As the 21st century dawned, bringing with it an unprecedented explosion in networked electronic information, the doomsayers were predicting the end of libraries as we know them and a declining need for new library buildings. Certainly there has been a shift in focus from the collection-based libraries of the past to a more user-centred approach where access to information takes precedence over its storage, but the libraries in cyberspace have not had it all their own way. Peter Davey, writing in the Architectural review in September 2001 on the role of cultural and art institutions in the new age of the Internet, pointed out that despite the power of digitisation and the availability of a wealth of information in electronic versions, ‘we need physical libraries and the books they contain because culture is far more complex than acquisition and assembly of facts. It is about thought and sensation’. He went on to say, in the context of Snøhetta’s design for the Biblotheca Alexandrina, that ‘it must provide a place in which scholarship is fostered, not just functionally, but socially as well’.

Leaving a 200-year-old building that was never meant to house a library for a 21st-century facility that strives to address the library’s future needs for 25 years doesn’t seem like a daunting task. But mix together sentimental attachments, institutional idiosyncrasies, federal government review of a private building, historic landmark status, and the administrative merger of four library collections into a single library, and life gets interesting – especially when your architect is Robert Venturi, Mr. ‘Learning from Las Vegas’.

Because artists’ books can be expensive to buy and to keep, institutions need to have a clearly articulated rationale for collecting them. This could range from documenting the history of art, and contemporary art in particular, to a survey of how artists have used the book format to explore their ideas. This latter approach would support the use of artists’ books in practical workshops leading to the creation of yet further artists’ books.

The IFLA Art Libraries Section was formed 25 years ago to fill a clear need for international co-operation in this most international of professions. The Section has been responsible for the publication of a range of materials including basic tools such as the International directory of art libraries and An art librarian’s glossary. It is also an active participant in the conference programmes of IFLA, frequently offering additional satellite programmes or workshops for art librarians. Representation in the Section has covered many countries, although there are still gaps that need to be filled.

When a group of women artists decided to organise their slides to inspire others to document themselves and raise the visibility of women’s art, they could not have known that several decades later those slides would still be together, forming the core of an internationally significant research resource. How did this idea of gathering together images transform a women’s art group – in the 1980s these were almost as common as book groups are today – into the Women’s Art Library/Make collection? Historically rooted in gender politics and the subsequent emergence of a radicalised women’s art practice and feminist art criticism, WAL/Make is an exciting ‘work in progress’. Now based in Goldsmiths, University of London it is being developed as a key special collection by the Library.

The Margery Somers Foster Center, based at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library on the Douglass College campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is a resource center and digital archive focused on women, scholarship and leadership. Numerous intersecting initiatives based at the center, library and university are making visible the lives, works and contributions to cultural history of contemporary women artists active in the United States.

The papers of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust are one result of the passion of Harvard University Professor Emeritus Eduard F. Sekler. In the 1960s he witnessed the encroachments of progress and the associated threat to buildings in the royal and religious centers of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, and co-founded the Trust in 1990 with others interested in documenting the sites and restoring the buildings. The Trust has restored numerous temples, guesthouses, townhouses and shrines in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, and in the process has generated vital documentation including measured drawings, photographs, contextual materials, planning reports and feasibility studies. Threats to this material from the natural environment and political turmoil, as well as longstanding ties to Harvard of several of its members, led the Trust to approach the Frances Loeb Library at the University’s Graduate School of Design, where as a result the archive will be housed. The infrastructure developed by Harvard University Library will be used to create a virtual archive available worldwide on the web, as well as a parallel paper archive to be maintained by the Trust in Nepal.

Artists’ books have been collected at the Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design for over 40 years. They include early multiples, conceptual books, fine press books, livres d’artistes, unique books, limited edition handmade books, books as sculptural objects, artists’ archives and ephemera. With between three and eight classes and individual appointments each week, artists’ books have become important teaching tools, fostering creativity among students, faculty and outside researchers. How do they speak to the creative process on so many levels? What is it that makes these resources so compelling?

With a detailed but not site-specific building program, the librarians at Rhode Island School of Design made the case for a new library three times the size of the existing facility. The site became specific with the donation of an early 20th-century grand banking hall. This paper addresses the role of the librarian in the design and construction process and includes an analysis of the way the new library meets the program objectives. In the early 1990’s after several early attempts to resolve the library’s space constraint at Rhode Island School of Design, the librarian was given a useful bit of advice: Stop trying to find the space. You must focus first on the program. What is it that you really need?

The history of the Institute of Fine Arts library collections cannot be disentangled from the intellectual and physical history of the Institute itself. Housed in various locations since 1938, the collections have grown parallel to the interests of the IFA’s faculty, many of whom, in its early years, were exiles from Europe and brought different approaches to the study of art. Amidst New York’s array of outstanding art research libraries, the IFA’s once extremely modest collection now comprises some 175,000 volumes, divided between two libraries: the Chan Library (for art history and archaeology) and the Conservation Center Library.

The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University is home to the most extensive collection of women’s history in the UK. It houses a wide variety of material from badges to banners, which reveal the many ways in which the struggle to change womens’ lives has been expressed visually. A move to purpose-built premises has created opportunities to open up the collections to a widening new audience.

This article describes some of the research projects investigating contemporary artists’ books at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England in Bristol. As part of its remit, the Centre explores and promotes many aspects of the book arts including contemporary creative processes and outputs. Some recent projects include the Arcadia id est touring exhibition of 118 artists’ books on the themes ornature and the landscape; Bookmarks: infiltrating the library system; and the Regenerator altered books project. The Centre also works with artists, academics, curators, institutions, galleries and bookshops to promote the book arts to a wider community. In addition it publishes reference information, guides and critical essays on artists’ books through its Impact Press imprint; these include the Artists book yearbook and The blue notebook, a journal for artists’ books.

The Docklands campus of the University of East London (UEL) is located in one of the fastest-growing regeneration areas in the UK. It is also one of the most dramatic and visually stunning new libraries in the sector. Good communication with everyone involved in the planning and design process was crucial to the success of the building. The design, the engineering, the widely varying subject areas supported, the dynamics of the library staff and the quality of the external bodies involved, all contribute to the whole. For art and architecture students the large clean space has meant that they are once again able to use the library in a creative way.

A woman artist of wide-ranging interests, Beatrix Potter is less well-known for her activities in sheep farming, natural science and the preservation of the Lakeland countryside than for her much-loved children’s books, especially The tale of Peter Rabbit. But Potter scholars and enthusiasts can gain a broad view of her oeuvre at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, home to the internationally-acclaimed original collection of Leslie Linder, the first curator and collector of her work. The world-wide popularity of the material gives rise to some challenging conservation issues that the V&A, in close association with Frederick Warne, is working to resolve.

The Centre des livres d’artistes (cdla), which has been based in S aint-Yrieix-la-Perche since 1994, is the culmination of a project initiated at the end of the 1980s by the association Pays-paysage. After many years during which it lacked anywhere to develop its activities fully, the cdla has at last been installed in a refurbished building and opened early in 2005 with a new exhibition of books and publications by herman de vries. The two principal activities of the cdla are the creation and management of a collection of artists’ books (currently nearly 3000 items), and the organisation of exhibitions in France and also abroad.

Early users of the internet and the World Wide Web soon realised that there was a need to gather together links to sites of interest to art and design researchers. The Art, Design, Architecture and Media (ADAM) information gateway attempted to satisfy this demand, whilst also helping to develop appropriate methodologies and standards. One of ADAM’s successors, Artifact, adopted an expanded role and provided additional services. Artifact subsequently became part of Intute: Arts and Humanities, which covers a broader range of subjects. Surveys, usage figures and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us suggest that some – but not all – users and potential users appreciate the services that gateways, portals and hubs can provide.

The Museum of Modern Art’s ten-year building project provided new, purpose-built spaces for the library and museum archives, one of the world’s premier research resources documenting modern and contemporary art. This article summarizes the planning and implementation of the new space and reflects on its successes after six months of operations.