Art documentation: exhibition catalogues and beyond

This chapter explores the present and potential future of the art catalogue and related formats, their role in the documentation of art, and their management and use in art and design libraries. Exhibition catalogues, alongside special formats like recurrent exhibition documentation (biennials, triennials, etc.), auction and sales catalogues, and scholarly collection catalogues and catalogues raisonnés, present a number of common characteristics and their management in library collections often requires specialist knowledge, as they can be challenging to acquire, demand expert cataloguing, etc. Art ephemera (invitations, posters, lists of works, press releases, etc.) are another important if underrated resource collected by libraries as a complementary source of information on exhibitions and artworks.

The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship integrates theory and practice to offer guidelines for information professionals working in art and design environments who need to support and anticipate the information needs of artists, designers, architects and the historians who study those disciplines. Since the first edition of this title, the world of art and design libraries has been transformed by rapid advances in technology, an explosion in social media and the release of new standards and guidelines. This new edition, offering mostly entirely new chapters, provides an accessible, fully updated, guide to the world of academic art and design libraries from a range of international experts who reflect current practice at a global level.