The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship

Citation

Thornley, C. (2012), "The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 68 No. 3, pp. 423-424. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411211225610

This book is a fascinating analysis of what is different about providing library and information services to artists and those working in the other creative disciplines. It offers useful guidelines, observations and case studies to those working in art librarianship and also provides important insights, in particular about the role of creativity in learning and information use, that usefully challenge some of the conventions of library and information science. It is divided up into four sections: Part I, “Roles and responsibilities”, examines management issues; Part II, “Materials and collection management”, considers issues in organising and cataloguing visual materials; Part III, “Teaching and learning”, looks at working with visually literate users; and Part IV, “Learning spaces, promotion and sustainability”, discusses the use and design of space in libraries. It also includes an appendix of profiles of the participating libraries, which is a helpful resource.

Part I on management is highly applicable to all libraries and offers some new approaches. It emphasises the complexity of the academic environment and suggests that developing good personal relationships at all levels is as at least as important as perfect cataloguing. I particularly liked the characterisation presented in chapter 2 of the need for “nimble librarians” in the face of ever‐shifting roles and responsibilities. Some interesting ideas that challenge at least my own experience of academic libraries is the advice not to have only one library liaison in each academic department who channels all requests but to make sure all academic staff send their requests directly to the relevant librarian. This was found to foster better and more diverse relationships with faculty and improve collection development. Another possibly counter‐intuitive point made about the role of accreditation was the usefulness of negative reports on the collection from external accrediting bodies. These external reports often carried more influence within the university than complaints from the library staff and hence were more likely to result in increased budgets.

Materials and collection management is covered in Part II and the important differences between visually based as opposed to text based collections in terms of collection policy, the role of digitisation, cataloguing and providing access are discussed. This can be complex because an art library collection often includes original artistic objects as well as documents “about” them and representations “of” them. Digitisation, in cases when the detailed quality and visceral feel of artistic objects can often be very important, is seen as a tool with potential but also limitations for art libraries. Traditional cataloguing tools, likewise, often have to be adapted to better suit both artistic objects and the searching and browsing (observed to be often preferred to searching by visual thinkers) methods of artists.

Part III on teaching and learning provides some thoughtful analysis of the nature of information literacy (IL) in the artistic context and in doing so, perhaps inadvertently, reveals some of the weaknesses in more mainstream IL thinking. This may be because art librarians generally have excellent scholarly knowledge of their discipline and this is then brought out in carefully structured and in depth teaching to the highest academic level using the library resources. There is also some useful guidance on working with international students where cultural sensitivities to certain images can be an issue and some helpful points on the problems caused for some cultures by patterns that Western cataloguing takes for granted (for example reading from left to right). Part IV discusses the library as a space and how design can help or hinder the role of the library. This is also fascinating as some libraries are works of art in themselves, for example the Glasgow School of Art library discussed in chapter 18 is a listed building, and then the needs of the users, the collection and also the building itself have to be carefully balanced within restrictive frameworks. A striking theme in this section is the respect that the librarians have for the spatial and artistic expertise of the architects and their ability, as art experts themselves, to really engage with the design process. I also particularly enjoyed the vignette given in chapter 21 of the President of the Rhode Island School of Design asking the owners of nearby historic bank building to donate it to the college for the library and then getting it. Perhaps asking banks for the use of redundant building could be a new way forward for more libraries?

This is an excellent anthology of work providing both careful intellectual analysis of the key questions of the field and also useful practical guidance. It would be particularly helpful for its intended audience of art and design librarians but its insights are also highly relevant to all librarians.