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An account of the present ‘state of the art’ of the librarianship of non‐book materials must begin with a note on terminology. ‘Audiovisual materials’, ‘non‐print items’, and more imaginatively, ‘metabooks’, are some attempts at a collective description of film materials, sound recordings, and pictures of all kinds. The National Council for Educational Technology (NCET) favour ‘non‐book materials’, abbreviated to NBM. ‘One day, perhaps, the word “document” will be commonly accepted as connoting simply an embodiment of evidence, whether it be in print or pictures or whatever, and we shall take for granted that arrangements for the handling of documents should make provision as a matter of course for all media. In the meantime, the case must not be overlooked, and as an expression “non‐book material” is probably no more offensive and no less apt than its several rivals. “Non‐print document” is perhaps more accurate but is not yet in common use.’ I have adopted NBM.

This paper is based on the analysis of a few photographs published by El Heraldo de México in 1968 about the student movement. The purpose of this paper is to consider the photograph as an act in which the observer is included. From this point of view, the observer could identify a discursive line of the newspaper and build an independent interpretation. The librarian is an observer.

It is a theoretical description about the objective character of the photographs published by El Heraldo de México in 1968. Considering photography as an act, this paper proposes to empirically identify the whole context of three cases of photographs of the newspaper, as examples.

Based on the contextualized interpretation (or photograph as an act), the photograph is identified as an information object and, therefore, an epistemological object, too. There is a relation between the image and the building of knowledge, through the interpretation of the observer.

There are many studies about cataloguing and classification of images, but there is no study on the theoretical implications. The theory presented in this document comes from the work of other specialists and from other disciplines.

Learning to read visual information is as necessary as reading texts. The visual world waits to be decoded. And the twenty-first-century librarian knows how to organize, preserve and disseminate documentary collections (as photos). Value is how to find, access, decode and build knowledge over them.

In this document, the authors take a position in the library discussion about the image as an information object. Also, this paper promotes development of theoretical studies about this topic by librarians.

The tremendous growth of the audio visual industry over recent years, coupled with the sheer complexity of the aids now being marketed, has made it imperative for the user to obtain authoritative, unbiased advice on what aids best suit his needs. So to whom can he turn for help? This article brings to light some of the founts of information on the subject and explains how the busy lecturer can keep an eye on the fast expanding audio visual scene.

For students who are blind or visually impaired, technology enables greater access to the educational curriculum, immediate and independent access to information, and full participation in community and citizenship. This chapter reviews research on technology use by students with visual impairments, and highlights effective practices, promising developments, and ongoing challenges. The authors discuss the implications of these advancements on policy, instruction, professional development, and future research.

This paper aims to explore a study that examines the role of academic librarians who teach visual literacy within their information literacy curricula.

The author developed a survey that was distributed to five listservs during a three-week period, generating 118 responses from academic libraries. The author subsequently interviewed 16 participants.

The findings reveal that visual literacy is important across all disciplines. However, a majority of academic librarians who replied to the survey stated that they do not teach visual literacy. Only 37.3 per cent of the respondents indicated that they or their institutions include a visual literacy component in their sessions.

The paper identifies the most relevant visual literacy trends, and it includes examples of visual literacy skills and concepts being taught in academic libraries. It provides ideas to develop marketing strategies to increase student enrollment in library workshops.

This study has expanded librarians’ awareness of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. In addition, it explores the teaching of multiliteracies such as visual literacy within the information literacy framework in the academic library. The survey data demonstrate that academic librarians are slowly embracing visual literacy and including it in their information literacy instruction across all disciplines. The study recommends that librarians work on their professional development to become multiliterate to remain relevant within their academic communities.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the information needs satisfaction of visual art teachers affects their creativity. Visual art teachers’ information seeking behaviour and specifically the association of information needs satisfaction with creativity has been an understudied area, despite competent information seeking being considered essential for high quality practices of art teachers.

A questionnaire survey was developed addressing the information seeking behaviour of art teachers, informed by Wilson’s model (1981), including visual art teachers’ information needs, information resources, obstacles faced while seeking information and the perceived impact of information needs satisfaction on visual art teachers’ creativity.

The study included 298 visual art teachers in Greece. The results demonstrated that the key information needs of art teachers were mainly related to materials’ properties, techniques for creating artwork and artwork promotion methods. Online information sources were the preferred sources of art information, followed by colleagues, personal collections and visits to galleries and museums. Our study identified lack of time, lack of specialized libraries and copyright, as the main barriers to information seeking.

Information about art plays a substantial role in visual art education, while visual art teachers’ information needs satisfaction positively influences their creative endeavours. There is a need to further explore the digital information needs of visual art teachers.

In addition to providing a review of the literature recently published in the librarianship of non‐book materials this survey aims to draw attention to the characteristics, problems and achievements particular to the documentation and handling of non‐book materials (NBM) in many types of libraries. The materials are briefly described and considerations of selection, acquisition, organization, storage and in particular bibliographic control are dealt with in some detail. Other areas of concern to the librarian dealing with media resources, including the organization and training of staff, planning, equipment, exploitation and copyright, are also discussed. The past decade has seen the widespread introduction of NBM into libraries as additional or alternative sources of information. Librarians have been given an opportunity to rethink many basic principles and adapt existing practice to encompass the new materials. The survey reflects the achievements and some of the failures or problems remaining to be solved in this rapidly expanding area of library work.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of visual aesthetics as a key in generating satisfaction in student information system (SIS) users and to discover relationships to other antecedents. This work has also studied how gender discriminates those relationships.

DeLone and McLean’s model of information systems success, visual aesthetic and gender socialisation theory are used as a theoretical framework for the study. An explanatory model was proposed based on the previous literature, and then this model was validated using a sample of undergraduate students. Partial Least Squares was chosen as the approach to conduct the statistical analysis.

First, the findings show that the variance explained by the proposed model in user satisfaction of SIS is 67 per cent. Second, visual aesthetics has a significant direct effect on user satisfaction of SIS, but the indirect effect is much higher, through its relationship to system quality and information quality. Third, the results indicate that there are significant differences between men and women in the direct relationship between visual aesthetics and user satisfaction of SIS, and this relationship being much more intense in the case of women.

The study highlights the role of visual aesthetics as a variable that explains user satisfaction in information systems; this fact emphasises on the importance of taking into account aesthetics when designing information systems. In addition, the findings support the existence of a novel relationship between visual aesthetics and information quality. Finally, new evidence on gender differences concerning user satisfaction in information systems is presented; this result indicates in the opposite direction to recent studies that imply a certain homogenisation of gender in relation to the perceptions associated with the technologies of the information.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate student visual literacy skills using the newly designed visual literacy framework and visual literacy (VL) scale.

It includes a newly designed framework, a self-reporting questionnaire and a scale to evaluate an individual's VL skills and overall competency. The self-reporting questionnaire consists of 13 items with a five-point Likert scale.

The newly developed VL skill scale assessed the Fiji students’ competency (i.e. identify, understand, evaluate and communicate using visuals). The mean for the 13 items on VL skills showed average results, but 46.33% recorded high visual literacy competencies. The multiple linear regression analysis outcomes showed all 13 skills demonstrated significant contributions to becoming visually literate.

The limitation of this study is that the questionnaire is self-reporting, so the evaluation can be highly rated. The implications are that relevant stakeholders will be able to devise strategies and content to improve visual literacy in Fiji.

Images are playing an important role today, especially after COVID-19, which forced the education system to go online. Online learning involves a lot of visuals, and as such, visual literacy is important to students so that they can successfully learn online. This paper brings out the important aspects of visual literacy, which needs to be understood by the students.

In society, everything involves visuals. This paper introduces a visual literacy scale and a visual literacy tool to measure the visual competencies of individuals. If people understand the components of visual literacy, then visual competencies of the people will also improve.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first one on evaluating visual literacy competencies in Fiji and also in the South Pacific. The visual literacy tool is also new to the world.

The purpose of this paper is to understand young children’s knowledge of visual literacy elements as well as their ability to comprehend newly introduced visual literacy concepts. The study also examined existing support for visual literacy programs from parents and educators.

The study explored the knowledge of basic visual literacy elements of young children enrolled in two private schools in the New York City metropolitan area. The authors interviewed 17 children, aged four to six years old, about fine art paintings using a semi-structured interview format. Children’s responses were qualitatively analyzed to determine their initial level of visual literacy and their ability to learn and retain the concepts of visual literacy after receiving basic instruction. The children’s educators and parents completed online questionnaires that were quantitatively analyzed to determine their level of support for visual literacy programs.

The findings show that young children exhibited extensive knowledge of simple visual literacy elements (color, shape, line), and limited understanding of more abstract elements (perspective and salience). Children’s knowledge of visual elements improved after instruction. Parents and educators expressed support for incorporating visual literacy instruction in early childhood education.

The study relied on a sample of children and adults drawn from two private schools. The sample’s demographics might have affected study findings. More studies are needed using a larger and more diverse sample.

The study suggests that young children are ready to receive instruction on visual literacy elements using art images. Children reacted positively to the images and were engaged in the discussions about them, supporting the use of fine art paintings as an instrument to introduce visual literacy concepts to young children. Survey of children’s parents and teachers indicated strong interest in, and support for such programs.

With the increase of visual information production and consumption, it is important to introduce visual literacy early in life. The study advances research in methods for developing visual literacy instruction for young children.

There are no previously reported studies that have examined pre-kindergarten children’s knowledge of basic visual literacy elements and reactions to visual literacy instruction.