my review of The artist's library

The Artist's Library: A Field Guide by Erinn Batykefer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another new book exploring the area of artists/makers and libraries. The writers of the book manage the excellent Library as incubator project blog. There is a scarcity of writing in this area and this book makes a helpful contribution.

This book seems to be written for library clients/artists/makers, but it can also be used as a source of inspiration and ideas for library staff when developing programs, services and partnerships. There are many examples of how artists work with libraries. There is useful information about copyright and online resources. They explore the "inherently inspiring nature of libraries". Does this describe your library?

The poem by Joseph Mills called If librarians were honest gains a worthy inclusion.

Much of the material has been covered on their blog, but this book bring it together well. The chapters have different themes exploring diverse sources of inspiration and ideas, often within the library. The chapters also include the work of artists relevant to the points being made, and some exercises which artists/makers can do, or which libraries could run as programs or services.

It would work well as a companion volume to Bibliocraft by Jessica Pigza

View all my reviews