Materials and Materiality: Swimming the tides of technology in an art and design library: from AMICO to Delicious to YouTube

Abstract

Academic art and design libraries generally exist to serve the teaching mission of the art school or academic unit to which that library is tied. As faculty become more engaged with digital technologies, as more digital resources become available for license, and as student and faculty knowledge and comfort with e-resources and application grows, there will be greater demand for e-content. The library must be prepared to provide related access and content. This transformation of service across disciplines, combined with significant format changes to collections, is changing the culture of the art information professional’s work environment, presenting new challenges to our previously-held, clearly-defined roles, and blurring long-standing resource allocation models and resource development activities within our academic institutions.