Is it, should it be, the responsibility of an art librarian to document and collect ‘the now’? There are obvious pros and cons of this – the inevitable value-judgments, the expensive errors of unnecessary acquisition or omission, the labour involved, deviation from the institutional mission, etc. The author explores a personal journey through the acquisition of artists’ books and multiples, defending a role for the art librarian in the interstices of curatorship and the art world as it actually happens.

In the past few years, several new publications and exhibitions have presented surveys of the genre of artists’ magazines. This recent research has explored the publication histories of individual titles and articulated the significance of this genre within contemporary art history. Millennium magazines was a 2012 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that traced the artists’ magazine into the 21st century. The organizers, Rachael Morrison and David Senior of MoMA Library, assembled a selection of 115 international tides published since 2000 for visitors to browse during the run of the exhibition and created a website as a continuing resource for information about the selected tides. The exhibition served as an introduction to the medium for new audiences and a summary of the active community of international artists, designers and publishers that still utilize the format in innovative ways. As these projects experiment with both print and digital media in their production and distribution of content, art libraries are faced with new challenges in digital preservation in order to continue to document experimental publishing practices in contemporary art and design.

Half a century after the 1960s, commonly considered to have been the period when artists’ publications expanded and consolidated, this genre seems to be experiencing a new ‘golden age’. In recent years, the number of books and printed matter produced by artists has grown exponentially, and so has the interest in them demonstrated by exhibition curators, public and private collectors, and even the media. The contemporary art scene in Spain is not immune to this phenomenon. On the contrary, over the last decade, artists’ publishing has undergone an explosion in quantity, quality and impact with no precedents in Spanish art history. The causes for such an explosion and its main traits are explored here, focusing on a number of significant examples and protagonists. Relevant sources of information documenting its course are offered, both online and in print.

Established in 1999 within the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, in Bremen, the Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen (Research Centre for Artists’ Publications) is today one of the most significant institutions worldwide in the field of artists’ publications, with holdings of more than 200,000 items, and important programmes of exhibitions and publications. The Research Centre traces its roots to the Archive for Small Press & Communication (ASPC), founded in 1974 by Anne Marsily and Guy Schraenen, and incorporates more than 40 individual archives and special collections, including the PLG Friesländer’s Mail Art Archive, the Klaus Groh Collection and the Kunstradio Archive.

Since 2010, Book Works has been digitising material from its archive – whether finished works, ephemera, correspondence, photographs, or manuscripts – to give access to the working processes of the organisation (at www.bookworks.org.uk). The archive database is constructed around a chronological timeline and includes a search facility that allows visitors to filter and select material using a bespoke classification system. It currently comprises detailed content relating to two case studies from Book Works back catalogue: After the Freud Museum by Susan Hiller and Erasmus is late by Liam Gillick, as well as ephemera and material from other works. The project has been developed in collaboration with Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts London, with support from the AHRC Knowledge Transfer scheme.