I joined the editorial team at Art Libraries Journal as an Associate Editor in spring 2022 and I am thrilled to present my first issue. In this volume, readers will find a wonderfully broad array of topics from inclusivity to circus arts. Four countries are represented in this issue.
I have been involved with art librarianship since 2003, but I must admit that circus arts has not been on my radar as a subject area. I was very surprised and intrigued to read “Circus Arts in Content Service Systems.” This article by Tibor Móring and Péter Kiszl describes their study into the prevalence of Circus Arts materials in commonly-used full-text databases. Stefanie Hilles in her article “The Canon No Longer Applies: How the Fine Arts (N) Range of the Library of Congress Classification System Perpetuates Bias by Privileging Fine Art Over Craft” and James Blake in his article “Facilitating the discovery of diverse content: some notes from Sotheby's Institute of Art” each offer their own perspective on how the cataloging of art books could be made more inclusive. When I saw Marty Miller present her open access visual literacy tool at a conference last year, I was certain that this would be of interest to ALJ readers. She discusses the creation of the tool and how it will be used in her article “Using Merrill's First Principles and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy to Select and Design H5P for a Visual Literacy OER.” Art libraries that are open and circulating to the general public are rare indeed. This is why I was so excited to learn about the Melbourne Art Library in Melbourne, Australia. In “An Independent Art Library for Naarm/Melbourne” Nell Fraser offers a look into the challenges of building and maintaining such an invaluable resource.
Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to this issue and to the editorial team at ALJ for such a warm welcome.
