Marissa Rhodes
LIS581
#4
Introduction
The Ins and Outs of Art Libraries and Expectations for the Future
Art libraries have the role of collecting, maintaining and disseminating resources related to art of all kinds. This specialized library is not exempt from the recent transformations prompted by improved technological capabilities but their transition is less complete than is common in libraries in general. This paper introduces the art library, discusses its historical and current challenges, and surmises the direction they will take in the future.
Types of Art Libraries
Many public and academic art resource collections are no more than a separate but illdefined section of art books. There are exceptions, however: there are two predominate types of art libraries, those that are part of academic institutions such as Virginia Tech’s Art +
Architecture Library and those connected to art museums such as the Met Libraries which operate as part of the Metropolitan Art Museum.
Museum art libraries and their staff librarians tend to lean towards cataloguing and exhibition activities while academic art librarians tend to publish art-related scholarly articles and work within a larger system of university libraries. Ivan Gaskell put forth the analogy of a surgeon versus a university medical professor (Collins, 2003). One is a practitioner (i.e. the museum art librarian and the surgeon) and another is a scholar, steeped in academia ( i.e. the academic art librarian and the medical professor.)

Museum art libraries tend to have fewer resources because of funding difficulties.
Academic art libraries must, in order to remain well-funded, demonstrate their relevance to the academic organization’s greater priorities. Despite the differences between these two art library venues, they have the same patrons and the same general function in information services so it is possible to discuss art libraries as a whole regardless of type.
Art Library Collections
The collections housed by art libraries consist of resources pertaining to art history, architecture, the fine arts, and the performing arts. Most art library collections consist mainly of color-illustrated monographs, exhibition catalogues and art journals. Exhibition catalogues and art journals are increasingly Web-based, which is no surprise but according to expert Kathryn
Wayne, “Today’s art historians still deem the printed book the most desirable format” (Wayne,
261). This phenomenon will be discussed further below.
Unsurprisingly, the means of access to these collections have transformed rapidly in the past decade. Art libraries underwent the same digitization of scholarly printed texts that traditional libraries encountered, but their highly diverse media presented additional problems to overcome. Art libraries were forced to digitize analog image collections that included photographs, prints of artworks, maps, blueprints, comics, broadsheets, etc. Expert David
Weinberger asserts that this image-centric transformation is easily traceable over time. He calls it
The Three Orders: The first order consists of images on slides which contained metadata directly on the slide. The second order consists of the primitive database, which existed independently of the slides but still guided patrons to a physical location. The third order consists of the digital image contained within a network and stored, manipulated and shared among environments such as Flickr (Bauman, 2009). Even though Wienberger’s Third Order has been realized, there is a

disparity between what is technically possible for art libraries and their patrons, and what they are able to achieve in actuality.
Art Library Patrons
The primary patrons of art libraries are art and architecture historians. Secondary patrons include artists (studio and performing), architects, archivists, drama scholars and curators. Even though art library patrons tend to prefer monographs for their images, it would be inaccurate to discount them as low-tech. The majority of art library patrons are experts in their field, usually
PhDs, and they are some of the most library-savvy researchers (Collins, 2003). In fact, art library patrons, name art historians, were some of the first scholars to use computers in their research
(Rose, 2001).
Despite that fact that art library patrons have been for some time the most dynamic, hardto-pin-down users of libraries, there is a lack of user studies within the discipline. The first art library user studies were conducted in the 1960s. Even though machine-readable cataloguing was introduced into libraries in the 1970s and no doubt changed information-seeking behavior at the time, no more user studies were conducted until the late 1980s. By then, computers were already in use, yet again changing information-seeking behavior. The next rash of art library user studies did not appear until after the turn of the millennium. By 2002, it was clear that art library users were using computers regularly for information-gathering, synthesis, and storage when many scholars were still using note cards and steno pads (Rose, 2002). The comparatively high level of information literacy among art library users paired with the frankly scanty number of true art libraries prompt an interesting question: what do art librarians do anyway?
Art Librarianship

Art librarians have special training or background in the arts. Many academic art librarians have an MA in art history, fine arts or performance art in addition to an MLS (Wayne,
2010). They are, therefore, helpful to patrons because they are familiar with the discipline’s content, not just its resources, however, art librarians are becoming increasingly important as technological skill becomes necessary to visual arts study. Studies show that many art scholars begin their research by consulting the art object itself or a representation of the original.
Traditionally, art librarians were most consulted by patrons who needed to locate a specific image or those who were doing research out of their area of expertise, which is common because the arts are often interdisciplinary (Rose, 2002 & Collins, 2003).
Slowly, high-resolution, on-demand artistic images are making their way online and into sophisticated databases, diminishing one of the user’s traditional reasons for consulting an art librarian. Thus, like most information professions, theirs is currently undergoing a transformation that makes it unclear what their roles will be in the future. It is, however, clear that it will involve technology (Fry, 1970 & Gendron, 2009). Librarian Johanna Bauman suggests that art librarians address their dwindling clientele by engaging users in new digital image resources and teaching them to use Web 2.0 gadgets for research purposes. Though art library patrons boast of a comparatively high level of information literacy, there will always be resources, tools and information that require professionals to disseminate. Perhaps art librarians, like most librarians in today’s world, will play a larger role in information literacy and smaller one in information retrieval.
The Key: Limitations to Technological Advancement
Though art libraries have been greatly affected by technological development, their users have not been able to take full advantage of new technologies like other patrons. The indexing of

images is, in and of itself, a monstrous task. The indexing of art images is, at this point, one of the most difficult concepts to put into practice. Art images have layer upon layer of indexable information, most of which is fairly subjective (Jacobs, 1999). At this point, art image retrieval systems have only mastered the bibliographic control of art images; smooth and comprehensive subject access to art images has yet to be realized (Weijsenfeld & Wolffe, 2009). Access to highresolution art images is improving rapidly but as mentioned above, databases such as ARTstor are not yet preferable to the good old-fashioned monograph for research purposes. Thus a paradox is revealed: art librarians and their patrons, brimming with information literacy, are held back by the very technology that is supposed to make progress possible.
Conclusion
All types of libraries, especially those in the special library sector, have special challenges to deal with in the coming years. However, art libraries and their complex relationship with technology, are sure to encounter especially difficult challenges. It is important that art image indexing and retrieval reach the level of sophistication that other information storage and retrieval systems have reached. Art library patrons will be forever enslaved by the monograph unless this happens. Furthermore, art librarians will not be able to achieve a new niche as teachers of information literacy if art image indexing remains at the same low-performing level.

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