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The artists' book is a hybrid art form: it has no home, no shelf upon which to comfortably reside. Nor is its readership easily described or accounted for. It is a book art form that is in transition; it is still evolving. This paper maps attempts to define the artists' book and explains why definitions fall short and what the slipperiness of the form might imply for library collections.

This article has been informed by a literature search, the examination of special collections of artists' books in libraries in Europe, the UK, North America and Australia as well as negotiations with librarians to acquire books.

The artists' book as a minor genre within both art and literature is also an interdisciplinary practice: as such is difficult to manage and display within the conventional library system.

This article suggests an approach to the inclusion of the artists' book in special library collections.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on a designed research methodology to distil existing research findings from an esrc/ahrc funded japan/uk network on location-based virtual reality experiences for children in order to generate new knowledge.

The structured co-production methodology was undertaken in three stages. These were: (1) a collaborative workshop which produced a series of collage narratives, (2) collaborating with a non-human entity in the form of a digital coded tool to reconfigure the workshop responses and mediate the hierarchy of roles, (3) the co-production of a zine as a collaborative reflection method, which shared via postal service enabled a dialogue and exchange of round Robin interventions by the network members.

The analysis of the data collected in this study highlighted five themes that could be used by other researchers on a wide range of projects. These were: (1) knowing through making, (2) the importance of process, (3) beyond linear representations, (4) agency of physical materials and (5) agency of digital code.

The context of the study being undertaken during the first phase of the global pandemic, revealed insight into a method of co-production that was undertaken under emergency remote working conditions. The knowledge generated from this can be applied to other research contexts such as working with researchers or participants across global borders without the need to travel.

The research provides an innovative rethinking of co-production methods in order to generate new knowledge from multidisciplinary and multimodal research.

The aim of this research paper is to examine why concert promoters sometimes advertise sold‐out live music shows when nobody can buy tickets any longer.

Durkheim's theory of religion as a thrilling social activity is used to hypothesize that the advertising of sold‐out events reminds audiences that star performers are popular and therefore helps to generate the “buzz” around them. Interviews with a series of promoters from the USA, UK and Canada revealed, however, that they see more immediate and mundane reasons for advertising sold‐out shows, including building the artist's career profile and training consumers to buy next time round.

It was found that promoters could also organize the sales and advertising process to bring sold‐out events into being. While their explanations diverged from a Durkheimian schema, the results of their actions did not. In effect they serendipitously did cultural work to further the Durkheimian process without being consciously concerned by it as an explanation of motives.

This paper suggests that the Durkheimian model illuminates a point of connection between commerce and affect in the reception of star performances. Further research on live music using the model as a hypothesis may therefore be useful.

A central issue in contemporary dance ethnography is that of writing the somatic – the attempt to articulate kinesthetic, bodily sensations that emerge in a particular culture or context, within a research format (Ness, 2008; Sklar, 2000). Emerging methods including performance making and poetic, narrative, experimental, or performative writing create space for recognition of choreographic and sensory knowledges within ethnographic research.This chapter presents a case study that illustrates what I term “movement-initiated writing”: writing that emerges through dance making, wherein the dance ethnographer is a participant observer in studio practice. This emic approach attempts to translate the felt affects of a specific world of movement into performances sited in the terrains of pages. This mode of writing draws on Roland Barthes’ (1977) notion of the “grain of the voice,” Gilles Deleuze's concept of the “minor literature” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), Hélène Cixous’s examples of écriture feminine (Cixous, 1991), and the field of performance writing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of accounting when managing the institutional complexities of a festival organisation pursuing financial and social objectives. Specifically, it focuses on how accounting can be implicated in handling a festival’s multiple and potentially conflicting logics. Also, through mobilising the concept of institutional work, the following builds on our knowledge of the importance of what people do, in managing an organisation’s institutional complexity.

This paper is grounded in a qualitative case study, for which the primary data derives from interviews, plus examination of internal documents and information in the public domain.

The festival studied is commercially successful, though ultimately one of its main organisational goals is to maximise donations to charitable causes. Other goals include: offering an alternative community through music, particularly to the young; fostering new and innovative artistry; and nurturing a festival family that is rooted to a large extent in its army of volunteers. The paper reveals how seeking such goals simultaneously requires the handling of logics that potentially can pull in opposite directions. Moreover, it highlights the efforts of festival organisers to maintain coexistence between the different logics, including the utilisation of accounting, accounts and accountability to facilitate this.

There are three main contributions of the paper. First, it offers new insight into how accounting can be purposefully used to mediate between potentially opposing logics in a complex organisational setting. Second, the paper extends our knowledge of the use of accounting specifically within a popular culture context. Third, the following adds to recent use of the concept of institutional work to understand why and how people mobilise accounting to handle institutional complexity in organisational settings.

This paper aimed to conduct an inventory of digital resources for the Queens College Special Collections and Archives and had two purposes. The first was to assess the digital resources for a department too understaffed to address digital preservation and to provide a step-by-step program for them to start thinking in the long-term. The second was to show how these steps can be generalized for many institutions just starting to have digital holdings and looking to create a long-term digital preservation plan.

The main method for research involved taking a significant sampling of the department’s digital holdings and conducting an inventory of them, analyzing such characteristics as file size, names, formats and metadata. After the inventory was conducted, recommendations were made to the department based on best practices in the field of digital preservation.

We found that while the department generally does not follow industry-best practices for preservation, the files were relatively new and, therefore, many issues could still be fixed. With a concrete plan and a bit of effort, their digital files can be more easily accessible and protected against future threats.

The issues that the Department of Special Collections had with their digital holdings are similar to those at many other institutions – especially educational ones where staff turnover is high. This case study could help similar small organizations start to access their digital holdings and start formulating a plan for long-term preservation.

The purpose of this paper is to consider perceptions of sustainability, information communication technologies (ICTs)-enhanced performances, authenticity, COVID-19 and performance futures in relation to digital content for use on-site and off-site at music festivals/events. It responds to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 – Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure. The research analyses existing literature to inform a dialogue among music festival organisers, consultants and performers. It addresses the thesis that: industry gatekeepers’ opinions on the authenticity of environmentally sound ICT-generated live content will influence its adoption at music festivals.

Primary research was carried out using purposive sampling of 50 live music industry professionals to collect and interpret expert empirical evidence through informed narrative. Using a mixed-methods approach, respondents completed a structured e-mail questionnaire comprising closed questions, a five-point Likert scale and additional qualitative open questions.

Predominantly positive quantitative responses relating to the live music industry's role in advocating sustainability contrasted with negative responses to virtual festivals. Responses adopting and rejecting environmentally sound ICT for live content were evident in qualitative results, with significant proportions of undecided or uncertain respondents. The prevalence of postponement and rejection responses around authenticity may prevent adoption at some music festivals.

The limitations of this research include the relatively small sample size and limited scope in terms of the artform.

The “snapshot” of digital aspects of sustainability at music festivals within this research is of particular value due to the paucity of research in this area, rapid change in virtual music festival provision prompted by COVID-19 and its narrative from varied industry professionals. The paper makes recommendations to artists, music festival organisers, consultants, academics and public funders to attempt to advance sustainability.