The Place for Artists' Books in Library Collections

Wemhoff, Ashley

An Article Review of "Acquiring Artists' Books at Art Book Fairs: Dynamic Collection Development Practices" by Joey Vincennie

Vincennie, J. (2022). Acquiring artists’ books at art book fairs: Dynamic collection development practices. Art Documentation, 45(2), 257–268. https://doi.org/10.1086/725520 

Summary:

This article discusses the practice of acquiring artists' books for library collections. During art fairs artists may sell books showcasing some of their collected works. The author of this article seeks to understand what kinds of libraries add these materials to their collections and contemplate why art fairs aren't used more for collection development. To begin they discuss briefly the history of art book fairs.

They describe art book fairs as, "venues for artists and publishers to sell their materials to the public. Materials one can generally find at an art book fair include artists’ books, zines, photobooks, artist multiples, rare books, magazines, posters, and ephemera."

While the author notes that art book fairs vary in size, they observe that these events provide a wonderful opportunity for librarians to connect with local artists, learn about artists' trades, and curate a collection of books to add to they library. 

After an examination of literature that discusses the collection of art books in libraries, the author goes on to present their findings from an online survey they collected from academic and special library respondents. From the results they found that 89.3% used art fairs as a place to build their art book collections, 57.1% used a virtual art book fair for collection development, and 75% had collections policies in place for the acquisition of art books specifically.

Evaluation 

The author of this article acknowledges that they would have liked to get responses from school and public librarians in their survey results, but they simply didn't get any feedback. There certainly could be some merit for these two library types to utilize art fairs as a collections development tool, but I have a feeling that it is mostly academic libraries and art libraries the utilize this resource. 

A brief discussion on how virtual art fairs are becoming more commons since the COVID-19 pandemic show that art fairs are becoming more accessible for rural librarians or for those who have limited budgets. Before reading this article I had not considered using art fairs to find materials for a library collection. I appreciated this author's nuanced discussion on how art is often subjective and librarians need to consider the community when acquiring art for a library collection.

If you are looking for an example of what art books visually look like, check out https://www.artbook.com/, one of the leading sellers for art books globally.

What is curation? An interesting video...

 I really enjoyed this video, which introduces the idea of curation as a part of collection development and management. We are living in a data driven world, and librarians are in the unique position of gathering and arranging information for consumers. As the narrator says, "It is the curator's job to bridge the gap between the material they're presenting and the people they are presenting it to" (location 2:18). The narrator works largely in the art world, in which she reviews, gathers, selects, and presents works of art and the information pertaining to it--and these are the same words we use in collection development and acquisitions. She mentions the various steps and facets of curatorship and describes it as a timelined process, which repeats and often takes a circuitous route from the initial search and review to the final presentation to the public. While the terms curator and curation are in wider use these days (as anyone can "curate," and this is no more evident than in places like Pandora and GoodReads), the narrator provides us with a solid grasp of the traditional use of the terms and how they apply to today's digital world.

Although this video speaks in terms of the art world, libraries often deal in physical items as well as written works, and this is especially true as the world of librarianship opens up to diverse collections and industries. For example, there was recently a job announcement for a librarian at Pixar Studios, in which the librarian would be in charge of managing the collection of animation cells, prototypes, and digital animation resources. A movie lover's dream job! And like so many librarian jobs that come up, it is not a traditional book collection, yet still needs the professional knowledge of a librarian. This is what we are looking at in terms of the future of our career field--and watching this video is a great way to get these ideas defined and understand just how we'll likely be working now and in the future.