In reflecting upon my own transition from art librarian to academic developer, I can strongly relate to my library colleague's frustration in terms of espousing ‘what works’, with ‘earning the right to be heard’. We know we need to move beyond deficit models of learning support which are not practically, pedagogically or ethically supportable. But, we are compromised in this quest by traditional perceptions of the librarian and academic developer role, which do not always position us as equal with our academic partners or as a key partner in the student learning process.

In 2013 a new research institute or ‘Arts Lab’ was set up at the University of Manchester. The John Rylands Research Institute (JRRI), based in the John Rylands Library, is a unique partnership between the University of Manchester (UofM) Library and the Faculty of Humanities at the university. Its aim is to establish an internationally renowned centre for research that attracts, and supports work by local, national, or international scholars on the library's special collections. By bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of library professionals, humanities scholars, students and scientists, new approaches are being developed within the JRRI to increase and improve our understanding of these collections, in all their richness and diversity. This piece will provide insights into the work of the JRRI and through a specific case study it will demonstrate how some of the works of art in the library are beginning to benefit from the research carried out under its umbrella. However, it is first necessary to explain why these collections merit such intensive investigation.

The IRIS Consortium is able to accommodate in its union catalogue RDA records derived from two authoritative sources, The Library of Congress and the Berenson Library (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). The consortium's position at this time, however, is to integrate into our original cataloguing some of the most useful aspects of RDA without taking the full ‘plunge’ into RDA (toolkit subscription, retraining, etc.). In Italy we may very well be, for varying reasons, in a not uncommon situation.

Fashion is often held synonymous with frivolity, excess, and luxury; as such, the study of costume history and theory has historically been considered impractical or subsidiary. The significant rise in costume education and scholarship during the 20th century has brought new and more frequent queries regarding the histories of fashion, etiquette, and material culture to our libraries. We are now often asked to assist in researches of cultures of style, and how they may be analyzed in a multidisciplinary context. Is it possible to analyze fashion trends through the lens of the law? Are effects of American colonialism present in fashion trends today? This brief historiography of costume and fashion studies seeks to utilize a multi- and interdisciplinary lens that reference librarians may employ to assist patrons with style-related inquiries.

The subject of this article is Europeana Fashion, an EU-funded initiative that deals with the aggregation and online dissemination of the digital fashion heritage from the most important European collections. The project started with a consortium consisting of 22 partners from 12 European countries and included the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Les Arts Décoratifs (Paris), MoMu (Antwerp) and many other museums. Also archives of brands, such as Missoni and Pucci were represented. The main goal of Europeana Fashion was to harvest the digital collections of fashion institutions and to re-present them in a uniform way on a specialized fashion portal. This article outlines the origins of the project, focussing on its main achievements, and offers a look into the future of europeanafashion.eu.

The Mediathek of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz Basel (FHNW) is a remarkable place. It's shaped, on the one hand, by the demands it must meet in functioning as the central information hub of the Faculty of Art and Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst - HGK). On the other hand its exposed location on the Campus der Künste (art campus) and its specific spatial plan determine the everyday work. Positioned between research and education, the Mediathek HGK functions as an intermediary, with the character of a laboratory: it provides access to important knowledge bases and makes content available in a way which enables experimental, creative and yet also systematic forms of research. Knowledge, in the sense of classified information, becomes a resource and raw material for the arts and design. New, digital contents must be made as available and accessible as archived (post-research) or historical material. A creative work cycle is enabled, which continually questions, implements, refines and forgets materials and resources.1

Both the dynamic agility of the university itself and the focus on always questioning the adequacy, timeliness, relevance, potential, etc. of the theme of information service, results in continuous developments at the Mediathek (bibliotheca semper reformanda est).

What do academic librarians and fashion designers have in common? As designers produce a good—clothing—and librarians provide a service, it may seem like the two share no similarities. However, in recent years, both professions have been asked to do more with less. Designers are tasked with churning out clothing collections at a record rate while academic librarians have had to maintain and in some cases increase their level of service in the face of steadily decreasing budgets. One response to this relentless cycle in the fashion world is the development of slow fashion, a designer-oriented process that prioritizes producing fewer collections of clothing using materials that have less of an environmental impact. For libraries to respond to increasing demands, slow collection development is proposed and applied to building fashion resource collections in academic libraries.

How do artists, designers, architects and craftspeople seek and deploy information in support of their practice? It is a question that is of central importance to the learning and teaching that art libraries provide, yet one that has also been subject to much debate within the historical and contemporary literature. An attentive reading of this literature reveals three fundamental metanarratives, each underpinned by a particular epistemology, and it is these narratives that have then informed how institutions construct, embed and assess the teaching of information skills to their readers. Only by critically evaluating the literature is it possible to resituate our own practice and that of our respective institutions within a paradigm that is most appropriate for our particular contexts. It is also possible to identify gaps in our collective professional understanding, in the hope of signposting avenues of research potential for the future.

The Library of Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), the first Director of the National Gallery, London, became the founding collection of the National Gallery Library. It is now being catalogued to rare book standards, and the records will be made available to researchers as part of a wider retrospective conversion and online access project. A few highlights from the Eastlake Library are described in order to illustrate the range and depth of the collection.

What can an institutional archive tell us about the history of fashion education? The Royal College of Art's archive, in documenting the legacy of study and practice at the college, a key focal point of fashion education since 1948, illuminates in diverse ways the establishment and development of fashion design as an academic discipline. The print and digital collections in the RCA archive thus provide a rich resource that informs both contemporary practice and historical research, highlighting in addition issues raised by the increasingly digital access to this documentation for the archivist and the research community.

On January 5th, 1903, Mrs. A.M. Dunstan, a designer and dressmaker with an eponymous store on 34th Street, sold a $370 green velvet coat with matching bodice to Clarisse Livingston, a New York socialite. This information, captured from a household invoice within the Edward Livingston papers at the New York Public Library, reveals more than pecuniary data about the sale of clothing at the turn of the century; rather, the invoice contains complex metadata about the relationships between modernity, fashion, and group identity. This paper describes the processes and results of a preliminary study of fashion-related invoices from the Livingston papers and seeks to demonstrate that invoices are a rich, yet often overlooked source of cultural data.

The ACRL Framework for information literacy for higher education, the guiding document for academic instruction librarians in North America, encourages a deep connection between information literacy and discipline-specific teaching practices. In the context of art librarianship, one means of attaining this connection is via librarian participation in studio critiques. Critiques enable librarians to identify the similarities between the research process and the creative process, making information literacy relevant for art students. In two different institutional examples, the ACRL Framework provides a conceptual grounding for studio critiques as a collaborative space between librarians and faculty, where students learn lifelong information literacy and critical thinking skills that enrich their artistic work.

Throughout the year, research and instruction librarians at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) instruct students in ways to use the library for studio-based research. At the end of each semester, librarians attend studio critiques for these classes to see the finished work and participate in the critique. These visits are opportunities to look for and reflect upon the presence of research and the impact of concepts taught during library research workshops on the finished presentations and artworks. The coordinator of graduate library instruction created a qualitative tool to assess the evidence of student learning within the studio critique. Its use is cultivating a culture of art and design research within the library and throughout campus by fostering reflection and discussion about the value of qualitative assessment.

How can we entice adolescents into a “behind- the- scenes” world of an art library? The internship project at the Prints and Drawings Library is now in its 7th successful year. Young Florentine students are introduced to the working of the bibliographic research done by the librarians and are given the opportunity to carry out their own projects. At the end of the week they visit the masterpieces on show in the Uffizi Gallery.

How do art and design libraries collect the history of the future? Trend forecasting literature presents exactly that challenge. These multifaceted print and digital publications, issued regularly and expensively by a handful of companies, are held by few libraries even as they influence everything from womenswear to computer games. We examine how libraries collect these materials and consider their role in the broader information landscape.

First, we historically situate forecasting, looking to origins in colour charts, trade catalogues and international communications. Next, we look at the post-war institutionalization of trend forecasting, describing its role in the consolidation of a consumer-oriented supply chain.

With the Fashion Institute of Technology as the case study, we then examine forecasting in context: how faculty incorporate it into pedagogy, how students engage with the materials and how librarians integrate critical thinking and information literacy into instruction. Practical matters such as cost, housing, long-term archiving and access are also addressed.

We conclude with a forecast of forecasting, examining its move to digital formats and the challenge of meeting pedagogical needs that are at once rigorous (as accreditation demands) and creative (as schools promise), reflecting the mash-up wonder of today's fashion discourse.

The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)-SUNY Gladys Marcus Library's exquisite, rare, primary research materials are housed in its unit of Special Collections and College Archives; as such, it is known to those who study fashion and other creative industries throughout the world.

Like the unit's name, its mission is two-fold: regarding special collections, it acquires, preserves, and provides access to a wide range of primary research materials in their original formats and across many languages and geographical spectra. All acquisitions support one or more curricula offered at FIT. Regarding the college archives, the unit acquires, preserves, and provides access to college records permanently-scheduled for retention, or deemed to have enduring, historical value, created or received in the course of college business; archival records are created or received by administrators, staff, faculty, and students. Fulfilling this mission supports myriad goals in and across FIT units as well as research from those outside the FIT community.

This writer will introduce the collections to readers and briefly discuss the large-scale renovation that the unit is currently under-going.