How can cultural heritage institutions use new technologies to improve access to holdings for remote users when so much material is protected by copyright and the repository is normally not the copyright owner? Many American institutions have put material online even when they do not own the copyright, after taking thoughtful measures to minimize the risk that this may incur. Others have elected to forego any efforts to control the use of public domain reproductions from their holdings.

At the 2009 Tate Triennial Nicolas Bourriaud declared that postmodernism was dead and that the world was now altermodern. Many papers have been written on the effects of postmodernity on libraries, yet three years on there has been little about the post-postmodern library. This short article, adapted from a Master’s dissertation, looks at whether the 21st-century library could be seen as an altermodern library. Recent changes at Bodleian Libraries are discussed to highlight how an altermodern paradigm could better fit today’s academic libraries.

Questions posed in this short paper are based on thinking back over 30 years of feminist studies in the visual arts and museums. Does the library work for its culture, or sometimes against the grain of its own culture’s amnesia or even repressions? What are the politics of memory in relation to art library practices in terms of registering the critical reworking of knowledge that is associated with feminist critique of institutions, language, disciplines, practices, social relations? How are we to ensure libraries survive as keepers of cultural memory in the era of profitability? What will be lost under these economic pressures in terms of our ability in the future to understand our histories?

The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), consisting of The Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), houses significant collections of material on Latin American art that document the cultural history of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America, as well as the foundation of New York City as an epicenter of US Latino and Latin American cultural production since the 19th century. Ranging from historic archeological photographs to contemporary artists’ books, the holdings of the NYARC libraries are varied in their scope and record the contributions of Latin American and Latino artists to the international art scene. With the creation of Arcade, the shared online catalog of the Frick, MoMA and Brooklyn Museum, the ‘collective collection’ of material about and from Latin America has been strengthened in ways both expected and unanticipated. Techniques for integrating Latin American bibliographic information into discovery platforms, strategies for increasing the visibility of these collections, and ideas for providing improved access to the Latin American subset of the NYARC collections are being explored, and many further opportunities exist to engage in co-operative collection development in this area, across the NYARC consortium and with other peer institutions.

The Study Centre at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona has, since its inception in 2007, amassed a wealth of material relating to Latin American art. Its collecting policy addresses the relationship of contemporary works of art to their documentation and aims to compensate for the lack of a tradition of public collecting of documentary and bibliographic material relating to 20th-century contemporary art practices. The collection now includes influential artist publications such as concrete poetry, magazines, mail art, books of photography and even fiction written by artists, as well as special materials from letters to photographic negatives, alongside information from galleries, cultural spaces and artistic centres.

What role does book illustration play in teaching book history, and how can libraries best support it? This article looks briefly at the lack of interest in book illustration as part of traditional historical bibliography and its increasing importance in the wider field of book history. Using the example of the London Rare Books School, an international summer school, it outlines the nature of the books needed and the extent to which a teaching collection may supply them. It further discusses how and why librarians and teaching staff can collaborate fruitfully to satisfy demand.

Biennials have been central to the development of contemporary art for decades, but there is a paucity of published material specifically related to this subject. Documentation for these important exhibitions is not always made available and it is often difficult to acquire, posing an obstacle to current and future research across a number of areas within contemporary art, curating and art history. This article offers an overview of major current biennials and of the different sources of information they produce (catalogues, other printed material, online resources, archives), and surveys the secondary literature of the phenomenon. It also discusses specific collection development issues in libraries, from a research perspective, proposing a set of recommendations for best practice.

Copyright is in essence terribly simple, but in application it can be extremely complex. This article considers what copyright is and how it applies to the materials handled by art librarians in the UK. Copyright is further complicated by perpetual change: there have been repeated reviews of copyright in the UK in recent years, the EU has issued eight directives to harmonise copyright and international bodies have come up with four different principal treaties. The article looks forward to further change around the corner.

Visual resource professionals (VRPs) for years provided high-quality, subject specific, copyright cleared images for teaching and research in higher education in the UK by maintaining slide collections. As the rapid march of technology left the 35mm slide in its wake, VRPs found themselves unable to provide the digital alternative because their hands were bound by outdated copyright law. They began sounding the alarm over ten years ago and have been calling for a resolution ever since, but to no avail. Why have their calls not been heeded? How have VRPs responded to the resulting dilemma, and where does it leave the copyright status of the images used in everyday teaching in the UK?

From its creation in 1968 the Gulbenkian Art Library has possessed a number of special collections, and these have been enriched through major bequests or through acquisition. Currently there are about 180 collections with relevance for the study of Portuguese art and culture: they include private libraries, the private archives of Portuguese artists and architects, and photographic archives. Material in the special collections is available through the library’s catalogue and some have already been digitised and are available on the internet, depending on their copyright terms and conditions. Among these special collections two have special relevance to the study of the history of Brazilian art and architecture: the collection of Portuguese tiles and the Robert Smith Collection.

How does Cornwall Art Library support the cultural life of a county that is a magnet for tourists but has continuing economic problems? The historical background to the development of the internationally renowned art ‘colonies’ in West Cornwall illustrates how the libraries have become embedded within this history. Various initiatives from Cornwall Council should establish the county as a highly networked, vibrant and creative place, which will contribute to its future regeneration. Can the Library continue to reinvent resources in order to combine with the artistic community as a crucial part of the local economy?

The Glasgow School of Art (established 1845) has a long history of collecting publications and artefacts to support its teaching of fine art, design and architecture. The School now owns a rich resource of historical material, spread across its library, archive and museum collections and overseen by its Learning Resources department. Can this material continue to support learning and teaching in the creative disciplines in the 21st century? And what are the potential benefits for students? Over the last five years Learning Resources staff have explored these questions and developed a programme of activities to promote knowledge of this material and understanding of its potential use in fine art, design and architecture education.

Despite the overall complexity of United States copyright law, the basics that an archivist needs to understand are relatively straightforward and manageable if taken element by element. This article highlights ten core issues that archivists, both in the US and elsewhere, would be well-advised to study.

Free and unrestricted access to online educational or scholarly material, without subscription or registration requirements, seeks to eliminate traditional financial, legal and technical barriers. Indeed it provides greater accessibility to scholarly materials, substantially increasing the visibility of research. This article introduces the Mexican open access journals that specialize in art and culture, and analyzes their visibility in the databases of Latin American scholarly journals.

Love it or loathe it, digital is here to stay. This article explores the enormous effect that digital visual media and the ubiquity of the internet have had on the supply and delivery of images at higher education institutions, on both sides of the Atlantic. It observes the levels at which regulated digital visual resources have been adopted and looks at the problems inherent in rapidly evolving technology and the demands of the ‘millennials’ and ‘digital natives’. It also examines the barriers preventing a more fluid adoption of legal, good quality resources and the role that image specialists bring to the mix.

The Fine Arts Library at Harvard University has served the needs of teaching faculty, art museum staff, art and architectural students, researchers and historians since the founding of the Fogg Art Museum in 1895. Library collections have been enhanced by gifts from faculty, museum publications received on exchange, and by the transfer of arts-related materials from other Harvard libraries. Although founded in the spirit of a museum library, the Fine Arts Library has increasingly developed its collections and services for a wide community of users in fields across the academic spectrum.