Video collections have been part of library holdings for several decades, but developing and managing these collections presents a number of challenges. This is the case particularly for artists’ film and video, and this article attempts to identify the issues involved and to offer some practical guidance, drawing on the experience of collection development and management at Chelsea College of Art and Design Library, and across the libraries of University of the Arts London and elsewhere.

This article describes the documentation centre at the contemporary art museum MAC/VAL in Vitry-sur-Seine in the Val-de-Marne, outside Paris, and in particular its audiovisual collections. It outlines the problems that have to be faced when seeking to make this material – documentaries and artists’ videos, whether purchased or produced in-house, even the museum’s audiovisual archives – available to the centre’s users.

The British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection is a small specialist collection dedicated to the history of artists’ moving images in Britain, which is based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts London. The Collection services the needs of both academics and curators in this specialist area. Its founders describe its raison d’être and collecting policy, and outline some of the challenges of working in an environment susceptible to changing research priorities and uncertain digital storage standards.

This case study provides an overview of the logistical aspects of introducing a DIY streaming service, from original idea to implementation, at Coventry University. The study includes reflection on practical problems such as the structuring of file names and complying with the terms and conditions of the ERA licence. It concludes with a short discussion of the impact of the new ERA+ licence on levels of use, together with possible future developments in streaming in the UK Higher Education sector.

The British Film Institute has always tried to balance its role as a repository of moving image collections and their associated materials with encouraging their study and understanding. This article looks at the increasing opportunities for providing access to material in educational and library contexts, as well as giving an overview of the library.

‘Oscar’ is the best-known symbol of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But there is more to the Academy than the golden statuette. The Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, which has been in existence for 80 years, is widely regarded as the pre-eminent research and reference facility for the study of all aspects of motion pictures, as an art form and an industry. The non-circulating research and reference collection, located in Beverly Hills, California, is open to the public, free of charge, and is heavily used by students, scholars, industry personnel, journalists, filmmakers and the general public. Its holdings document the multiple facets of the film industry and its personnel, past and present, and include books, periodicals, clipping files and screenplays, as well as special collections of photographs, manuscripts, posters, graphic art materials, music and recorded sound, and oral histories.

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.

Artists’ videos present some challenges to cataloguers. How to select the source of information, how to describe them in ways which will help library users to find them, and particularly how to facilitate subject access are matters addressed in this article. With reference to the artist’s video collections at Goldsmiths, the author considers interpretations of the rules for cataloguing art documentation and moving image material and discusses how they can be applied to video works and art documentation from contemporary art practices.