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This chapter examines the impact and influence of the visual and performing arts in sustaining thriving communities and highlights the essential role of libraries in providing access to arts and cultural programming and services. Creative and artistic intervention has become the imperative of our time. Creativity is required not only in design studios and workshops, but in all areas of work and life, both professional and personal. Places of artistic and cultural production are strongly correlated with strong local economies and sustainable communities. Libraries are public spaces that promote and maintain community, not only civic institutions. As such, the library plays a key role as incubator for the arts. Libraries advocate freedom: of ideas, communication, and information. Arts programming in libraries provides an avenue for people to communicate ideas and feelings through visual, auditory, or kinesthetic forms. But more than that, libraries are also about education, safe and welcoming spaces, community, and entertainment. Libraries support and promote the value of multiple perspectives and voices. Libraries can shape patronage of the arts and engage future generations by addressing social diversity and inciting inclusive participation in the arts. Many libraries are participating in the creation of new forms of understanding through arts programming, services, and resources. In an age where many of society’s most important challenges are related to our relationship with information, it is vitally important to include visual and performing arts professionals in the intersection between artistic practice and critical engagement with information.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the outreach activities of the Fine Arts Library at Ohio State University.

Outreach at Ohio State is intended to have global impact, but successful outreach is often hampered by lack of partnerships, funding restrictions, and a monolithic approach to the patron. The paper reflects on each of these issues and discusses the strategies used by the Fine Arts Library to conduct outreach with user‐focus and budgets in mind.

The paper finds that there are techniques for outreach that involve small outputs of funds but have larger impacts. Moving past a “one size fits all” philosophy for outreach allows the Fine Arts Library to connect with the patrons it is best able to serve.

While the phrase “think globally, act locally” is well‐known, it can often be forgotten in libraries, where the goal to reach as many people as possible is very important. This paper suggests that the returns on the local investment are incredibly important to the global missions of libraries.

Public libraries in the UK are increasingly expected to provide arts activities and events as part of their usual operations. The purpose of this paper is to summarise recent policy trends in this direction from both the perspective of libraries’ and the arts sector. A touring theatre project aimed at children and families is discussed in further detail to examine some of the outcomes of these policies.

The paper will present a brief history of policy developments and debate in this area. Mixed method findings from the research element of “Among Ideal Friends” will be discussed, having used surveys and interviews with audiences and librarians, geodemographic profiling, box office records and library card data.

Public funding across both libraries and the arts has decreased at a national and local level, though both sectors are encouraged to work together to share expertise and community knowledge.

The primary funding for the project was an arts funding body. While a holistic approach to evaluation was taken, this limited any specific focus that might have been given to educational outcomes or cost-benefit analysis compared to other interventions.

Public libraries can see the results and challenges of a successful regional touring theatre project for consideration in their own activity planning, especially those related to families and younger users.

Libraries and Arts organisations have different priorities in regards to these areas. Though co-operative, the situation is not without tension. The topic is illustrative of some wider debates around cultural value, everyday participation and cultural democracy.

This paper offers a timely discussion of cultural policy in relation to libraries, e.g. The Society of Chief Librarians “Universal Cultural Offer” (October 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to examine science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) efforts at Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) John D. MacArthur Campus Library (JDM) to share methodologies and ideas with other academic libraries. Recently, there has been an emphasis on and push for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in colleges and universities across the USA as a means for training future work forces and for remaining competitive in global job markets (Land, 2013). FAU in South Florida is a big proponent of STEM and STEAM education (Florida Atlantic University, 2012; Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, 2013).

As many librarians and outreach staff strive to remain relevant to their faculty and students with changing technologies (Drewes and Hoffman, 2010), the FAU JDM outreach staff have developed several novel programs that are geared toward the STEAM initiative.

The Library Outreach Committee at FAU was committed to investigating how they could advance student success through visual arts programming. How can the library help contribute to STEAM education for the students and learning community as a whole? How can the library engage art students? Can the library promote dialogue in arts to the faculty and staff, regardless of their disciplines? This article will describe and discuss the various art outreach programs that the JDM has tested and their outcomes addressing goals toward STEAM education and academic libraries.

The objective in sharing the experiences at the JDM is to spark new and successful program ideas at other academic libraries across the country and abroad and create knowledge in this relatively new area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature on the information behavior of practicing visual artists to determine if a consistent model emerges and what further research is necessary.

Works dealing with the information needs and uses relevant to the creative activities of visual artists are discussed in the paper. These works are assessed for their contributions toward understanding of the specific information behaviors of practicing artists.

The results show that a consistent model of artists' information behavior emerges. However, nearly all of the literature focuses on art students, academic art faculty, or librarians, and so any claim that practicing artists fit the model is largely unsupported by research. There have been no published studies of communities of practicing visual artists. The implications of defining artists as communities of practice are discussed.

Research is proposed that studies the information behavior of communities of practicing visual artists in order to confirm or amend the existing model.

Practitioners will have their attention drawn to an underserved user population whose information needs and behaviors have not been directly targeted for research. They will recognize the need for study of their own artist communities and the development of services for them.

This paper directs the discussion of artists' information behavior away from the art‐library‐specific literature, where it has largely resided, as a means of adjusting the focus of research onto the largely unstudied and underserved communities of practicing artists.

I can think of no better way of beginning this paper than by defining a Fine Arts Library; and no better definition of a Fine Arts Library than that given by Mr. Wheen in describing the Victoria and Albert Museum Library. It is, he says, a library for the study of the history, philosophy, technique and appreciation of the arts. The arts referred to are of course what are generally known as the Fine Arts, and those, for the purposes of this paper, are in three main classes: Painting, which includes sculpture, drawing and applied fine art; Architecture, which includes town planning; and Music, with which we may include the dance, the drama, and other entertainment arts developing from them.

From 2007 to 2009, Kansas State University Libraries (K-State Libraries) committed to strategically assess and redevelop their organizational structure. The Libraries’ Strategic Plan and position redistributions commenced in 2007 and 2009 respectively, with adjustments in 2010 to accommodate the university’s K-State 2025 Strategic Plan. Together, these changed the roles of former subject librarians, dividing and transferring responsibilities for outreach, reference, instruction, and collection development. Among the more significant changes was the creation of departments devoted to patron groups, rather than specific academic disciplines. Illustrating how the reorganization changed the roles of traditional library services, this chapter outlines the responsibilities of three librarian positions: Undergraduate and Community Services, Faculty and Graduate Services, and Content (collection) Development. The librarians are also founding members of the K-State Libraries Arts Matrix, an ad hoc team operating within the new organization to enhance communication and expand subject expertise in the visual and performing arts. These transitions presented both opportunities for engagement and specialization, as well as challenges to communication and subject identity. These issues are addressed, including solutions offered by the matrix model. Although this study is limited by the neoteric existence of this model, and lack of precedents for comparison, K-State Libraries’ example may offer a viable model for institutions adapting to fiscal realities. Additionally, matrices may supplement the traditional subject librarian model for those seeking to enhance engagement and collaboration. This chapter offers further insight into a strategic planning process, as well as a transparent, inclusive strategy for librarians adjusting to organizational change.

This paper aims to study the information needs and online information-seeking behaviors on mobile platforms of performing arts students at a college level.

Survey instruments were used to collect data from performing arts students at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (HKAPA), a metropolitan’s major performing arts tertiary institution. Data collected were analyzed through descriptive statistics and other statistical methods, and the music-related students were compared with the production-related students.

The result reveals that performing arts students all owned their mobile devices and often used mobile apps for non-academic purposes, but they did not often use mobile library services or read online academic contents with their mobile devices. The participants considered inadequate signal coverage, slow loading time, difficulty in reading on a mobile device and the lack of specialized mobile apps as more significant barriers affecting their usage. There are some significant differences between the music-related and production-related student groups in that music-related students watched lectures on the library websites and used electronic music scores more often than the production-related students.

This study contributes to the input for enhancements and policies to future mobile services and facilities of performing art libraries.

There have been scant studies on the mobile learning needs of performing arts students, especially in Asia.

THE wealth of special and general libraries in Great Britain justifies the assertion that there are few serious inquiries which cannot be answered satisfactorily by one or other of them. In the field of fine arts Britain is especially strong and, although the majority of the great collections on this subject are concentrated in London, the existence of important art libraries—particularly on the subjects of textiles and ceramics—in the provinces must not be overlooked. Moreover, the sources of information on the fine arts comprise not only the special libraries and the appropriate departments of the university libraries but also the special departments of several great public libraries—such as the Hornby Collection at Liverpool—the private collections of experts such as the Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson Theatre Research Collection, and the information bureaux such as those maintained by trade organizations and by various foreign governments.

It is not unfair to say that the arts in association with public libraries have been hampered in Britain (1) by financial restrictions (2) by legal restrictions and (3) by the deliberate choice of librarians and library authorities.