As befits a journal for art libraries I shall begin this opinion piece with Max Ernst's quote on exhibiting Dada: ‘What's the matter with everyone, wanting to make a museum piece out of Dada? Dada was a bomb…can you imagine anyone…wanting to collect the pieces, sticking it together and displaying it?’

At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Master of Fine Arts (MFA) students are often not aware of the library and its resources. As a way to address this gap, Flaxman Librarians have organized studio visits, in which librarians visit students’ studios to hear about their work and offer library resources to support it. Using the ACRL Framework and SAIC's core values as a guide, we are able to assess and address students' current methods/modes of research, as well as their artistic practice. In addition, we are able to forge new relationships with these students throughout their program and increase outreach to a program not targeted for traditional information literacy.

The Rijksmuseum project in Amsterdam began in 1999 with a government plan to celebrate the millennium in the Netherlands with a series of grand cultural projects. It was recognized that the museum building had been neglected, and urgently needed modernizing. Following a European search, the Spanish architects of Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos won the competition in 2001. The renovation would also focus on new spaces for the entrance hall and a pavilion for Asian art. The main art gallery and the library were selected as places to receive an especially thorough renovation and restauration. The Cuypers Library Hall is the one of the very few 19th-century library spaces that have survived in the Netherlands. The library is very close to the architect's original conception of the space and how it would be used. The reception is an impressive 20-meter high rectangular book hall, elaborately decorated and composed as a Gesamtkunstwerk. This article will draw attention to the design and the historic functions of the library hall.

Documentary sources for Irish art are widely scattered and vulnerable. The art library of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts was destroyed by bombardment during the Rising of 1916 against British rule. The absence of degree courses in art history delayed the development of art libraries until the 1960s when art history degrees were established at University College Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin. In the 1970s the state founded the Regional Technical Colleges all over Ireland with their art and design courses. Modern approaches to art education had transformed the education of artists and designers with a new emphasis on concept rather than skill acquisition. This led to theoretical teaching and the growth of art sections in the college libraries. Well qualified graduates and staff led the way in the universities and colleges to a greater emphasis on research. Archive centres of documentation on Irish art opened at the National Gallery of Ireland, Trinity College and the Irish Architectural Archive. At NCAD the National Irish Visual Arts Archive (NIVAL) became the main depository for documentation on 20th century Irish art and design. Many other libraries exist with holdings of relevance to the history of Irish art, notably the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and the National Archives.

During the move to a new location in 2016-2017, the headquarters of Thailand Creative & Design Center (TCDC) in Bangkok applied a service design approach to devise and deploy new and improved services. Applying a case study approach, this article reports the TCDC experience in adopting a service design approach in its library function at the TCDC Resource Center. The initiative aimed to create a new service blueprint as well as to implement new and updated services to meet ever-changing user needs. It is expected that service design will increase the user satisfaction level, which will lead to an increasing number of members and visitors, as well as promote revisits and brand loyalty. The process included developing empathy, service ideation, prototyping, and testing. As a result, several new and updated services were introduced and implemented both in the physical space and online. As an iterative process, the design team has also provided multiple channels to receive feedback from users both directly and indirectly to ensure continuous improvement of its services and products.

The renovation project of the Forney Decorative and Applied Arts Library in Paris, belonging to the Paris Specialized Libraries' Network, not only concerns the modernization, restructuring and security of the building, an historical monument, but also the library usage, with an ambitious cultural project underpinning the rooms' refurbishment aimed at providing greater public access to the library, the building, and the spectacular visual collections. New visitors, alongside established readers, are welcomed in the heart of the tourist centre of Paris.

In 2013, as the dissertation component of an MA Library and Information Studies course at University College London, I carried out a selective study of UK zine libraries and collections. Case studies of both ‘institutional’ collections that were part of established libraries like London College of Communication Library (University of the Arts London) and the British Library, and ‘independent’ collections such as Salford Zine Library, 56a Infoshop and the Edinburgh Fanzine archive were carried out to draw attention to issues around collection, care and accessibility of zine collections. As much of the literature around zine collections in libraries at that time was focused on the USA, it was important to draw attention to what was happening in the UK. This article summarizes the findings of my dissertation, and the developments in zine libraries and librarianship since I wrote it, as zine collections have become more popular and a growing field in the UK.

This paper explores the essential and dynamic relationship between the artist and the institution in building the public record of arts activity. It examines the lifecycle of artist-generated documentation and the various methods of engagement with the library that result in material contributions to the collection.

Taking the view that NIVAL is an essentially democratic project in both collection development and access strategies, the paper presents an introduction to the genesis of the library, and outlines some of the ways in which contemporary artists are supporting the role of NIVAL as ‘living archive’. The paper examines a number of recent collaborative projects with practising artists including Jennie Guy, artists’ collaborative Floating World and National College of Art & Design Communication Design students that attest to the regenerative effect of direct engagement by artists in the process of legacy building.

In the libraries of the Yale Center for British Art and the Kimbell Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn created spaces and atmospheres that are particularly conducive to reading about and viewing art. In these rooms, natural light combines with sympathetic materials and forms a timeless dance with thought and contemplation. This paper focusses on the unique library carrels which form the physical bridge between light and dark, inside and outside, and constitute a microcosm of Kahn's thoughts about reading, libraries and museums.

Over the past half-century video games have become a significant part of our cultural environment, in part, by leading advances in both technology and artistic innovation. In recent years librarians and researchers have recognized these games as cultural objects that require collection and curation. Developing and maintaining collections of this fast moving and somewhat ephemeral media, however, poses challenges due to constantly advancing technology and a corresponding lack of consistent terminology. This article addresses the literature and critical issues surrounding collections of video games within libraries and presents a case study of the University of Michigan’s Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA), one of the largest academic archives of its kind. Moreover, video games are situated in a humanistic approach to the field of game studies as the article draws on the relevance of methods from art history and film studies.

This article presents a practice-based account of collection development related to zines in the British Library. Rather than making the case for the collecting of zines, it aims to describe the process of collection building in a specific time and place, so that researchers have a better understanding of why certain resources are offered to them and others are not, and to share experiences with other librarians with zine collections. Zines form an element of the cultural memory of activists and cultural creators, and for researchers studying them it would seem useful to make transparent the motivations, methods and limitations of collection building. Librarians in the USA have written about their collecting practices for some time, for instance at Barnard College1 and New York Public Library2, there has been less written about the practices of UK libraries. The article aims to make a contribution as a case study alongside accounts of collection development in a range of other libraries with zine collections, and it is written primarily from my own perspective as a curator in Contemporary British Collections since 2015, focusing on current practice, with some reference to earlier collecting.

The National Gallery of Ireland is the country's premier art institution. It houses the nation's collection of fine art in addition to a collection of library and archive material relating to the visual arts. The library and archive collections play an invaluable role supporting the work of the gallery and are regularly consulted by external researchers. Surprisingly, for more than a century there was no dedicated library space allocated to this collection. This article explores the development of the collection and the space it has occupied within the Gallery over the last 150 years, chronicling the challenges the gallery has faced housing this growing collection. This article outlines the situation today and concludes with an outline of the gallery's future plans for the library and archive in its efforts to create a space that will be a fitting home for this remarkable collection.

Registrars, collections managers, and other professionals tasked with the practicalities of acquiring, storing, loaning, and shipping collections often face the same challenges but are left with few ways to communicate their experiences. Specialist literature is usually only available in English - a problem for the diverse, international profession. As a solution, the blog “Registrar Trek” was created in 2012 to overcome language barriers and connect the profession.

The London College of Communication (LCC) Zine Collection was founded in July 2009 and now contains more than 4,000 zines. It is the most heavily used special collection at LCC Library. This article outlines the history and development of the collection, its uses in teaching, learning and research, and its value for widening access to, and representing diversity in an academic library environment.

Over the past 20 years, the Chester Beatty Library has undergone a transformation in how it presents its collections. Unique among Irish museums in its focus on global artistic heritage, it has consciously positioned itself as a centre for intercultural engagement and sought to address questions around diversity and national identity.