Belonging:

Artists’ Books and Readers in the Library

Eva Athanasiu, University of Toronto

Abstract—How can the theme of belonging inform our understanding of the interconnecting
relationships between readers, libraries, and artists’ books? In this article, the author considers
the challenges that emerge through the institutionalizing of artists’ books in rare books or
special collections models. While these systems encourage preservation, they disrupt access to
collections and complicate processes of belonging.

[This article is a revision of the paper that won the 2015 Gerd Muehsam Award. The award recognizes
excellence in a paper written by a graduate student on a topic relevant to art librarianship or visual
resources curatorship.]

introduction
Certain challenges emerge when the relationship between artists’ books and readers is
organized in the care of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs). Institution-
alizing artists’ books in the model of rare books or special collections is problematic,
affecting how readers and artists’ books connect with each other. I shape this perspective
in this article through the theme of belonging, furthering the argument with several
guiding questions: What does it mean to belong? Where do artists’ books belong and with
whom? How do GLAMs play a role in shaping and influencing the process of belonging?
Focusing on library contexts, my use of the word belonging is informed by an interdisci-
plinary collection of theories and ways of thinking, included in the works of Robert Darn-
ton,1 Aristotle,2 and Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star.3
Prefacing the critique, it is important to acknowledge the challenges of contemporary
librarianship, and of caring for artists’ books collections. While there are models that give
increased access to collections—positioning accessibility as a core goal within the scope of

Eva Athanasiu is a master of information degree candidate at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario; eva.athanasiu@gmail.com.

1. Robert Darnton, “‘What is the History of Books?’ Revisited,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 3 (2007), 503, Figures 1 and 2, doi: 10.1017
/S1479244307001370.
2. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
3. Aristotle, “The Elements All Have Natural Motion,” in On the Heavens, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1971), 300a20–302a09.

Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 34 (fall 2015)
0730-7187/2015/3402-0009 $10.00. Copyright 2015 by the Art Libraries Society of North America. All rights reserved.
 Belonging: Artists’ Books and Readers in the Library | 331

Figure 1. Robert Darnton, The Communications Circuit [diagram]. 1982, reprinted 2007. Retrieved from:
Robert Darnton, “‘What is the History of Books?’ Revisited,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 3 (2007), 503,
Figure 1. doi: 10.1017/S1479244307001370. Reprinted with permission from Robert Darnton.

GLAM mandates—this work is complex. GLAMs continually negotiate the fine balance
between preserving and engaging, a particularly challenging project in the face of dwin-
dling resources. Workers struggle to sustain their livelihoods on low-wage and precarious
contracts, increasingly prevalent in all facets of GLAM communities. Those conditions
must be recognized— even if they are not the focus of this article—because they shape the
well-being of both staff and collections. Within the rare books or special collections model,
artists’ books demand extra care and concern from librarians; their safekeeping is pre-
sented as a necessary and integral practice to ensure the long-term health of collections.4
This model also demands additional effort in the form of outreach initiatives. As Michelle
Strizever succinctly points out in her recent article concerning online browsing resources
for artists’ books collections, “Even with a broad access policy, the librarian nevertheless
serves as an intermediary between work and researcher.”5 Access is heavily mediated. To
balance the perspective of the primary argument, I offer brief examples of notable initia-
tives by library staff, intended to bring readers and artists’ books together.

wha t d oes it mean to belon g ?

Two secondary sources offer useful frameworks for considering how artists’ books
belong in our communities, both where and with whom. Presenting his work in the
form of a visual model, Robert Darnton offers his Communications Circuit (Figure 1).
Darnton shows how different labor groups source, manufacture, distribute, use, and

4. Annie Herlocker, “Shelving Methods and Questions of Storage and Access in Artists’ Book Collections,” Art Documentation
31, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 72.
5. Michelle Strizever, “Artists’ Books DC: Developing Access, Promoting Research, and Facilitating Browsing,” Art
Documentation 34, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 91.
332 | ART DOCUMENTATION | FALL 2015 | Vol. 34, No. 2

Figure 2. Thomas R. Adams and Nicholas Barker, The Whole Socio-Economic Conjuncture [diagram]. 1993,
reprinted 2007. Retrieved from: Robert Darnton, “‘What is the History of Books?’ Revisited,” Modern
Intellectual History 4, no. 3 (2007), 503, Figure 2. doi: 10.1017/S1479244307001370. Reprinted with
permission from Robert Darnton.

preserve books, all within a system of repeating and interconnecting processes. Together,
these events produce the life cycles of books. While the system is specific to western
European book trades in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and is thus limited, it
can still be usefully applied to consider the positioning of artists’ books within our com-
munities and how they might fit in our libraries. On the left side of the circuit, Darnton
shows how readers are an integral part of the life cycle, and how libraries are one of the
spaces in which readers can connect with a network of books, including artists’ books.
Thomas R. Adams and Nicolas Barker transformed Darnton’s earlier model to reflect
their interest in the process of the book, rather than specific labor roles (Figure 2). In the
Whole Socio-Economic Conjuncture, they emphasize the significance of survival
throughout the book production process. The commitments of library staff fit directly
within the project of survival; their “intellectual influences” and “social behaviors” clearly
impact the ways in which artists’ books are managed and accessed.
In De Anima, Aristotle argues that everything has a natural resting place in the
world.6 In the Aristotelian model, an object’s meaning is intimately tied to its belong-

6. Aristotle, “The Elements All Have Natural Motion,” 300a20.

 Belonging: Artists’ Books and Readers in the Library | 333

Figure 3. Eva Athanasiu, A Network of Belonging? [diagram]. 2015.

ing in place and to the familiarity and normalcy of this belonging. However, in their
seminal text on the sociology of classification, Sorting Things Out, Bowker and Star’s
primary argument is that “categories are historically situated artifacts and, like all
artifacts, are learned as part of membership in communities of practice.”7 They ex-
pose the role of human action in organizing and maintaining a given artifact. The
process of learning slowly transforms into a process of naturalizing, in which the
newness or strangeness of an artifact slips into the infrastructures of a given commu-
nity of practice, becoming a normal presence within community activities. Commu-
nities of practice organized around art librarianship, as well as rare books and special
librarianship, slowly naturalized the category of artist’s book. This process occurred
as library staff normalized and legitimized the acquisition of artists’ books, invited the
category into their discourse, and worked to develop cataloging and storage schemes,
among other projects.8

where do artists’ books b elo n g an d w it h w h o m ?

In the context of Bowker and Star’s work on membership in communities of practice,
and Darnton’s visualization of the life cycle of books, the theme of belonging can be
seen to operate within each of the following relationships: artists’ books and libraries,
artists’ books and readers, and readers and libraries (Figure 3).
The first pair—artists’ books and libraries—strongly connote the theme of belong-
ing. Libraries have engaged with and collected artists’ books for several decades, and

7. Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out, 287.

8. Stefan Klima, Artists Books: A Critical Survey of the Literature (New York: Granary Books, 1998).
334 | ART DOCUMENTATION | FALL 2015 | Vol. 34, No. 2

the category of artist’s book is firmly established as legitimate within many different
institutions. Artists’ books belong in GLAMs. GLAMs are significant spaces of be-
longing, because of their work and capacity to facilitate learning opportunities by
caring for and sharing primary materials, through education and outreach.
People also belong in GLAMs—they are students, visitors, researchers, staff, and
community members. Thus, while artists’ books may be collected and cared for by
institutions, they belong to their readers, and together with their readers, in GLAMs.
However, intricate circumstances inform how the theme of belonging operates
within the second and third pairs: the relationships between artists’ books and read-
ers, and readers and libraries.
Artist’s book is a complex category. In name, it is widely recognized among GLAM
institutions, but conversations remain in flux regarding which artifacts constitute the
category.9 This premise is well-established in the discourse; Rosemary Furtak de-
scribed an artist’s book as “a book that refuses to behave like a normal book.”10 While
many scholars and information professionals have contributed to the debate, I will
not present additional definitions or descriptions; Furtak’s effective use of anthropo-
morphic metaphors imbues discussions surrounding artists’ books with humor and
trickery. She considers artists’ books as challenging objects, a useful proposition
when discussing their special positions in libraries—among the “normal book[s]”—
and subsequent complexities of organization and access.
Referring again to Bowker and Star’s concept of membership in communities of
practice, artist’s book, as a category, serves to isolate selected book objects from other
book objects, resulting in a continual process of including certain works, and exclud-
ing those “normal book[s].” This process of isolation is comparable to the twentieth-
century project of the art object, a fetish legitimized by its recognition in an “art
world,” which is another kind of community of practice, according to Arthur C.
Danto.11 Curator Sarah Mottalini offers a useful example in her accompanying essay
for the exhibition Artists’ Books: Where to Put the Apostrophe?12 Mottalini comments on
the unique position of artists’ books within the nexus of other art objects, referencing
book artists of the 1960s, including Dieter Roth, Sol LeWitt, Edward Ruscha, and
Lawrence Weiner: “[they] discovered that with artists’ books they could circumvent
galleries, which at first had rejected them, while creating more egalitarian avenues for
art to reach the masses.”13 Each of these artists benefited from their considerable
privilege and establishment within the fields of conceptual art (Weiner and LeWitt),
pop art (Ruscha), and fluxus (Roth). The support and recognition of these respective
art communities are examples of Danto’s “art world.” Using Mottalini’s representa-
tion of each artist’s relationship with artists’ books as an example, and acknowledging

9. Nola Farman, “Artists’ Books: Managing the Unmanageable,” Library Management 29, no. 4/5 (2008): 319 –26.
10. Rosemary Furtak, “Text/Messages: Artist Books at the Walker Art Center,” YouTube video, 2:49, posted by
“Chuckumentary,” January 9, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v⫽8S2y-7nq5hc.
11. Arthur C. Danto, “The Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division
Sixty-First Annual Meeting (October 15, 1964), 571-584. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2022937.
12. Artists’ Books: Where to Put the Apostrophe? is ongoing in the Lally Reading Room, Schaffer Library at Union College, until
the spring of 2016. To learn more, visit https://www.union.edu/library/collections/digital-collections/exhibits/.
13. Sarah Mottalini, “Artists’ Books: Where to Put the Apostrophe?” Union College Library, https://www.union.edu/library
/_pdfs/exhibits/Artists-Books_Full-Essay.pdf.
 Belonging: Artists’ Books and Readers in the Library | 335

the specificity of this book art history (nonetheless, one that continues to be influen-
tial in book art literature and commentary), artists’ books can be arranged within a
history of art world[s], in which artists’ books were perceived by their authors as
alternative media, adopted in order to evade the commercial and exclusive models of
art collection and distribution.
While the latter part of her statement arguably leans towards an idealistic and
somewhat patronizing conception of the meaning and production of art (especially
considering the privilege of each of the aforementioned artists), Mottalini hints at a
very real history in which artists’ books have traversed institutional boundaries—
slipping between galleries, libraries, archives, and museums—in a way that other art
objects have never quite achieved. This history offered the opportunity to distribute
art works within alternative models such as library systems. The sentiment is echoed
by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Research Guide on Book Art, which shares
seven potential reasons for making book arts, including “to make art that is portable
and easily shared,” “to make art accessible outside of the constructs of galleries and
museums,” and “to allow viewers to have an intimate or interactive experience.”14
Considering these reasons together, they suggest a historically rooted preference for
bringing artists’ books and readers together. This preference is particularly evident
through the use of the following words in the previous quotations, which portray
artists’ books in direct connection with their potential readers: portable, easily shared,
accessible, intimate or interactive experience. As Darnton demonstrated in his Com-
munications Circuit, libraries are important spaces in the life cycle of a book—argu-
ably critical epicenters for book survival.

ho w do glams shape and in fl u e n ce b e lo n gin g?

Within the current context of rare books and special collections models, artists’ books
continue to belong to the category of isolated art object, subjected to rarity and fetish-
ism. This complicated reality manifests itself through the storage of artists’ books:
most live in non-browsing, non-circulating, advance-request collections.15 “Browsing
and circulating book art are not activities possible in most libraries,” Strizever points
out.16 Artists’ books are typically restricted to their primary environment, known only
to a particular and immediate readership. “In the rare books model,” writes Strizever,
“limited access and lack of browsing protect fragile and valuable work, but even rare
book librarians have criticized the browsing limitations and gatekeeper role of the
librarian in special collections.”17 The potential usefulness of artists’ books is too
often mitigated by the perception of the primary need for protection, and their coveted
presence in the context of a GLAM collection.
In his recent book Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typog-
raphy, Gaspereau Press co-founder Andrew Steeves critiques what he calls “this ten-

14. Virginia Commonwealth University, “What is Book Art?” VCU Libraries Research Guides: Book Art, http://guides.library
.vcu.edu/c.php?g⫽47628&p⫽298016.
15. To learn more about a notable exception, see Nicole Lovenjak’s poster presentation for the 2015 ARLIS/NA Conference in
Fort Worth, Texas, “Fresh Off the (Closed) Shelf: The Banff Centre Library’s Transition to an Open Stack Artists’ Books Collection”
at https://arlisnw.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/lovenjak_arlis_artists27-books-poster-presentation-2015.pdf.
16. Strizever, “Artists’ Books DC,” 90.
17. Ibid., 90 –91.
336 | ART DOCUMENTATION | FALL 2015 | Vol. 34, No. 2

dency to rarify the beautiful and exile it outside of our common experience.”18 Steeves
addresses the function of libraries within this problematic practice:

To my way of thinking, the library in general, and the rare book library in
particular, is a workbench, a place of productivity and discovery where many
generations of tools may be actively employed toward the accomplishment of
contemporary acts. A rare book library must never be a place where we observe
or preserve only, where we merely come to view the old tools, protected and
posed under glass.19

Continuing, he shares an example of the consequences of this practice:

One negative side effect of the library-as-sanctuary is that it perpetuates the

ideas that the books we use in our daily lives are somehow merely ordinary, and
that real truth, real beauty and real quality does not reside in them, but resides
elsewhere, protected in the collections of great institutions from our clumsy,
prosaic ordinariness.20

Mottalini shares a relevant historical anecdote from Union College’s own long-
rooted relationship with artists’ books. A copy of Lawrence Weiner’s Statements
(1968) “now long out of print and coveted by collectors, ended up in Union College’s
circulating collection, written on and in, stamped, covered in stickers and categorized
as ‘American Literature.’”21 Here, Mottalini positions the fetish of the book art ob-
ject—“now long out of print and coveted by collectors”—in direct contrast with its
short-lived use within the library’s circulating collection, facilitated through its inte-
gration with browsable materials and handling by “our clumsy, prosaic ordinariness.”
Library staff are designing projects to support reader access to artists’ books: public
exhibitions, tours, class visits, one-on-one consultations, and integrating collections
into course programming, all of which can greatly assist in promoting and providing
access to collections. However, most offline initiatives require that readers enter the
library space, as collections may not be permitted to travel off-site. A new set of
problems therefore emerges: potential readers may not live within visiting distance of
an institution, may not belong to the university library community, or may feel over-
whelmed by the parameters of a rare books or special collections environment. As
John H. Overholt writes, “Special collections is often an intimidating place, with
elaborate rules and extra hurdles to access.”22 When artists’ books are stored within a
rare books or special collections model, they often live with one another in a restricted
system. Overholt argues that it is “crucial to reach out and demystify special collec-
tions, to convey the message: ‘Please touch. This is here for you. You are special

18. Andrew Steeves, Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography (Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press
Limited), 33.
19. Ibid., 26.
20. Ibid., 27.
21. Mottalini, “Artists’ Books.”
22. John H. Overholt, “Five Theses on the Future of Special Collections,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, & Cultural
Heritage 14, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 19, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10601790.
 Belonging: Artists’ Books and Readers in the Library | 337

enough for special collections.’”23 While somewhat precious, Overholt’s tone sug-
gests the importance of creating a context in which library patrons feel that they
belong in the library space. This is a particularly nuanced effort when the materials in
question are managed like rare books.
Strizever points out in a footnote of her article that over the last five years “a swell
of book art attention and online resources from libraries” has emerged, and that
“many valuable online resources, from LibGuides to collection directories, [are] now
available to researchers.”24 Online resources, including digitization projects and on-
line exhibitions, extend the reach of analog collections beyond their library homes.
These projects are excellent resources, but they depend on several key processes
working together: detailed metadata, user-friendly interfaces, high-quality images,
and intuitive browsing functions. Additionally, online resources are only as success-
ful as reader skills in digital and information literacy, and access to the Internet
continues to be a very real challenge for many communities. Navigating online cata-
logs to browse a collection may also present difficulties, as cataloging schemas across
institutions vary immensely. Within a single classification system, materials may be
difficult to distinguish one from the other. For example, catalog entries organized
through the LC subject heading artists’ books (N7433.3–N7433.4) may include artists’
books as well as secondary and reference materials concerning artists’ books. Addi-
tionally, many catalog entries provide minimal metadata for readers. Some artists’
books often exclude the formal features of standard format books, which create what
Johanna Drucker calls the literal book.25 These directives may include the table of
contents, page numbers, a publisher’s description, subject headings, an index, or text.
These formal features are “graphical elements [that] are not arbitrary or decorative,
but serve as functional cognitive guides.”26 However, and more importantly, inter-
acting with the features creates what Drucker calls the phenomenal book,27 suggesting
an event, a process, or a happening—the phenomenon of belonging, in which readers
and books come together. Because they are ubiquitous in standard format books,
when the features are not present, library staff must find alternative methods to
facilitate the phenomenon of belonging between readers and artists’ books.
Outreach initiatives can support reader-belonging in both the library’s online and
offline spaces, demonstrating that collections are ultimately for readers’ use and
learning, and not only for institutional safekeeping. Perfect models to address issues
of access do not exist, and institutions must continually negotiate the process.

refl ec ti on
Reflecting briefly on a relevant professional experience, in the summer of 2014 I
worked at a branch of the Toronto Public Libraries, with a special collection of books

23. Ibid.
24. Strizever, “Artists’ Books DC,” 92.
25. Johanna Drucker, “Modeling Functionality: From Codex to E-book,” in SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative
Computing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 172.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
338 | ART DOCUMENTATION | FALL 2015 | Vol. 34, No. 2

for young people with disabilities.28 The collection had recently arrived from Norway,
courtesy of IBBY, the International Board for Books for Young People, in order to
serve one of the busiest branches of one of the busiest library systems in North
America.29 Although not categorically an artists’ book collection, the IBBY Collection
of Books for Young People with Disabilities includes many rare and one-of-a-kind
textile and tactile books that can benefit readers for whom traditional print or even
e-books do not meet needs or interests.
Our primary aim was to support underserved communities, so that they may feel
the library’s collection belongs to them, but we were also challenged to care for the
collection and ensure its continued safekeeping and use.
Librarians and staff implemented several initiatives, including open-stacks shelv-
ing, inviting readers to interact with the books. Class visits on-site, librarian visits to
schools off-site with selected books, on-site workshops in tactile book making, an
online catalog with full-color cover images and detailed descriptions of selected works
in the collection, and a dedicated collection librarian, are examples of other supportive
projects. While the collection is far from reaching its full meaningful potential in the
kind of network of belonging for which I advocate throughout this article, the library’s
efforts demonstrate how cultural and information institutions are shaping and influ-
encing the process of belonging, with the acknowledgment that there is much work to
be done.

28. To learn more about the IBBY Collection of Books for Young People with Disabilities, currently housed at the North York
Central branch of the Toronto Public Library, visit http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ibby/.
29. Toronto Public Library, “2014 Key Facts,” http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/media/key-facts/.
Copyright of Art Documentation: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America is
the property of University of Chicago Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.