Art librarians work with images. It’s one of the things that separates us from many of our fellow subject librarians. As the academy continues to grapple with the benefits, drawbacks, and effects of AI, art librarians are uniquely positioned to teach students how to critically engage with AI image generators. Considerations concerning copyright, bias in datasets, formal analysis, and AI image generators’ potential as an art medium are some examples of topics that art librarians have at their disposal.

Artificial Intelligence or machine learning is something that the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) sector cannot avoid. There are many examples of it being used for translation, transcription, and keywording of existing data, but can it be used to deal with challenging terminology, or to enhance physical access to our collections? At the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), projects are underway to use machine learning tools to analyse and flag potentially problematic terminology and to enhance access to stored collections by generating fragility ratings based on collections data.

The semantic web promises interlinks of cultural heritage objects, both original and digital, of which the Smithsonian Institution (SI) holds plenty in artifacts, books, audio/video, etc. At the core, structured data in RDF is likely the one member of data infrastructure that carries the major lifting for interlinking. Parsing millions of bibliographic data mainly locked in MARC21 into the BIBFRAME/RDF syntax is not an insignificant endeavour for the library community. The Smithsonian Libraries & Archives, a network of specialized libraries (including art and design), is not an exception. It became part of the Share Family to utilize its technology so as to increase user resource discovery and the library staff’s ability to resource curations. Working collaboratively with scores of research, academic and national libraries, and the Share Family team, the Smithsonian Libraries & Archives experimented with BIBFRAME, a Library of Congress RDF-based ontology, which has benefited greatly from the Share-VDE semantic technology and its system design. From such efforts, the Smithsonian Libraries & Archives looks to move away from the web of documents into a web of data. Fulfilling SI’s strategic vision of availing collections through digital solutions for the increase and diffusion of human knowledge.

The GESAH Graphic Arts Ontology (GESAH GAO) was developed to describe works of art on paper such as prints and drawings. The design was guided by the content-related, specialized needs of the domain experts, as well as the requirement to record the data in a structured manner in order to enable subsequent use and to ensure technical connectivity to current and future developments. The ontology models cultural objects by means of activities related to them (creation, production, inscription, preservation, exhibition etc.), people/organizations and their roles, subjects depicted and other relevant concepts. It incorporates concepts from upper ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and reuses classes and properties from ontologies such as Friend of a Friend (FOAF), VIVO, and Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). With TIB SAH digital, we show the reference implementation of the GESAH GAO. It was constructed using the open-source knowledge graph suite Vitro, which provides custom entry forms for cataloguing and public access to the digitized collection.

Today, social media has become an essential part of both private and professional life, especially in cultural institutions such as museum libraries. Museum libraries have recognized the importance of social media as a fast and constant source of information. With their increasing presence, employees in museum libraries have realized the need to determine which social networks are used and for what purposes. Social media allows for active, but virtual, interaction and provides new opportunities for developing intercultural collaborations. Social media technologies include: text messages, illustrations, photos, animations, music, and audio-video content. By using social media, individuals are able to express their opinion to a wide public, so they are, more than ever, relying on intercultural communication and cooperation.

Academic research libraries that build and steward collections in support of art research are always developing and executing strategies for their physical and virtual spaces, preservation, and access. NYU Libraries’ Institute of Fine Arts Library welcomes readers of a wide range of expertise, subject focus, and languages and works to make the library collections easier to discover and use in more creative ways in the pursuit of research, teaching, and learning. This work raises the question, whom do librarians turn to when they are responsible for subject areas or languages they may not know?

This article concerns collection development at NYU Libraries’ Institute of Fine Arts Library focusing on the African American and Black Diaspora, Asian, and Latin American & Caribbean art collections as distinct collections within a larger art library setting. In addition, it provides ways libraries can implement collection development policies that prioritize materials by underrepresented groups and offer community engagement with partners focused on inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and accessibility.

The work of making library collections and services more equitable is not a one-off task, but one that needs constant review and revision as perspectives and expectations change in the wider culture. Examples include three recent issues that have arisen in connection with Sotheby’s Institute of Art’s in-house book classification scheme: our use of the concepts of the Dutch Golden Age, MENA/SWANA, and the Global South/Global North. An awareness of relevant trends in contemporary thought, and a willingness to examine critically how best to respond to such trends, support librarians in offering the best service they can to their patrons.

Fashion ephemera, encompassing items such as lookbooks, invitations, show notes, and promotional materials, presents numerous challenges for cultural institutions seeking to collect and preserve this material. Although many museums have examples of this material in their archives, International Library of Fashion Research (ILFR), in Oslo, Norway, is the first public library to centre its collections around fashion ephemera. Positioned as a fashion library, ILFR therefore offers a unique approach, which foregrounds the materiality and tangibility of the objects in their collection, beyond their initial function as supplementary documentation of fashion industry events and outputs. This article examines the complexities of integrating fashion ephemera into library collections, the significance of the library in mediating access to this type of material, and the critical role ephemera can play in fashion research.