netherlands has become accessible to the general public, seven days a week from 10 am to 5 pm. More then 10,000 visitors a day are eager to explore the museum as well as its unique 19th-century reading room designed by P.J.H Cuypers. But how can the original concept be adapted to present day demands?

In 2006, Daros Latinamerica – one of the most comprehensive collections dedicated to Latin American contemporary art in the world – acquired a building, designed by the architect Francisco Joaquim Bethencourt da Silva (1831-1912) and listed as official historical heritage of the city of Rio de Janeiro. After seven years of refurbishment, Casa Daros and its library opened its doors on 23 March 2013. The library has maintained and improved its collection about contemporary Latin American art – considered unique in the region – ever since, with a view to motivating and increasing the amount of research on the subject in Brazil. At the same time, the library team plays an important role in the preparation of the programming planned in the cultural centre – considered a platform for art, education, and communication – and also during the events at Casa Daros, providing support for the researchers’ needs.

China’s publishing landscape today remains a harsh environment, dominated by the state industry and hostile to outside intruders. A few small independent art publishers, design studios and self-publishing artists have appeared in recent years in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities, a series of developments that signal new directions for the future of art publishing in this country.

The Museum der Arbeit (Museum of Work) in Hamburg, Germany, took over the collections of the remarkable Reemtsma Cigarettenfabriken (Reemtsma Tobacco Co.) almost exactly ten years ago. The traditional, German-owned international company had established and maintained a comprehensive cultural-historical collection during their approximately hundred years of trading. The collections include photographic archives, advertisement and product archives, as well as the historical tobacco collection with various library holdings. What treasures of our cultural heritage are bound to be discovered? How can we sufficiently document and research collection holdings this complex and varied in a museum?